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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Mar, 2020
Submitted to Contest #104
I poked my fingers through the stiff white blinds on our window, letting in a crack of light. I was too afraid to open the window, but the light was enough for me to breathe deep and feel my shoulders relax. All those people might be breathing their germs out there, but I was safe in here behind my glass windowpane. Tilting my head, I took a closer look at the street outside and nearly reared back in shock. Folks were walking around outside like there wasn’t a worldwide pandemic. Maskless, even. Walking their dogs, going on runs, stepping...
Submitted to Contest #102
She was only noticeable for how normal she was. She smiled too much. She laughed at all the right jokes. She kept up with the witty banter. But the one thing she never did was talk about herself. After all, she was a listener. A giver. She was a tree that gave shade and never received it. She was a lover, never a fighter. She was a walker, not much of a talker. I followed her one day. Just the way kids do, when they’re curious about someone. She was in my sister’s grade, and my sister had referred to h...
Submitted to Contest #79
“This tastes like kool aid,” I say, taking a quick sip of the drink before passing it along to Maya. “It’s vodka,” noted Zac, his arms around the edges of the hot tub. “It’s not kool aid.” “Wow, what a genius,” I retorted, crossing my arms self-consciously, still trying to hide behind passive comments as the shy but know-it-all tenth-grader I was. “Have you ever even had kool aid?” taunted Tony, his voice cracking obviously in the middle of his sentence. “Heh. You’re still a wittle boy, too,” teased Maya as s...
Submitted to Contest #78
Right after college, I took up woodworking. Sanding wood, building birdhouses, learning how to use a saw. My hands flexed in new leather gloves as I started power tools and crafted little lopsided wooden walls. I read books about woodworking, scoured websites, and went out drinking with my fellow woodworkers every Saturday at 9pm. I walked with a swagger in my step, digging my heels into the floor wherever I went. Thud-thud-thud whenever I walked into a room. You could hear me coming. I led meetings with my fellow interns at ...
Submitted to Contest #76
“One-third of college students transfer before receiving their degree. Did you know that?” “I didn’t. You drove all the way back to our old high school just to tell someone that?” “One out of three means that in every threesome that happens at college, one of those people is so dissatisfied with the experience that they leave their school altogether.” “And, I guess, you also came to pick up that old violin swinging by your side. You’re planning to practice that thing at college?” “Practice having threesomes? You kno...
Submitted to Contest #75
A limo peeled away from the cracked curb, leaving the girl with twin black braids stranded at the mouth of a dark alley. A broken gate blocked her path. She shoved it open, letting it clank closed behind her, and stepped into the alleyway. Shattered bottles littered the cracked stone slabs before her. Inching closer to the dilapidated doorway at the end of the path, she felt a crunch underneath her feet. Upon lifting her boots, she noticed glass fragments from a crushed bottle. With a distasteful glance, she toed them aside and conti...
Submitted to Contest #68
I Wish I Heard Him “I didn’t marry for love.” We were friends. I cared about him. One day, drunk and upset, I had recounted how I needed to be married. He had awkwardly patted my shoulder and sympathized, telling me about his problems. I offered the solution. He accepted. The perfect answer for both of us, dropped straight into our laps. Izra chewed an ice cube thoughtfully. “Then why did you?” It had been one of the hardest decisions I’d had to make. My parents had fought through an advancing civil war, an unstable...
Submitted to Contest #54
Purple Hyacinths She stood at my front door every Monday at 7AM with a bouquet of purple flowers. Hyacinths, she told me once, and she had said that they meant she was sorrowful over an event and she wanted forgiveness. Forgiveness, what a funny thought. Of course, I never opened the door for her. And normally, I never spoke to her either, except for the one time when I had asked what the flowers were and what they meant. She would wait at the door for exactly 17 minutes before leaving the bouquet, retreating down the...
Submitted to Contest #50
Tertium “Hey, kid, get back here!” Clutching the newspaper to my chest, I ran through the neighbors’ well-kept yards, dashing towards the truck idling at the curb. My breath sawed in and out of my lungs, but my feet kept pace. “Kid!” His voice grew closer. “Kid, how many times are you going to try to get this paper? I forbid you to do so! Bring it back to me!” I knew I should save my breath for running, but the retort escaped my lips against my will. “Oh, wow, you forbid me. Nice one; you can’t forbid ...
Submitted to Contest #36
Dear Diary, This is stupid. Why am I doing this? Sincerely, MeP.S. I mean, who else is going to be reading this? I’m not a princess in the middle of a love triangle. My high school crush, whom I suddenly run into at a local coffee shop (why is it always a small, cute, local coffee shop? Why can’t it be a McDonald’s?), is not going to pick this up when it falls out of my sparkly pink designer handbag and then take it home with him (because he wuvs me and doesn’t know it, obviously). Then he’ll read it while thinking, ...
Submitted to Contest #33
“I’m so sorry for your loss.” If I hear that phrase one more time, I think I’ll melt into a puddle of tears. I accept the proffered hugs, the promises to help, and the acknowledgements of loss with a forced smile, clenching my teeth through the burn of tears, my voice now far too choked to string together full sentences. The line of friends and family and acquaintances who have come to support me streams around the corner, and I vow to speak with them all. My father would have done it; now, I will in his place. He was only able to reach...
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