Jayne, the brains behind the always inspiring and entertaining injaynesworld, took the path that leads from Magpie Tales into a writer’s mind and produced a wonderful vignette from Magpie’s picture prompt.

Today, I take the same path but with a different picture.

A House Personified.

A window gazes out onto slippery snow white, a coverlet for the lawn burdened by layers of cold and ice.

Seasonally speaking, the wind of change rustles leaves in the fall, severing their ties to the trees that carry them throughout the year. In the winter, the shrill cry of a wrong swoops down through gnarly branches now bare and worn.

Amid bleak muddy winter colors, a faded moss stained house holds to dreams through cold winter nights when darkness conquers shadows and hides memories thriving in tightly shut eyes.

The house sleeps until morning, awakened by sunlight slipping through cracks in the window, prying open the eyes of the beholder still looking inward at a soul tarnished and old.

Life cannot flourish inside where dead wood chairs sit devoid of human warmth fitting forms against soft back cushions.

Slowly, the growing glare of sunlight rouses the groggy soul cowering in the eye, moistening, blinking back hazy warm tears. Eyelashes flutter open echoing the thud of flickering drumbeat. Silently the house cries. Water spills from the gutters, dripping past paint chipped shutters, weathered from years of neglect.

Yet, outside beneath frost bearing air, the snow still shines, resonating white, glaring back at the window humbled by the power of life.