Reena’s Exploration Challenge #124

Welcome back to another week!

I had a tough time getting a pesky fly out of the house today. In the process, I came to admire her incorrigible optimism.

Here’s a poem by Lisel Mueller

IMMORTALITY
In Sleeping Beauty’s castle
the clock strikes one hundred years
and the girl in the tower returns to the world.
So do the servants in the kitchen,
who don’t even rub their eyes.
The cook’s right hand, lifted
an exact century ago,
completes its downward arc
to the kitchen boy’s left ear;
the boy’s tensed vocal cords
finally let go
the trapped, enduring whimper,
and the fly, arrested mid-plunge
above the strawberry pie,
fulfills its abiding mission
and dives into the sweet, red glaze.

As a child I had a book
with a picture of that scene.
I was too young to notice
how fear persists, and how
the anger that causes fear persists,
that its trajectory can’t be changed
or broken, only interrupted.
My attention was on the fly;
that this slight body
with its transparent wings
and lifespan of one human day
still craved its particular share
of sweetness, a century later.

PROMPT

Does this poem inspire a chain of thoughts? It is not just about the fly. What else could have happened during those hundred years? Did the inhabitants of the house really like the world after a century- post-modern, post-truth, post-illusions of AR & VR? Could it be a back-to-humanity world after an era of being ruled by robots?

Let your imagination run amok. May the scenarios you paint inspire a composite piece of art or literature!

As usual, there is no restriction on length or format of the piece. Write a post on your blog, and copy-paste the link here.

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LAST WEEK’S WRAP

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