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Caitlin Keim

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Mar, 2025

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The Couple in the Portrait

Caitlin Keim

Submitted to Contest #294

The paint felt sticky on Mili’s hands, bits of it drying and flaking and getting stuck to her fingernails, and other splotches of cerulean smearing between the lines of her palms. It’s why she hated painting in the first place. With a heavy sigh, Mili replaced her paintbrush in its wooden well; an actual, miniature well, where the ropes that might’ve held a bucket now held nearly a dozen paintbrushes aloft in the swirling mix of muddled colors below. It really was more paint than water in the well at this point. Perhaps that’s why all the...

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