BeInspiredAbstracts/Etsy SarahGreenwood

“Coming Home Again” by BeInspiredAbstracts/Etsy SarahGreenwood

Submitted to Contest #63

       By the time I stepped outside the leaves were on fire. It was a good time of year for a funeral. Dad had died Tuesday after a long battle with throat cancer, so I had flown in on the red-eye from California to Rhode Island.             I got to TF Green at seven a.m. and went straight to Dad’s house. I guess now it was Beth’s house now. Beth was my younger sister. She moved in a few months ago to help Dad when he got too sick to care fo...

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“Souvenirs” by BeInspiredAbstracts/Etsy SarahGreenwood

Submitted to Contest #62

“Shannon, an out-of-state plate is like a bullseye,” my boyfriend Billy warned me the day before I left. I was about to embark on a road trip from Tennessee to California for my job as a travel nurse. I had been a travel nurse for five years, that’s how I met Billy. And now Billy and I were going to be getting married, and trying to get pregnant right away, if Billy had it his way. But before I settled into a life of domesticity I wanted one last road trip, to celebrate my last bit of freedom.  Billy was worried about my trip, but he k...

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“An Isolated Incident” by BeInspiredAbstracts/Etsy SarahGreenwood

Submitted to Contest #61

Abby usually did the laundry, but on the rare occasion that John did, the smell of the detergent took him back. Back to a time they had both erased from their memory. A time they promised to never speak of again. But the detergent had been only the beginning.            They had been so excited, after a year of trying it finally happened, they couldn’t believe their eyes. But there it was, two pink lines staring back at them. John grabbed Abby in an embrace, both crying. Their labra...

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“Everlasting” by BeInspiredAbstracts/Etsy SarahGreenwood

Submitted to Contest #60

       James clawed his way out of the hole, grabbing at bits of crumbling earth. Barren trees creaked overhead, their boughs bending and twisting like his rigid joints. The sky was empty, no clouds, not even a bird. Silence covered the cemetery like a blanket.           He emerged, brushing himself off. Dust billowed from his tattered clothing. He reached into his front pocket and brought the letter to the place where his nose used to be, remembering s...

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“The Ward” by BeInspiredAbstracts/Etsy SarahGreenwood

Submitted to Contest #59

       Ruthie was left at the ward one early Saturday morning by her ailing parents. The other nurses shunned them for leaving her there, but it wasn’t their fault. What else were they to do? They were both old enough to be patients themselves. How could they be expected to care for a grown woman with such big needs.           They rang the buzzer and I could see their three forlorn faces in the oblong window. I unlocked the unit door.  “Good ...

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“Stuck” by BeInspiredAbstracts/Etsy SarahGreenwood

Submitted to Contest #58

1. Audrey           In two three four, hold two three four, out two three four. Audrey repeated the mantra to herself as she practiced the breathing exercises. She looked at her reflection in the elevator door. She was ashen, almost anemic looking. The anxiety rolled over her like an old frenemy: heaviness in her chest, the foggy brain, the urge to run and escape. It reared its head in even in the most mundane situations. This however, a stuck elevator, was a good reason to panic. &...

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“Meatball” by BeInspiredAbstracts/Etsy SarahGreenwood

       Elaine sat at the kitchen table finalizing her will, she would be donating all her money to charity. She wished she could see all their faces when they found out. She smiled to herself just thinking about it.She had isolated herself from the rest of the world. She was addicted to a certain kind of loneliness.She sat at the kitchen table eating dinner. Spaghetti and meatballs on Wednesdays. As she twirled her pasta around her fork she thought she saw a meatball move. She dropped her fork and leaned ba...

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“Sunday Dinners” by BeInspiredAbstracts/Etsy SarahGreenwood

Submitted to Contest #57

 I remember taking a cart away from an older woman, who was putting her groceries in her trunk, so she didn’t have to walk it back. Wrapping my hands around the handlebar, without the workers having sprayed it down first.           I remember strolling the produce aisles, shopping for Sunday dinner, placing the sweet potatoes directly in the cart as to not waste the plastic bags. That’s where I ran into an old friend.           ...

