July Challenge | Keeley Schroder | Day 25 | Harry Hogg
Writing prompts to inspire you through July #26
# 26 Is it okay to lie if you’re protecting someone you love?
I lie to protect myself. That’s just the way it is.
You cannot treat me as just another human because, by all measured standards, I am not one, never have been, and never likely to aspire so high.
I can be cruel and selfish when I’m afraid.
If you cannot protect me from my lies, I’d never want to meet you, have that dance, or feel your warm breath on my face. If you can, know that in my life, I’ll never be closer and more loving than I am now.
My chest is the strongbox containing my heart, protected by brass ribs, and a spine like a cobbled road holds my back strong. My belly is filled with jewels, and my penis rises at dawn. I am a man, but the pain of being a child holds true.
So alone, so wild of eye, a boy in a cornfield, a whirlwind upon the shore where my skin burnt, and my fingers played tunes on pebbles and the shells of crabs.
You need the heart of a bull to love me. You need a bolt for my neck and a razor for the cavity in my throat. And when the time comes, when my eyebrows are shot together with fear, and my breath becomes that of a dragon, you must end it for me.
There is pain in loving such a man; he walks the battlements of creative genius, failing, and all he can do is love you, as hot as lava and graceful as the willow. He lives in a ruined kingdom of dreams such as no man should ever live, and fights confusion with troubled answers.
Who do you think you are that you can care for me, my lies, and make me believe you can? Do you dare to think you can make me happy, a man who has never been happy in its simplest form?
Do you dare to challenge the distance and bring me close? It’s been tried. Are you so different that you could succeed? This is my fear of you.
Am I so wrong to offer you a different life, a new challenge so as not to be touched by you?
I’ve dribbled through cocktails and searched my pants for a comfortable place to dress because some starlet decided she could be the romantic heroine in a new story. I’m teased with cleavage and been shown vast ranges of flat stomachs and gentle slopes of young backs that I, twenty years senior, wondered and foamed at the prospect of following that secret passage.
I would leave and go to my room, into the bathroom with my round soaps, the combs for my hair, and a pile of towels, and take the tissues to relieve my frustration.
I managed to miss every opportunity to lay Miss Ambition by five minutes of hand relief! If you’re going to love me, let’s begin by loving the whole world of who I am. There’s no hero here, no knight on horseback, but I still believe I’m a man of some beauty, a man who knows how to run away from the one who dares to love him as much he would love her.
Can you live with creative lies?
Can you love me?
Other wonderful writers engaged in this challenge. Read and enjoy.
If you’re not listed below and wish to be, Why? 😁
If you wished to be removed, happy to do so, fee required.
Send Keeley Schroder a nudge, you’ll be welcomed.
Adrienne Beaumont | Autistic Widower (“AJ”) | Brett Jenae Tomlin | The Sturg | Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles | Trisha Faye | Karen Schwartz | NancyO | Katie Michaelson | Bernie Pullen | Michelle Jimerson Morris | Amy Frances | Julia A. Keirns | Pamela Oglesby | Toni the Talker | Tina | Pat Romito LaPointe | Ruby Noir | K. Joseph | Brandon Ellrich | Misty Rae | Karen Hoffman | Deb Palmer | Susie Winfield | Vincent Pisano
Paari | Marlene Samuels | Ray Day | Randy Pulley | Michael Rhodes | Lu Skerdoo | Pluto Wolnosci | Paula Shablo | Bruce Coulter | Ellen Baker | Kelley Murphy | Leigh-Anne Dennison | Jennifer Marla Pike | Carmen Ballesteros | Marlana, MSW| Patricia Timmermans | Keeley Schroder |Jan Sebastian And let’s not forget the indomitable, charming, incorrigible, the delightful, yes, please welcome Mr. Harry Hogg
If you are participating and not included in the above list, my apologies. Please let me know in the comments.
More from Harry:
Hey, this is Harry. If I’ve written anything that caught your attention, made you smile, maybe shed a teardrop, would you buy me a coffee? How? I’ll explain, for a measly $5 you can read anything, all the writers, poets, songsters, idiots, and other monkey business that happens inside Medium. If you choose to join and compliment me by using my link: Harry Hogg, I’ll receive a portion of your membership fee from Medium, a community that keeps its wallet closed tighter than a duck’s arse! Do I need the money? Will I die, starve, and not continue to drink alcohol? No, I’ll still live happily ever after, but with a smile on my face that someone liked what I’ve written and joined up to follow me and the other writers who make up Medium. Com
