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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2025
Submitted to Contest #324
The Sea Was Finally Quiet Not placid, nor apologetic, just eerily quiet, as if it had finished shouting, curious about what I’d do next. The boat rocked. Listless, broken, tired as I was, each rise and dip was gentle enough to make me forget, for a few heartbeats, that I was alone. She sat low in the water, heavy from the night’s storm. Mast snapped, sail gone. I dipped out water with my shoe, one scoop at a time, the way daddy taught me when the bilge quit. Every splash over the side felt like proof I wasn’t done yet. Salt stung the raw pl...
Submitted to Contest #323
The trash can of warm water steamed faintly at the front of the church. Women filed past it, dipping pitchers into the surface and carrying their portion back to their small tubs. The men performed their ritual in the back, away from the women's section. Even though most women wore very long skirts or dresses, legs were a distraction. The room was hushed; the silence itself was part of the ritual. Basins were placed gently on the tile floor. Shoes slipped off, stockings rolled down. She could see all of this from her place in line.She had gr...
Submitted to Contest #321
Grandma keeps the quilt in the cedar chest at the foot of her bed, along with her passports, birth certificates, and old pictures, as if moths could get in and steal her identity. I roll my eyes at the thought, grinning a bit. “Careful with the hinge,” she says, even though I've opened this chest a hundred times and I know about its creaky hinges. The lid gives a soft sigh; cedar, old, familiar scents drift up. Vintage clothing I know of is buried at the bottom: some of her wedding dress, tiny baby clothes, picture albums with their smell of...
Submitted to Contest #312
Midnight Buddy Her face was lit by the glow of her laptop, a gift from son number two. It etched the wrinkles and frown lines on her face more sharply than daylight ever dared. Everything about her reflected her age, shoulders softly bowed, gnarled fingers resting near the keys, close-cropped gray curls haloed around a serious face as she stared, bespectacled, at the screen.Somewhere a clock ticked. The tea kettle rattled as water neared its boil. Soon, a thin whistle would rise to announce her evening ritual. She knew better than to brew t...
Submitted to Contest #298
The Blue ElephantI scraped up another thick layer of what looked like cat feces with the paint scraper I’d found in the top kitchen drawer—could’ve been dog crap, though.I had gloves, an N95 mask, a headband already wet from forehead sweat, and Pine-Sol-soaked rags lying about on the worst areas of the floor. Pine-Sol, my least favorite cleaner, remained the only brand stocked in the small desert town.Its noxious scent barely covered the cat pee smell of the six feral cats that had made my mom’s home their home. The cat boxes had become so f...
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