PrompTuesday #9

PrompTuesday#9

Read this, and write whatever comes to mind.

Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock
by Wallace Stevens

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches Tigers
In red weather.

Rules:

• 10 minutes
• Keep to 250 words or less.
• No Pressure
• Tell her about it.

My submission:

I often romanticize the past. I look back and think, OH what life was like back then. It was so much easier then. I realize that life was actually harder, but were people happier when life was simpler? When you got up with the sun and went to bed with it as well?

I often romanticize those days because I've read some book, some historical fiction. A story about someone famous in history. And I have to remember, that these people had it easy. I would not have been a Lady or a Queen. I would most likely have been a normal, average person. Like I am now.

I would get up before the sun, milk cows and bake bread, hand wash clothing. I would shower once a week, on Saturday night before church. I would probably live in fear of the devil and his diseases. I would be in middle life, with several children.

If I chose a husband with the same career as I have now, I would see him far less than I do now. With only letters for communication. Letters that would often arrive after he would return from sea. If he returned from sea.

I have to remind myself, that life was not easier back then, when the word "widow's walk" was invented. As much as I despise waiting for him to return, at least I'd know if he was going to. There are no evenings walking on my roof, in despair, waiting to see the sails appear over the horizon. There are months and weeks with him gone, as opposed to several years. I have it very good. I am lucky. I must remember that.

The past is better when you look back, but that's because we tend to forget the bad stuff, and remember the good. That's how we function, how we work. That's how we are able to move on, without breaking down.