Feb. 2, 2010
Prompt: Bookshelves covered with dust lined the walls.
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Bookshelves covered with dust lined the walls, the books she could never get rid of that she carted with her from move to move, never stopping to question why. It was as if she were a turtle as she carried around with her all that she was, all that she had ever been, and all that she had wished she could be.
--Oreet Zohar, Silver Spring, MD
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Bookshelves covered with dust lined the walls. Several gaps showed missing editions. Among them a Dickens, several signed first editions from Russian dissonants, and a book of Shamus Healy's poetry in Irish. The value of those books was more than Alan made in a year. His grandfather probably lent them out, or left them places. Good luck to those. Alan thought about the treasures in the other shelves and what hid beneath the sheeted furniture. He remembered the leather sofa, so deep and dark and creamy. Alan was not greedier than his brothers, but at this moment he felt a hell of a lot happier. His grandfather's brilliant will and testament. Each grandson grabbed from an old bowler. Whatever room he got was his, in addition to the legacy, but that was invested, the lottery was for fun.
Alan had drawn the library. His brother James had drawn the old man's chambers, interesting and some fine jewels, but he wanted what the youngest brother Ted drew, the garage and the antique Bentley automobiles. Ted was donating the collection to the Cancer Project, because his wife was dying of bone cancer. James was enraged. She would die before a cure and the cars would be gone.
Dust from the shelves tricked into his nose and he sneezed. Yup, he was a lot happier than either of his brothers.
--Mary Pauer, RBWG member
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The tumbler gave way as she turned the key releasing the old worn door from its frame. The all too familiar creaking of the wood floors under her feet brought back memories. The room now darkened by the tightly closed drapes made the ticking of the kitchen clock echo into the living room.
It was strange now for her to be here without hearing Nana's smiling voice greet her followed by a snuggly bear hug. Instead, she felt cold. Rubbing her arms for warmth, she continued into the now empty space. A space that once held the baby grand piano, music, singing, and laughter, was now still. The bookshelves covered with dust lined the walls, empty of their treasures.
As life would have it, her chocolate chip cookie haven would soon become someone else’s home. The circle of time, she thought, it never does stand still for us. Sighing to herself, she smiled.....thankful for all the memories.
--Nancy Janssen, RBWG member
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Bookshelves covered with dust lined the walls. It was as if the room was the library in Miss Havisham's house -- captured at some fifty-year-ago moment that somehow failed to give way to a future. The people who had lived here clearly didn't consider taking the books away when they left. They stood there in their dusty built-in bookcases like they were the same kind of "real property" as the shelves themselves. Closer up it became clearer to me. We found a Britannica with all the annual supplements from the thirties and forties and fifties lined up next to it. A complete run of Reader's Digest condensed books. The Complete Works of Mark Twain. The Harvard Classics. Compton's Dictionary in several volumes. It had been acquired just like real property, intended to wallpaper the bookcases in the library, left behind because it had no other utility to the owner. I wondered who could be so acultural as to see the library's books as part of the house and not of himself.
--Tom Hoyer, RBWG member
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Bookshelves covered with
dust lined the walls.
Dust covered everything.
Dust heavy like a vale of death
had come upon this place.
Dust the unmovable husband
she had come to despise.
Dust her personality
sharp-edged, cold and curt.
Dust heavy as death
clogged the lace curtains,
choked the light that wanted to
come in. Did she know
dust itself was not the problem
but the source of life?
From dust we came and to
dust we shall return.
--Alice Morris, RBWG member
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A sliver of sunshine poured through the front door behind him, illuminating the center of the dim and dingy room. Behind him, outside in the blistering air, he could still hear the shouts of other men deploying to search other homes or calling for medics. His nostrils flared like an animal checking for danger. The acrid smell of exhaust from the rocket propelled grenade told him the sniper had lurked here in this abandoned home. The sniper, his deadly work done, had fled through a back door swinging softly on a single hinge as the hot wind poured in, stirring dust motes and feeling like the breath of Satan. His eyes adjusted and swept through every detail of the room. The furnishings were sparse – a small wooden table, four rickety chairs, a smattering of pots and utensils, a curtain pulled back to reveal an empty bedroom. He wondered about the family and how their hovel became abandoned. Was it voluntary? Forced? On a windowless wall to his right, through the gloom, he saw that empty bookshelves covered with dust lined the wall. No mementos, photos, and where had the books gone? Were they carried away like treasures by the missing family? Or were they burned by the enforcers of the enemy regime? He did not know, but as a literate man, he wondered how these people, living with war for centuries and scratching out their meager existence could call themselves civilized. He barked out a summons to his fellow soldiers oblivious to the irony that he was here in this foreign land armed to the teeth and ready to kill.
--Jim Van Loozen, RBWG Member
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Bookshelves covered with dust lined the walls…full of books not only sitting up straight as usual but lying sideways on top of the standing books. Dusty book piles sat on the floor beside any bookcases that had floor space beside them. There were also books on end tables, side tables and on the windowsills. The long coffee table had stacks of books on it; however, they weren't as dusty. She wondered what was different about them. Autobiographies. Volumes of letters. Diaries. She wondered if Millie had decided it was time to turn her attention to writing about her own life and vast correspondence.
--Sharon Lee Hoover, RBWG member
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