Button squash grow behind our house
They are yellow and round
Mother cooks them sometimes
She stuffs them with button mushrooms
It was Nana’s recipe
She called them button buttons.
Maud stared at the page and sighed faintly.
Pinkie peered over her sister’s shoulder. “Whatcha’ dooooin’?”
“I was taking your advice,” Maud answered. “And writing about things that aren’t rocks. But I don’t think it’s working.”
“Aw, that’s too bad, Maud.” Pinkie put a comforting hoof on her sister’s shoulder. “Why not?”
“Rocks are the inspiration for everything I write. Without them, I’m just not feeling it.”
“Oh, just not into the creative groove. Trust me, I know that one. Sometimes you’re asked to plan a party, or somepony needs a party, or somepony makes an offhand remark that could possibly be construed as implying a party would be an acceptable event and you just happen to have a closet full of extra party supplies you hid in their closet last week, and…” Pinkie sighed herself, and shrugged. “Well, sometimes you just can’t figure out what kind of party to throw.”
Maud considered this. “I think that might be like my problem.”
“Let me see what you have.” Pinkie picked up the paper Maud had written a handful of half-hearted lines on and examined it. “Well, it looks like you’re still thinking about rocks. Because the opening is just Rock Poem Number Seven Hundred Forty Three, but with squash instead of pyrite. And then you started writing Nana’s Button-Buttons recipe in free verse.”
“You’re probably right.” Maud looked over the paper again, and marked out the lines she had already written. “Do you have any suggestions?”
“Well… Maybe you should take it slower? Instead of writing about something that isn’t rocks, write about rocks with something else that isn’t rocks?”
“I wouldn’t be pushing myself very much.”
“Why not try a new style, then, too? You can change more than one thing, silly.”
“Okay.”
Button squash and rocks
Yellow squash, brown and grey rocks
Both grow in the dirt
“See?” Pinkie said with a smile. “It was only half about rocks, which means it was half an entire poem not about rocks! That’s what I call progress!”
“It wasn’t very satisfying,” Maud said, idly rolling her pencil across the table. “My poems are usually longer than that.”
“So why not just make it longer?” Pinkie asked. “There are a lot more rock colors you could use.”
Maud shook her head. “Neighponese styles are very strict about length.”
The two ponies sat staring at the blank page for a while, “hmmm”ing at the puzzle before them. Or at least Pinkie was. Maud was sitting quietly, so Pinkie made sure to “hmmm” twice as loud and twice as often to make up the difference.
Soon, Maud took the pencil up in her mouth and began writing again.
Button squash, your skin is very yellow
And you grow in a field very shallow
“Is the garden really that shallow?” Pinkie asked.
“I’m not sure,” Maud said around the pencil. “It’s not rocks, so I’ve never really thought about it.”
You can be made into some soups and stocks
“You can make soup out of them?”
“I don’t know. The only thing I’ve ever cooked was stone soup.”
And be cooked in a stove made out of
Pinkie frowned. “Why’d you mark it out? It seemed like you were really getting into it.”
“I was about to write about rocks,” Maud said, frowning slightly as well. It wasn’t in any way particularly different from her normal expression. “I’m trying to avoid those.”
And be cooked up and stewed in ro stock-po warming pots of crocks
Maud stared at the tortured words she’d just written. “I should start over again.”
“No, it’s fine!” Pinkie hugged her sister across the withers. “Mangling language beyond anything you’d ever recognize is what poetry’s all about! Some ponies think poets suffer for their art, but it’s grammar that’s the real victim, there.”
“You’re probably right.”
You turn soft and mushy when you are cooked
But also when
Maud paused, her pencil resting at the end of the word “when”. After short while, she tossed the pencil aside, crumpled up her paper and threw it into the fire.
Pinkie gasped. “Maud! What was that for?!”
“It was going nowhere.” Maud kicked the pencil, but there was even less energy in it than usual. “I’m afraid I just don’t have very much to say that isn’t about rocks.”
“It’s okay, Maud,” Pinkie said, wrapping her forehooves around her sister in a hug, which Maud shifted slightly into. “I believe in you.” She flicked her tail at a stack of papers nearby, sending one twirling and fluttering onto the table in front of Maud. “Don’t give up, and I know you’ll think of something super-neat to write about!”
Maud stared at the new, blank paper for a while again, before suddenly turning to Pinkie. “What are the other ponies’ button stories about?”
“I’m not sure,” Pinkie said. “I haven’t actually read any of them yet. All I know is every one of them is called ‘Button __ash’.”
Maud nodded and allowed Pinkie’s pronunciation of a blank space pass without comment. “Maybe we should look at one, and find out what they did.”
Pinkie nodded and bounced over to a stack of scrolls, pulling the top one out. “Here we go! The latest of the button stories—Button Gash!”
Pinkie unrolled the scroll and the two sisters sat down to read. Soon, Pinkie’s eye was twitching. Then her ears were folded back. Then she winced and began to physically push herself away from the scroll, while cocking her head to one side, as though she could understand what she was seeing if only she could twist her viewpoint far enough. By the end, her jaw was hanging open, and her face had taken on a faint green tint.
“That was terrible,” Maud said, calmly rolling the scroll back up and tossing it into the fireplace. “And possibly illegal.” She tapped a hoof on her chin as she gave it further thought. “I’m also not sure it’s physiologically possible.”
“Maud?” Pinkie said weakly. “I think you can just go back to writing about rocks, now.”