Just Once

For the "No Repeat Story Challenge": http://www.writerscafe.org/contests/7919/ in which you cannot repeat any word twice.

       She breathes in, hands loosely gripping her swing’s chain links, toes dragging patterns across rumpled sand, and exhales. Imaginary butterflies swirl through tangled hair, bright, vivid, technicolor wings beating staccato rhythms. Trees, forests, ancient forgotten giants, those ruined redwoods, sequoias, cherries, mahoganies, twist from cracked dirty concrete sidewalks, twining about our monumental skyscrapers, scratching glass windows, damaging steel supports, rising above them, begging for sunlight beneath an overhanging pollution bank. Water droplets tremble, hesitate, beaten down by gravity, too wary, frightened, terrified, before breaking free, rising into the sky, a shower of reverse motion. We tape everything on someone’s stolen camera, then, judged as worthless, abandon it at some local park. Somewhere, long ago, I danced with indistinct shadows underneath your darkening sky, dimly lit clouds threatening rain everybody now knows will never fall. You never realized that distant city skyline belonged to us, broken, empty, yet somehow still stunning, beautiful, complete. This is ours, always has been. 

Author's Note

This was the best I could do under the given conditions, but I would still really appreciate any comments/opinions of any kind really. Thanks. :)

Reviews

[Salvatore Buttaci]

Congratulations for winning the no-repeat contest!

[ink]

i can tell where you're trying to go with the images. it's difficult to get them all though, with the way there is so much detail in each (slightly run-on) sentence. I'm impressed with your ability to keep from repeating any word, as well. is there any way to break it up a little?

great start

[Snuggles McClintock]

think this might work better broken into a poem. there are some great images that don't really seem connected to me and hence do not have a great impact on me.

[We are young.]

This was beautiful in every possible way!!! I like everything about it. How it was so vivid, and done greatly under the conditions of the contest.