The prompts this week come from Opal Reflections and the poem Pre-Dawn Reflections. They were "taught by my example" and/or "echoes". It should be obvious which I used! Thanks for reading.
Sanatorium, 1972
Isabella Snow thought she had them fooled: the memories, the
trauma, the extreme mood swings and the night terrors. Famous painter turned
poet with the fading white scars up her arms; she who had checked in over a
month ago, hours before her deadline, clutching a yellowing photo of her father
and a bottle of gin, no shoes. The first therapist, a fan, wanted to talk of
her portraits, especially ‘Broken’. She hurled a vase at him. The second asked
about her childhood. She spilled over herself, tripping on lost memories that
made no sense with what the world actually knew. He gave her more pills, just
sugar. The third therapist opened with, “I hated your last anthology.” Isabella
smiled inside and cowered in her chair. ‘Echoes’ had been a roaring success,
but she knew it was full of rainbows, shredded ropes of hope for the mindless
to cling to. Here was what she really needed in order to write again. Pain.
“Tell me,” she whispered back and prepared to really break herself open.
