Here is another of those two-sentence stories with poetry added. Read here for the first one and explanation of why I wrote it and got started on this idea, and search under the category Fiction/Poetry Combination for others in the series.
I like doing this form of minuscule story. I can handle two sentences, I think, and it is fun.
Diet
“Your hands are ice-cold and you’re so thin I can see right through you,” Mia said, giving a theatrical shiver though she was in fact very comfortably settled at the alcove dining table and finishing off another piece of lemon pie.
“Thanks for the compliment,” said her companion, withdrawing his hand from her shoulder and drifting across the room on a meandering course away from her, his smile dissolving as he walked through the fresh-painted oak of the two-hundred-year-old paneled wall.
Faded memories
refreshed by a coat of paint
take on a new life
(Haiku 348)
11/13/17
Digital collage.
Claudia McGill Writes Poetry, Did You Know That? 
The art and words are a perfect complement. Sometimes you know your companions are not actually present and accounted for…(K)
Yes. I am always thinking of who’s been here before me – leaving traces and maybe speaking to me some day. The photo collage is my shadow and the tracks from the rail trail I often run on before they were taken away. Ghosts, again.
I like your interpretation. I was thinking of being with someone who is not really “present”. It’s disconcerting, kind of like, as you say, being ghosted.
Yes. As if there is a barrier you can’t get through, the kind of thing you associate with the “veil” between this world and the next – or- a person who is really not paying attention, or – a person who is permanently focused on some other reality. I guess it turns out, there are lots of situations this works in. My goodness, I never thought, when I was writing this!
Now, I want to know more than the two line story. Very intriguing.
I’m not even sure myself what happens. One of these days, I will venture out into something longer, I think. These little guys are a good way for me to practice seeing if I could come up with any kind of plot.
I like your method. I enjoy reading them.
I love the fact that this is a ghost story that is about the possibility of casual companionship rather than being haunted. I don’t believe in ghosts but I do like the idea that the history of a space echos or reverberates in the present. I did some work experience in a historic palace when I was in my mid-teens and I loved feeling my feet fall into the groove of the steps in a spiral staircase and thinking about the hundreds of feet that had ascended and descended those steps before me in order to wear those grooves into the stone.
I’ve thought the same thing- places absorb events and feelings and I enjoy being a contributor. I also like friendly ghosts. Maybe some just want to stay where they were at home?
[…] “Diet” is the title of the story. Look here to read it. […]