Agnes let her eyes slumber, slowly following the faint line where the sky met the sea. The sun was preparing to set but no one left and no one came
On the bare platform outside her hut, she was only Agnes; cold by herself,
Two months ago she awoke to this new silence with bedsheets still warm from their last love-making.
Many other things had mattered then: a stove that needed mending, the leaky rook, and meat to put on the table. Andrew said he would get the funds to fix their life and left.
He crossed the border the day before the walls came up.
“Just protecting ourselves”, the police had said.
She had beans and rice, she had water and salt, but she could only linger in the void he left.
Counting every day, no one knew how long it would last.
Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder by John William Godward
Sarah hosts Prosery on dVerse today. The prose challenge where we should use 144 words or less while embedding one line from a poem selected by the host.
This time we shall use “No one left and no one came on the bare platform”, taken from Adelstrop by Edward Thomas.
April 13, 2020
Björn Rudbergs writings 
I like the way you’ve used the exact line by splitting it within the content…but continuous when we look more closely. This is such a sad tale….and one that could very well be true in these days of immigration laws, borders, and now Covid-19 affecting travel.
Oh, I wonder what happened – why did those walls go up? How will she survive? it ends on such a delicate cliff-edge.
So many people separated from loved ones at the moment – for good reasons and bad. I can’t stop thinking about people whose loved ones are dying alone. So sad, so terrifying. You have channelled all of that emotion into this story.
Oh, your story has me wondering what will happen, Björn! I like the clever way you used punctuation to split the given quotation – and it’s not a railway station platform but a part of a hut. What kind of hut is it, and why is she living in a hut in the first place? I also like the way you emphasise their separation by using the contrast of ‘cold by herself’ and ‘warm from their last love-making’. So sad, too, that nothing got fixed.
It could be a true tale! Like Lillian, I enjoyed the break in the quote.
I wonder if he is thinking of her as well. Beautiful subject in the photo, yearning for her distant lover.
You are a master of flash fiction and prosery. You conjured just enough of a tale to peak our curiosity regarding several plot lines. There is no hint of borrowed words, just powerful emotional prose.
A great story! Hopefully this will not be our near future!
Perfect Bjorn.
So sad, and is very true for some. I have a niece in Ecuador and her husband, a pilot, in the Dominican Republic cannot come home now until they open the Ecuadorian borders.
Like how you split the sentence … could be the Berlin wall, an emotional wall or even today … love those layers!
It’s always for our own good…(K)
This could be a story of now. A story of other days. A story of last year or tomorrow. Very well done, and I like how you’d split the quote without breaking it.
Oh I cannot explain how this resonated. This is my story. Sigh. I love how tender the cliffhanger is.
Walls have such a finality about them, if the possibility of a door does not exist.
What a package, poem, picture and music. Well done Björn
Much🌼love
I love the cleverness of splitting the prompt, fantastic thinking outside the box. It is also interesting how timeless this piece is. It could be describing the ancient Greek city states, it could as easily be the rising of the Berlin Wall (where my mind initially went), it could as easily be the walls bought up by lockdown, especially true when I am in a different country (as far as Wales and England are) from my family. Life is so precarious now, but then it has always been precarious, we just seem to have ignored that, but people live on anyway. Thank you.
The Lonely Recluse
Fixin’ is such a different word i my part of the world. It is frequently use instead of ‘preparing’. Example. “We’re fixin’ to go to the park.”
Always a pleasure to read the products of your mind!
Very clever, and ever so sad.