Total Cleansing ~ prosery

/ Ken Gierke / rivrvlogr

Total Cleansing

Remember when you felt good about yourself, a time when you had no doubts about your abilities, your value to others, or the value of those around you? That part of you is not lost. It lives within you, still, and the time has come for you to recognize that.

Take a moment to breathe. In. Out. Slowly. Now, think about who you are, who you can be. The negative energy that has been feeding into you has poisoned your mind, masking who were. Let it wash away from you so that you may remember who you have been, recognize who you really are, and you will love again the stranger who was yourself.

Remember all of this as you enter the polling place with a clear conscience, determined to remove that toxic presence from the Oval Office. Don’t let yourself be fooled again.

This bit of flash fiction is my response to Prosery #3: Love After Love, presented by Kim at dVerse. With Prosery, the challenge is to write a piece of flash fiction with a 144-word limit. Included in the bit of prose is to be a complete line from a poem. For Prosery #3, the line to be included is “You will love again the stranger who was yourself” from Derek Walcott’s “Love After Love.” My flash fiction also meets the additional challenge of hitting the 144-word mark, exactly.

Image source: Tulsa World (Bruce Plante)

43 thoughts on “Total Cleansing ~ prosery”

  1. Gauntlet. Fingers crossed for your state in FIFTEEN MONTHS (omg do we really have that long until it is over) (NO, we then have to wait for January etc.)
    Brrrrr I shiver in anticipation, then shudder in pain.
    Remember that old saying about the so-called Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times.” TURNS OUT that too is alternative facts. The “Chinese curse” was invented by an Englishman who remembered something not quite rightly this time. That time.
    PS Thank you for voting against the toxin. I bet you did it before, three years ago, too.

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  6. Well done, Ken, for hitting the 144 exactly! I have never understood US politics and suppose I never will. But I do understand that the current president is an idiot and trust that he will be voted out very soon and that, in the words of The Who, the US ‘won’t get fooled again’. Mind you, we have our own idiot to cope with in the UK, whose plans for Brexit are a disaster.

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  14. This is ass kicking Ken! I can here Roger Daltrey singing, “Won’t get fooled again, no no!” Sadly, I am not certain anyone was “fooled”’. The good folks knew he was an asshat, and voted against him. But the haters, who gave him the power, are still haters. I just hope we truly do outnumber them in a way that overcome the evil Republican gerrymandering.

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  18. Hard to imagine he fooled anyone. He’s still spewing the same bile, the same people lap it up (yuk). I don’t know what the answer to awful people like him is, but I’m almost sure it’s not democratic and probably illegal.

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    • 🙂
      I have some that I need to check-in on once in a while. Even though I follow them, they don’t appear in my Reader, and I can’t see any difference when I check their settings when I “Manage” follows.

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