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Welcome Hall of Fame of the Microfiction and Poetry (MF&P) contests






In this hall of fame the winners of the Microfiction and Poetry contest will be honoured and their winning entry will be showcased.

Congratulations to all winners. You deserved this place!
Hidden 4 yrs ago 2 yrs ago Post by Loksfjoer
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MF&P #1 - Butterfly





The Lepidopterist


Lepidopterology is the study of butterflies and moths to the exclusion of all other insects. A strange lepidopterist lives in a termite-infested house on the edge of town, neighbor to nothing and no-one. If he had room in his heart for beetles and spiders and other forms of creeping, crawling life, he would be an entomologist and not half as strange, but his consuming obsession does not extend to anything else.

Only butterflies and moths.

Coyotes used to prowl through the tall yellow grass behind the house, but the lepidopterist is long in the tooth and knew just how to scare them away so that they wouldn’t come back. The ravens and the crows were next, then the speckled eggs in the cradle of the nest: all still and flightless when his work was done. He is no ornithologist, either. Removing them made room for his favourite things to breathe and fly free, and by the might of the same blunt tools, a butterfly garden was soon erected in the backyard.

Inside the house, there are dozens of wooden cases with glass fronts, designed for displaying preserved butterflies and moths. Most lie as bare as his kitchen cabinets, which makes him a strange lepidopterist: he hasn’t the stomach to keep any. Those that remain are ragged monarchs chewed up and spat out by whatever creature tasted their bright, bitter wings and thought the better of it.

He stores his blunt tools next to a bell jar on his workbench. The glass contains decomposing leaf litter and wilting flowers, and has imprisoned within it a single specimen of the genus Dryas. This one he has nicknamed Julia, because her species is the D. iulia; a bad joke inherited from the entomologist who lived in the house before him. Difficult to swallow without smiling.

Now, the lepidopterist lifts the bell jar like the lid of a serving dish and extracts her with feather-light expertise. Several of her brothers and sisters have made their home beneath the poplars in the butterfly garden, as common as mud. He often watches them from the kitchen window whenever the southern sun grows hot enough to dry him out, but one day Julia came in to keep him company, clinging to his green-checkered shirt rather than the greenery outside. A kindred spirit, she too chose the safety and security of a short life indoors over the nasty, brutish freedom God intended.

Julia trusts his gnarled finger is a twig to rest on, sprinkling the ridges and wrinkles with her sweet pixie dust. Her passionfruit wings are long and tucked in protectively against her abdomen. Some would describe them as gossamer, but they are far more delicate than that. Like rice paper. He has heard that edible confetti is made out of it these days so that when it’s thrown at weddings it doesn’t harm the local wildlife. It just dissolves away to nothing in the rain.

Melts in the mouth.

He swallows the butterfly whole and fluttering.




by @Roach
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MF&P #2 - Stars





Interstellar

Oh look to the heavens and despair,
Stare into the emptiness from below,
No distant beauty that was never there,
Fair stars which burned out long ago,

They who once had shined so bright,
Night must come to follow every day,
May stars guide us by their dying light,
Might we too soon lose our way,

Centuries traveled to reach the eye,
Why journey forth as distant memories,
Sentries blinking hung upon painted sky,
Die then in your cosmic serenity,

One by one winks out each star,
Far fates destined to be undone,
None remain reaps the repertoire,
Are certain ends which had begun,

Trust in them who are gone,
Spawn ripples as they combust,
Just as from them we live on,
Dawns a new star from the dust.
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MF&P #3 - Wish





The Wishing Well

I watched my coin as it fell into the bottomless black maw of the well. When I looked back up, she was waiting for me.

by @a jellyfish

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MF&P #4 - OX





Haiku for the ox

ox under the yoke
burdened by many sorrows
ploughs for a new spring

by @Kassarock

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MF&P #5 - Sleep





I always loved to watch you sleep.

Every night, when you drifted off, I would stay up to watch you sleep. Each morning, before you rose, I would get up to watch you sleep. You looked so peaceful, lying there so still and composed. I would creep around on the tips of my toes, trying my hardest not to make a sound. You were so beautiful when you were sleeping, I never had the heart to wake you.

Until I did.

And then you saw me.

And then you started to scream.

by @Kassarock

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MF&P #6 - Colours





Despair

Black, like his pupils. They were dark and pierced through me. It didn’t matter what color his eyes were. It was the undiscovered universe behind them. It was the mysterious darkness that looked at me. It was like the color of this room. Completely and utterly pitch black.

I opened my eyes and studied the shadows of the silence. All I saw was black, like a void, trying to swallow me. My sheets were reassurance that I was still alive, still breathing, still lying in the stiff, sanitized bed in a hospital room.

