The prince sighed at the tragic tableau before him.

Two mothers sobbed against their husbands whose own tears fell in silent grief. All bemoaned their part played in what has come to pass. The two men glanced at one another, but neither could sustain the visual contact. Their hate too old. Their pain too fresh.

“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish?” he looked to each of the four red rimmed eyes, but none could return his stare.

“It could have begun here. Grown into something beautiful had you let it. Instead, it ends with them and with you, now the last of your line.”  

“Was it worth it?” He spread his arms to the ones before him, but each knew the gesture encompassed several others no longer there to speak. “Capulet. Montague. Go bury your children.”

dVerse Poets Pub | Prosery: The Waste Land

At dVerse Mish tends bar and welcomes us to another round of Prosery where we are asked to write a very short piece of prose that tells a story, with a beginning, a middle and an end, in any genre of our choice.

Since it is a kind of Flash Fiction, there is a limit of 144 words. It must include a complete line from a poem in the story, within the word limit.

Punctuation can be changed, but it is not allowed to subtract or insert words in between parts of the original quotation.

Today quote is from T.S. Eliiott’s The Wasteland “What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish?”

In my mind Romeo and Juliet are the branches that would have grown from the stony rubbish of their families’ hate had it been allowed to take root.