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Derek Roberts

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2021

Stories (37)

Comments

Library

69 Followers

133 Following

37 Stories

875 karma pts

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Lost

Submitted to Contest #305

This story contains sexual abuse that is implied but not described. The worst thing about being lost is worrying about the people who are worrying about you being lost. If I'm lost, I still have me. My small circle of family (my mother and her brother) don't know where I am when I am lost, but I am pretty sure I know where they are. They'll find me or I'll find them.. They are missing something that I'm not missing. They are missing me. And that's why I worry. Each one will react differently to the news, and that makes my palms sweat. I hav...

6 likes

Cuentos de la Novia

Submitted to Contest #305

1. Knocking on Doors I am unemployed, so I count the states. I lie in his bed in his apartment in his city while he goes to his job. I try to name all the states that I had to fly over in order to get here. It’s one way to deal with my broken heart. I'm 18 and 10 months. 18 and 3,000 miles from home. He's 9 years older. 27. I met him online. He’s a virtual poet, and I memorized every word. He was a way out of the church where I was trapped. My father works tirelessly, and so I would be alone with my mother. Her only protest to America was he...

7 likes

I Came with the House

Submitted to Contest #304

Show patience. You've got to let things come to you. You've got to put up with everything else and sit still long enough and keep your flashlight low until the thing that you're waiting to see starts to rustle. Then it will slowly sneak out into the middle, and it will come to you. I didn't always believe this. I wasn't raised to believe this. I lived in a house where everything should have happened yesterday. I lived in a house where people would yell. Where the volume for everything was always set at 10. If you didn't yell, you weren't goi...

10 likes

Just Another Moon

Submitted to Contest #304

I will admit the truth. I am beautiful. From birth I've always glowed more than the other girls. Even though the other girls are quite beautiful too, I just had certain qualities that they did not. I lived with my uncle because my parents were gone. I liked to think that they died in the war but it's most likely that they abandoned me. They probably stumbled out of too many taverns and somewhere got lost and forgot that they had a daughter. But my uncle never forgot me. I worked with him in his shop where he would repair tractors and small m...

8 likes

Rose

It burns. That's all I can think about is the burning. My skin feels like someone has punctured it with an awl until I am shredded. I feel like my face is not my own. The rocoto peppers melt in my hands as I wash my face with their red skin. I can feel my flesh start to glow. I shake my head so that the pain spreads evenly like seeds in a pan. The pain feels better on my face than the eyes. There are so many eyes that follow me whenever I walk wherever they are. It doesn't matter the age of the eyes, I can feel them covering me like a potato...

1 like

Midnite on Mars

Submitted to Contest #210

Midinite on Mars By Derek Letsch That We are Legal I am living with my crime. It is the window and the desert and the empty space between where I am now and where everyone else used to be. And I am imagined. I am assembled. I am quiet and alone and the bones under my skin seem to vibrate with fear. I have been awake for days, but I know I have slept well in the past. My dreams were swollen in the heat of things. They skitter across the empty pages of the loosely held idea that we are allowed. That we are legal. That we are not alone. T...

7 likes

Sober

Submitted to Contest #157

The shaker was frozen and stuck to his wet fingers as he pulled it out of the freezer. He kept the ice in it and whatever remnants of liquor that didn't pour out into his glass each time. And now he measured the gin and mixed in the vermouth. He stirred it carefully but vigorously because a martini is best served cold. He attached the lid and opened up the strainer and poured it out into the frosty glass. He dropped in two blue cheese olives and poured just a little bit of the juice into the icy cocktail. The first sip was the best thing tha...

7 likes