Hiding

I find prose to be much scarier than poetry.  In poetry, I can hide behind adjectives.  And if the adjectives don't make much sense, I can fall behind the poet's stereotype of the "tortured inner soul" to explain my choice of words.

"The bleeding wells 
Drip, dripped 
Onto crisp whiteness,
Blankness seeping through
My windows
To fill the darkness until
Only white remained."

What the - ??!

See? 

To write prose - or "to write like a normal person" as my husband so delicately puts it - is to unlock those doors I like to keep shut tight.  The ones that hide rooms chock full of my vulnerable ideas.

I could leave it at that.  Just leave those ideas in their rooms and keep on using the adjectives - and sometimes I might turn out a pretty decent piece of poetry.  

Or, I could take a risk, suffer a few knocks on the sensitive parts, and maybe, someday, come up with something truly great.