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AnneMarie Miles

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Mar, 2021

Stories (60)
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341 Followers
214 Following

60 Stories

3493 karma pts

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Dad's Cereal

Submitted to Contest #228

My daughter found a hat in one of the boxes collecting dust underneath my bed yesterday. Out of boredom, she had asked me if she could “investigate” the contents of this unknown space, a place in the house that she had not yet explored. If it had been December, I would have quickly said no, frightened by the possibility that the truth of Santa’s workshop would be revealed at too early an age. But in the middle of fall, the thought of purchasing presents and stowing them away felt distant and hidden. I had been busy with other things, perhaps...

36 likes 26 comments 26
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Blizzard

Shortlisted for Contest #227 ⭐️

The blizzard was inside him now, in more ways than one. He felt his bones grow goosebumps the way he thought they could only appear on his skin. They seemed to shiver between the muscle and tissue that were once soft, now like icicles hardening beneath the surface. His fingers and toes succumbed to their numbness much quicker than they had in the earlier days, warning him that even five minutes of stillness was too dangerous. But as he shifted in the small cab of his truck, the effort felt enormous, and his breath threatened to release the l...

57 likes 81 comments 81
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Little Red Wishes on Wild Things

Submitted to Contest #226

Beneath a hooded cloak, I gaze up at all the things on fire in the sky, searching for shooting stars. The sky is as vast and deep as the ocean, as dark and sinister as the forest; it upholds all of its chaos, displaying its trauma, as if to say: “You should know better than to trust in me.” I distract myself, looking for constellations while I wait for morning, hopeful that a glowing streak of light might seize my wish and free me of this burden.Release me of those devil’s eyes, my heart yearns.When a cloud emerges from my lips, I pull my cl...

21 likes 20 comments 20
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Watercolors

Submitted to Contest #225

He tells me to sit still.It is not hard to do. I am lost in thought, lost in my reasons for being here.I keep thinking of that woman I never knew. The person in the painting on the wall in the hallway of the house I grew up in. I keeping thinking about what it would have been like to know her, what it would have been like to call her my grandmother.Or would you have preferred, abuela? Did you speak English? Even that, I do not know. Even that, my father will not say.He only says, You look just like her.I test your name out on my lips: Mary. ...

29 likes 22 comments 22
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Carry Me

Submitted to Contest #224

“I can’t sleep,” I whisper.I am seven, standing at the foot of my parent's bed. My father is snoring, and the rain is pounding steadily onto concrete. I imagine the worms coming up for a swim somewhere in the grass.“I can’t sleep,” I say again, but I only hear the bed squeaking as my mother shifts to her other side. I can’t tell her I’m scared. I can’t tell her my brothers shoved me in the linen closet when we were playing hide-and-seek and left me there. It’s dark in my parent’s room, and I know it’s silly, but I am frozen, too scared to ge...

35 likes 40 comments 40
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Cerulean

Winner of Contest #223 🏆

The door is cerulean, a bright and vibrant blue, but really it is the color of my sudden uneasiness. The feeling creeps up me slowly, jumps out at me dauntingly, and I am frozen in it. If the door were a mirror – and how I wish it were as innocent as a mirror – I would see my face reflected back to me, and it would tell me to run.I’m not sure what’s more jarring: the fact that this door is a clashing contrast to the rest of the library décor, or the fact that I’ve never noticed the path we took to get here before. I suppose there are better ...

187 likes 188 comments 188
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Beowulf: Big Brother

Submitted to Contest #222

I had thought old age would bring me the finer things in life, like a small staircase at the foot of Mother and Father’s bed to help me climb up without having to jump; or chicken broth in my kibble to soften it; or more frequented walks; or heck, maybe some freaking pain meds that would make the world feel like it had when I was a puppy. Those were all the things my older friends at the park had bragged about when they told him what to expect in my elderly years, and it was the only thing that made reaching my tenth birthday something to lo...

23 likes 18 comments 18
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A Ghost's Testimony

Shortlisted for Contest #221 ⭐️

After the living and the dead decided to merge worlds, the supreme court was flooded with appeals. With “coexist” being a hot topic in the first half of the 21st century, most people thought it would be a great idea to create a union between the two worlds. They thought they’d get their loved ones back; they thought they’d get access to generational wisdom from their deceased elders back, and perhaps, some old family recipes could finally resurface. People could only think of the missing pieces in their lives that they wanted to finally have...

