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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Feb, 2020
Submitted to Contest #70
Elliott and Roxanne used to steal napkins from fast food restaurants when they were sixteen. Roxanne would stuff them in her bra and examine her unsmiling figure in the mirror. Elliott would jot down lyrics to a forgotten song with a ballpoint pen. They would also draw, but only figures that existed in their imagination. Weeping lotus flowers and splitting guitars. Roxanne wanted a tattoo but Eliottt knew she’d never get one. He knew the shapes of life and Roxanne with her suspiciously large breasts didn’t. Together they ate chicken s...
Shortlisted for Contest #69 ⭐️
1. Backpfeifengesicht | noun | (German) ‘A face that begs to be slapped.’ My uncle married a woman when I was three. Her name was Katharine and she had golden threads for hair and a voice like the tinkling notes of a piano. Coming from a long line of Germans, she could be sweet and sugary or tight-lipped and harsh. She chose me and my older cousin to be the flower girl and ring bearer, giving us a basket full of creamy white rose petals and two silver rings with the instruction not to lose them. Now I was only three and there are t...
Submitted to Contest #69
Trigger warning: suicide Our night first began at the graveyard. It was about five o’clock, the time where most families would be laughing and clanking pans and talking about politics. But there we were, our feet sinking in the wet grass, the smiles gone from our faces. The daisies that Josie held were bending and hiding their creased faces. She clutched them in one hand, her fingernails making brown indents in their stems. “Do you know where they are?” she asked, her voice cracking through the silence. “No,” I replied, wiping a ha...
You used to take pictures of the women you slept with. Every one of them had a forgettable face and some name that was on the first pages of dictionaries. They were always foggy-eyed when they woke up, whispering through unpainted lips and gathering their bag. The pictures were taken on your Polaroid camera. Those were the ones that came in muted colors and lived at the drugstore. Teenagers used them but you were twenty-seven. The film was expensive but the pictures were worth it. After they rolled out of the camera, you pasted them in ...
Submitted to Contest #68
It’s been twenty-four years since she’s last seen it, but the place looks exactly the same. Chipping paint peeling back to reveal ugly concrete scars. Isla feels her bags weighing down her shoulders but none of that bothers her. In fact, it makes the experience more welcoming. Through the window she spots Pia with a blurred face and thin arms. Now Pia’s hair is short and thick and white. Wrinkles on her flowery dress match the building almost exactly. There are no blue-eyed customers waiting in the window, so Isla throws a clumsy...
Driving down a highway in the rain always reminded me of you. Not because of the yellow lights and silver tire tracks that stained the roads like burns but because of the uncertainty of it all. The rain would smudge the scene behind your windshield until it resembled a van Gogh painting. People would bark in foreign languages and hold up a finger when necessary. It was a chaotic life but it was ours. Nowadays it only seems like yours. You’ve written in pen over the neon signs and convinced me to do stupid things that my relatives woul...
Submitted to Contest #67
New MoonTaran taught me to interpret the stars when I was only five. He tickled my elbows and matched my fingers to the loose stitches of the sky like puzzle pieces. I laughed when he traced Ursa Major, the wingless creature following his hand in circles. He even let me swing from his limbs like a twisting vine and dig my heels into his angled shoulder blades. I got the best view and covered his cratered eyes, pretending we weren’t parentless. He is not my brother—we are not related—but he holds my hand until I fall asleep. It’s no...
You arranged to meet her at the front steps of a church with dizzying limestone curves of nude angels. They blew shaken breaths into the tumbling leaf sky. When she arrived she scrunched her face and pecked a kiss on one of the statue’s lips. Later she would describe the sensation as cold, but right then you sat on the steps while she kicked pigeons in various directions. She was having fun, you could tell, the way her markered eyebrows were sketched down into the bridge of her nose. Once she was done, she ripped a feather from the...
Submitted to Contest #66
Cate told him she was pregnant on a Saturday evening. She said it with glistening eyes and hands folded protectively over her stomach. She looked at him, expecting something but receiving nothing. John dabbed the napkin on his lips. “Excuse me,” he pardoned, and rose from his seat. Cate watched him walk towards the bathrooms. In the car, driving back to their apartment, Cate let her hand sit on John’s shoulder. “What do you think?” “What do you mean?” John asked carelessly, his eyes flying all over the road. Cate ...
Shortlisted for Contest #66 ⭐️
My art professor in college hated butterflies. She said they were basic and painless with nothing more than wings that could break when you touched them. If we were ever to paint them in a project for her class, we’d have to make them shriveled and gray. Those last two words started to make me think that I had made the wrong decision about college. I had thought it was nothing more than cardboard walls and brick buildings, holding its breath with purple lips. Those words also reminded me of my father’s pinched face when h...
Submitted to Contest #65
Meisie can recall all the names of the dead in the Levell Graveyard. She could list them off on her chubby fingers, starting with the ones placed near the entrance gate. The names were carved and darkened by time and shadows to the point of blurriness. Perhaps that’s why she memorized them. One, two, three, four. Five, six, seven, eight. You knew she was an odd child, but when she told Pa there were 109 in all, he threw his head back and laughed. It was an uncommon noise in a graveyard, almost to the point of extinction. Pa led her...
My boyfriend knows the day I’ll die. He sees the future, not in a glass ball, but at the bottom of his nightly whiskey. He’ll never tell me and try as I might, all I see in the glass bottle are dawn dusted droplets. He comes over a lot more now. It’s the result of him moving into a house a few doors down. We’ve been together for barely more than two months now—but since then, the nightmares have kicked in. I wake up every day with swollen, red dots on my wrists. Rhys says they’re probably from thrashing around subconsciously in the midd...
Submitted to Contest #64
It was Wednesday when the painting of a man in spectacles at his desk told Micayla that a family would arrive at sunset that day. She considered his words, clapping her hands twice to the rhythm of life, but didn’t say anything because there was nothing to be said. The man in the painting rolled his eyes at her joy, sat back in his chair, and smoked his pipe. He was the painting that she disliked the most, but she wouldn’t admit anything because her father had painted them all. The first step to prepare for visitors was to make the...
One. You promised to write every day. Your two pinkies were outstretched and your parents met you halfway with theirs. You liked how the fingers wrapped around each other. They looked like little hugs. Your parents bent to kiss you goodbye. Two little circles on each cheek. You inhaled their scent of ripe persimmons and wet paint on portraits of dead pets. Over their shoulders, you saw another boy leaning on his car. He had thin-lipped parents who stared straight ahead. They tapped their feet to an unheard rhythm. He offered hi...
Submitted to Contest #63
The morning is swimming with threads of pregnant silver clouds by the time I thrust the key into the lock. I twist it around until the doors click open and shadows peck me on the cheeks. Shreds of dust whisper while I think about Kitty and her problems. I still don’t know why she asked me to open the shop’s doors today. Busy, dealing with daydreams, is what I wanted to tell her as my excuse. Instead I asked for a raise and she didn’t reply. I call her Ma when I’m feeling generous, but today I have my own mother to take care of....
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