This was  a poem I wrote for the Terrible Writing Prompts contest, 

6. write a scene in which one character reduces another to uncontrollable sobs without touching them or speaking.  



The open window welcomes the wind,

That blows, rattling the shrunken leaves of the dying roses;

And like the withered blossoms on the window sill, 

Sits the boy, his anguish curtained,

Like a waterfall behind vines.

Waiting, just waiting;

Then the kitchen door, its hinges squeaking,

Admits a visitor.

How can it be?

A week dead, surely not alive-walks in poor Thomas’s father!

As still as the dying roses on the windowsill, sits Thomas,

His pale eyes glazing over with tears as he realizes it’s not his father.

This man is shorter, his face harder, his eyes more sunken.

No, not father, he decides.  

Another man, a meaner man-

This man holds out a knife.

Now Thomas knows

Just how his father died.

“You did it!”

He cries.

The stranger stands, a dark shadow in the warm sunlight.

Thomas slings the vase of dying roses 

At the shadow’s form.

Still, the man is silent, still.

Now he’s desperate, and so, the tears running in streams down his cheeks,

He prays for deliverance from a murderous stranger.