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“A Childish Debate” by BeInspiredAbstracts/Etsy SarahGreenwood

Submitted to Contest #56

  Nancy thought she must be hallucinating the morning she saw two babies fist fighting in the park. She had had a long raucous weekend. Is this an after effect of eating macaroni and cheese made with weed butter, or drinking too many Irish car bombs? Had she finally pickled herself?It was a typical Monday morning, and she was already running late for work. She grabbed her purse, careful not to wake the man in her bed. ‘Dave,’ she thought he said his name was. She stepped over her crumpled up clothes from the night before. The singl...

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“A Girl's Girl” by BeInspiredAbstracts/Etsy SarahGreenwood

Submitted to Contest #55

  It was my final semester of nursing school and I was just diagnosed with diabetes (Type 1), how much worse could it get? Well, I was about to find out.            “Oh my God Sarah, you can stay with me! It’ll be so fun,” Jennifer squealed at our nursing school study group. The doctor had suggested I live with someone while I got used to my new diagnosis. I had never lived with anyone besides my parents. Not only had I never had a roommate, I never had many girlfriends at...

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“The Secrets Women Keep” by BeInspiredAbstracts/Etsy SarahGreenwood

Submitted to Contest #54

    After seven years of marriage, Linda fell in love. It was the first time she had been to work in months. Since the quarantine started, everyone at the firm had been working from home, many of them left the company altogether. Being back at work was a little nerve-wracking but she was happy to be out of the house, away from Joe and the baby. Of course she loved them, but she needed her space too. She was sure many marriages were being put to the test amid this isolation.She was the senior consultant at a reputable...

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“The Things You Don't Say” by BeInspiredAbstracts/Etsy SarahGreenwood

Submitted to Contest #53

           It was the hottest summer of the decade the year we bought our first air conditioner. It was August 1988, the summer before I entered high school, the summer before life got complicated. The six of us (seven if you count Daisy, the basset hound) loaded into the green Chevy station wagon and drove to Sears, Roebuck and Co. (as it was still called back then.) We were the only people on our street to get an air conditioner. Ronald Reagan was king and we were rich.   &nb...

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“The Red Bat” by BeInspiredAbstracts/Etsy SarahGreenwood

Submitted to Contest #51

       “Don’t do it that way. You’re going to strip the screw.” Dad corrected as he pushed up from his chair to retrieve the tool out of mom’s hands. They were replacing the screens in the kitchen windows, the last home improvement project of the summer. Winged insects buzzed in and out into the night air. My mother handed the tool over, the familiar look of defeat in her eyes, and went back to the stove to stir the boiling pot of pasta. Her eyeglasses slipped to the end of her nose from the moisture i...

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“Waiting at Airports” by BeInspiredAbstracts/Etsy SarahGreenwood

Submitted to Contest #50

       Airports are a place devoid of time and existence. Life stops once you step onto the unloading curb, the thick smell of car exhaust and hot tarmac burning your nose. Flights can be as late as they want and you have no control. Drinking beer at 9 a.m. is totally acceptable, because time doesn’t matter at the airport. My 1800-calorie diet doesn’t exist within the airport walls, I eat a cheeseburger and a bag of Doritos. Everything that matters happens before, or after the airport.   &nbs...

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“Grandma's Cardinal” by BeInspiredAbstracts/Etsy SarahGreenwood

Submitted to Contest #49

“When I die I’m going to come back as a Cardinal,” my Grandmother told me one Saturday afternoon as we sat at her kitchen table watching the birds and squirrels frolic on her patio. The Cardinal was her favorite, she named him ‘Peep.” He would stare at us through the screen door, his plump little chest heaving as he sang his melodious mating song, waiting for us to feed him stale peanuts and sunflower seeds.Every Saturday I walked down the street to Grandma’s house, picking my neighbors’ Black-eyed Susans along the way to give to her when I ...

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