55 likes 64 comments 64
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Tethered

Submitted to Contest #221

Sometimes I like to stand outside and watch the wind. I try to remember what it felt like, rustling through the tiny hairs on my arm, filtering through my thick beard. They say you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. I watch the six-foot branches of the redwood in our yard shake and shimmy and regret that I ever took such a powerful and beautiful force for granted. I’m not sure I will ever grow used to this numbness. Of course, time has no sense anymore, but this existence – if that’s a fair name for it – has felt like an eternity. It ...

24 likes 28 comments 28
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Doodle

Submitted to Contest #220

9:17 AMThe Office LobbyThe yucca tree is no longer alone among the impressive boulder formation and cloudy pink sunset of Joshua Tree National Park.“That shouldn’t be there,” Milton says to no one. He has been staring at the landscape for nearly ten minutes while he sips his coffee, letting the image before him sink in. Sometimes you see something that is so unbelievable, so out of place, it can take a moment for the emotions to settle. His therapist – who is not really his therapist but a barista at the coffee shop on 4th Avenue – tells him...

28 likes 24 comments 24
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Happy Place

Submitted to Contest #219

I am dancing, but it is more like existing. Existing here, in this perfectly beautiful place. My body absorbs everything around me: the delicious warmth of a never-setting sun, the reggae music, the luscious greenery of the mountains and valleys, the brightly colored flowers, the bare skinned people brushing up against me. My body can’t help it: it is swaying slowly, rhythmically. It is liquid in its movements, gliding up and down and side to side. The music travels through my whole body like a river. Nowhere for it to escape, it just kee...

31 likes 21 comments 21
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Rec Time

Submitted to Contest #219

I was never a morning person. I’d cling to my fur blankets and Egyptian cotton, pulling them up over my head at the first hint of daylight. I’d inhale the newfound darkness of my fuzzy veil and the plush promise of more precious slumber and moan myself back to sleep. If I’d had it my way, I’d wrap my consciousness up like a present and gift myself to the moon to be unwrapped every evening under its worthy gleam.I sigh at the luxurious memory. It is an ache in my body like a phantom limb, though its weight holds nothing against the absence of...

23 likes 21 comments 21
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Crochet

Submitted to Contest #218

For family members of terminally ill individuals.You take your time walking down the aisle, running your hand along the rows of skeins, giving each a gentle squeeze. Some are fluffy, thick cords of feathery fibers, while others are fuzzy like one long rope of pom poms. Some are thinner, strings of intertwining wool and cotton and silk, acrylic even. Some are rougher, not like hemp, but textured like a thousand individual hairs twisted together. You can feel the invisible fly away strands spiking upwards and yielding down against your touch.T...

51 likes 59 comments 59
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Beowulf: A Guard Dog's Tale

Shortlisted for Contest #217 ⭐️

Dedicated to my furstborn, who thinks he is much braver than he is, but really just has the sweetest and most tender heart, and often gets the short end of the stick now that he has a human sister. The day I slayed my first dragon started off like any other. The sun greeted me with a gentle touch, and though my nose welcomed its warmth, I felt my body tight and tense: my toes still squeezed together, my hair still up, my jaw still clenched. Last night had been an all-too-real slaughter of tree-dwellers, and I was convinced I’d find myself am...

55 likes 39 comments 39
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Widower

Submitted to Contest #216

TW: swearing.“’Do you like cheese?’” Bobby asks, incredulously.Kurtis shrugs. “Seems like a valid question to me.”Bobby deadpans.“What? I saw it in a movie,” Kurtis defends.“And how did that go? For the person who asked his date that question?”“I don’t know. I didn’t finish the movie. Fell asleep.” Kurtis shrugs again, taking a sip of his drink.Bobby slaps his hand to the side of his head. “Kurtis, come on, man. I know it’s been a long time since Barb passed – ““Hey, don’t talk about her like that!” Kurtis interjects, elbow to table, finger ...

27 likes 17 comments 17
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