Question

One day they disappear into their rooms. Doors and lips shut and we become strangers in our own home. I pace the hall, hear whispers, a code I knew but can't remember, mouthed by mouths I taught to speak. Years later the door opens. I see faces I once held, open as sunflowers in my hands. I see familiar skin now stretched on long bodies that move past me glowing almost like pearls. In 250 words or more, re-write this text as a short story, giving the characters their own names and placing them in any (or all) of the situations from the original poem. Use language and imagery from the poem to develop the characters and scenes in additional, interesting ways. as a 6 grader

Answer 1

My name is Jamie. When I was eleven, my house turned into a castle of closed doors. One Wednesday, Maya went into her room and shut the door like it was a treasure chest. Ben disappeared into his attic den and the latch clicked. Even Mom and Dad started keeping their lips shut, talking in small, careful sentences like mice. Doors and lips shut, and we became strangers in our own home.

At first I thought it was a game. I walked the hall like a detective, my shoes squeaking on the floorboards. I would press my ear to bedroom doors and hear whispers, little secret rivers of words. It sounded like a code. We used to have that code—funny names and silly songs that made us laugh until we fell on the couch. I had taught some of the jokes. When I was four I taught Ben to say “pickle spaceship” and Maya would call me “Professor Jam.” But now the code was spoken so quietly I almost couldn’t remember it. The whispers were mouths I had helped to shape, mouths I watched learn to swallow syllables and spit out my nicknames, and they mouthed the code I once knew but couldn’t remember.

I paced more each day. I would bring them snacks and leave little paper notes: “Dinner?” “You okay?” I drew sunflowers because the garden smells like summer and sunflowers always felt like open faces. The house felt like an island with tall trees for walls. Sometimes I imagined knocking and the door opening like a secret book.

Years crawled by and then, almost like magic or a very slow tide, the door to Maya’s room opened. I saw a face I had held when she was a baby, the same dimple, but the face was different—longer, softer, open like a sunflower I was holding in my hands. Ben came out too. Their skin looked stretched over taller bodies that moved almost like slow pearls, glowing in the kitchen light. They smiled a little like the old code, shy and shining.

We sat at the table and ate cereal as if nothing had happened and as if everything had. The whispers turned into real words again. It wasn’t exactly the same code, but we made a new one that night—one that had room for years and for sunflowers and for the quiet that finally learned to speak.