reedsymarketplace
Hire professionals for your project
reedsyblog
Advice, insights and news
reedsylearning
Online publishing courses
reedsylive
Free publishing webinars
reedsydiscovery
Launch your book in style
Author on Reedsy Prompts since Feb, 2023
Submitted to Contest #200
Maggie was never a particularly bad girl, but she had, at an early age, discovered that she could speak reality into existence, that words had weight. “Could you pass me the apricot jam?” she said, her voice hoarse with age. Her wrinkled hands caressed the knife, her index finger firm against its long silver spine. She returned it to the jar where it clattered against the glass lip. Crunch, breadcrumbs. “Truth is,” she said with a mouthful of toast, “I made it all up.” She r...
Submitted to Contest #190
Would it be clichéd to say the past stalks me like a shadow? Would my readers groan? Would you protest? Could I say it tucks itself into the folds of the dark each time I turn around to confront it? like being trailed by a figure in a trench coat, two lamp-posts back. How else might I articulate this pervasive lack of closure? And can a lack of anything really be pervasive? And how is it that absence can feel so present? I believed five years had made a difference, but now I twiddle my thumbs and wonder if my progress has been make-believe...
Submitted to Contest #189
A cloud of steam rises from the whistling coals as Zhen Chao screws the lid onto his water bottle. He returns to the wooden bench, folding his long legs beneath him, and the sizzle slowly dies away like the distant hiss of crickets. A drop of sweat trickles down his neck where it finds his chest, fine black hair dotted with white bean sprouts; his father also went grey in his thirties. In order to give you this life, he’d say, which was his excuse for everything, for his absence, further justified by his consistent return every Spring Festiv...
Submitted to Contest #187
A small crowd gathers on a flight of stairs by the river, by the food carts and their blinding white lights; the ping of a bottlecap can be heard as it hits the pavement, the shrill of gas as a can is opened, and the crumple of a plastic chopstick wrapper. A man in his twenties stands with his back to the river, a microphone before him. The streetlight paints his black hair with white streaks like rivulets, like moonlit water. He cradles his guitar lightly in his arms, rocks it back and forth as though singing it to sleep, and as his fingers...
Submitted to Contest #186
“I asked for raspberry.” “Not strawberry?” “Yeah, nah.” “¿Cómo?” “It means—fuck, I can’t open the bloody thi—” “Give it here, you’re hopeless.” “It means that—thanks, how’d you do that?—that you can’t read a shopping list.” “You wrote strawberry.” “Get the list, Alex. Look, r-a-s-p—” “And that’s supposedly an ‘r’ back in Australia?” “It would be if it weren’t for the coffee ring. I wonder how that got there.” “I think it has more to do with your handwriting.” “Or your aversion to coaste—fuck!” “¡Joder! Don’t move!” “I’m—” “Nora, don’t move....
Submitted to Contest #185
The sun lies, the sun lies as the breeze creeps up my legs, my thighs. It’s winter here, a sunny winter, and I’m both warm and cold inside. “It’s mine, and you can’t have it,” I say. He leans in, his elbow on the oily table, on the breadcrumbs. “I feel so at home in my own skin,” I say. Pause. He doesn’t try to fill the silence but watches me grapple with words in my head: a girl grasping at dandelion clocks. “Es tan mía,” I say. He smiles at this last part. I smile a closed smile in return; I smile because he does. It’s not ...
Submitted to Contest #184
My laughter is louder than theirs, my smile wider; but I’m the only one who sees the light bend, sees it flicker. It’s another Friday night and the queue stretches out before us, a duplicate code of drunken smiles, smudged mascara, windblown hair: copy, paste, copy, paste, copies. “I missed you,” says Alicia, moving in for an embrace. I see the glitch behind her eyes, feel it in her feather touch as her arms brush over me, move through me, as though we were mere light, flickering dust particles at most. I buffer a moment. “How was Budapest...
Oops, you need an account for that!
Log in with your social account:
Or enter your email:
7 likes
