From Cafe Writing's November-December Project:

Topic: Jewels

Option One: Pick Three

Fewer and fewer Americans possess objects that have a patina, old furniture, grandparents' pots and pans, the used things, warm with generations of human touch, essential to a human landscape. Instead, we have our paper phantoms, transistorized landscapes. A featherweight portable museum.

- Susan Sontag

Pick at least three of the following words, and build a piece of writing around them. The form is up to us: poem, scene, flash-fic, essay, or general blog entry.

WORDS: essential, furniture, landscape, museum, paper, patina, possess, touch, warm

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What Letters Are Made Of

Letters slant and curve over one another
spelling out names and meanings of abstract things
that have been forgotten or replaced,
demanding importance
and attention like nude sculptures in a garden

as a square piece of paper creases
and folds over mountains and valleys,
flexible and fickle like a theatrical mask
of the blue sky.

Each mood of a letter
becomes an essential being,
beautiful in its own landscape,
yet possesses complexity and mystery
if hung on the walls of a museum
to be scrutinized like insects pinned
in various metamorphic stages.

A poet's touch makes letters
coated in marshmallow
roasting over a campfire
tasty and crisp,
the melted letters enveloping
the skeleton of the poet's heart,

and words become the sweetest woody smoke
curling around heaven's jewels,
already having found their home
through p(s)alms and lips.