Father Sergius is scheduled to visit me today. He will arrive with his black cassock and black briefcase and his black shoes. He will open his briefcase and pull out his cross and a few other holy things. He will caress his black prayer rope with his fingers. He will ask what is on my mind, what is ailing me.

What will I say? It’s all around me. It caresses my skin, yet I cannot feel it. It holds me tight but never touches me. It folds me into the very heart of my sin. It leaves me empty and cold. Yet, no matter how close I am to the darkness, it never leads me to him.

All I have are memories of him. I can watch them. I can hear them. I can replay them over and over. They are a part of me, and yet I am not a part of them.

How can I keep searching in the darkness for his mysterious universe? No matter how close I get to the darkness, it will never be close enough to see him again. However, I must not lose hope, Father Sergius, even if it kills me.


by @chrysocoma
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MF&P #7 - Hole





There once was a man named John Bello
Who had dimples a plenty, I tell you.
He fell in a hole,
but that was the goal.
For he was a golf ball sized fellow.

by @artexercise

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MF&P #8 - Writing





Writing. A word that brings so much love and anxiety to my being. A word full of passion and fire, and a word of depth and the unknown all at once. A beautiful juxtaposition that lives inside of my mind just waiting to be tapped into.

A river of words that flow from my mind to my waiting fingers as each piece comes together to form a story wholly its own, willed into existence by my effort. A story so easily allowed to be in ruin or to thrive as I see fit but I am no god; I am a writer with the power of thought, and that’s enough.

by @MichiCommander
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MF&P #9 - Stone





I drum my fingers on the table, eyeing the elf in front of me carefully. She looks back with that casually, neutrally beautiful face, her head tilted to one side, long black hair refusing despite all reason to get in her eyes.
“I’m ready to stop playing this game now.”
Venne-ei et venne-du, wicke. I will follow your lead, witch.”
I lean back in my chair, gather my words.
“Okay,” I sigh. “You know what I want to talk about.”
“I do not.”
Guess for me.”
“You have never encountered a tame elf, and you have suspicions about me.”
Wrong… half-right… no, completely right, but not how she’s trying to imply.
“You’re an Akashic Librarian.”
She raises a thin, delicate eyebrow. “I am willing to entertain this as a hypothetical.”
“You said we weren’t playing any more games. Let me be clear here: you are an Akashic Librarian. You keep the Record of All Truths. Your aura makes no sense otherwise. This is not a question. ”
She crosses her arms. She has an intensely annoying way of faking bemusement, as if I’m some machine acting out of order. At least she stays quiet.
“I bring this up because you’ve been playing me. You know all this shit about the Philosopher’s Stone that you’re pretending not to. If you’re tired of helping me with experiments that get nowhere, all you have to do is talk. Why haven’t you?”
She looks off to the side, her movements slow, her hair seeming to float after her.
Wicke… supposing you are right. The Akashic Record does not only catalogue secrets. It keeps them as well.”
“But you’re helping me with my experiments. Look at me. If you’re trying to keep a secret, why are you helping me dig it up?
“I would be helping you play at digging it up.” She re-establishes eye contact, that coldly crimson gaze again looking at me like a puzzle. “Secrets kept in the Akashic Record can be learned nowhere else. There are bindings. The knowledge is not replicable. Even the keepers would not know it.”
I stare at her. She stares back, unaffected by my face, which could be showing any combination of shock and anger right now.
“So you’re saying – hypothetically – that the quest for the Stone is fucking hopeless. You’ve just been playing with me for weeks and that’s it.”
“Hypothetically, wicke.
“No, let’s drop the hypothetical. You’re saying it’s hopeless.”
“While the secrets of the Philosopher’s Stone are bound, they cannot be learned.”
“And you, who knows this, have been pretending to help me discover it.”
“That is the scenario that is-“
“True. Or. False.”
Pause. Her eyes start to brighten. She looks at me with a steadily growing grin. “You know I wouldn’t lie to you, wicke.
She turns away, hiding her smile just as it begins to show teeth, and goes for the door.
She opens it.
“True,” she says.
She closes it behind her.
…You know I wouldn’t lie to you?

by @Sniblet
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MF&P #10 - Ten!





Lights.
Eight Stars.
Cresting the sky.
Reaching out ad infinitum.
White horses of the horizon.
The sleek battleship grey churning past.
Septuplets guiding the navigator through the abyss.
Cargo cowering in fear of the eldritch benthos.
An esoteric mind rises through the inky depths; searching.
Sextuplets winking out above the screeching tearing of steel bulkhead.

by @PerfectThought

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MF&P #11 - Wind





The Hanged Man

Coils winding around the hanging rope,
Each turn marking the minutes he had left,
Seven twists of fate he could only hope,
His execution is the price of theft.
So down he went in falling for his sin,
Another body swaying in the wind.

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