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Weekly Contest #367
I have been trying to make sense of it. My brain, a constant loop of regret and longing. There is no suitable explanation. Randomness exists within order. The car wreck. That surprising discovery of infidelity. A terminal illness. The lay-off that you didn’t see coming. The body learns to wait for calamity, a protective forward motion. In that idling between disasters, a comfort is sought. It manifests in the light cadence of a sparrow or a mockingbird. The ear picks it up against all the crashing white noise. Its clipped melody heralds more...
Weekly Contest #347
They say nothing lasts forever, but they leave out the part about it breaking. The collapse before it disappears. It might dull out, at first. Become worn. Used. Eventually, it loses its integrity. The fine lines show up. It splinters to the heat or cold or indecision. With the cracking, the downward slide accelerates until you have nothing in your hand. Shards. Tatters. Hopelessness. I can hear her pounding on the front door. It's followed by screaming. A primal noise that is transfixing. She moves a slow and steady gait around the rental h...
Weekly Contest #346
The liminal spaces are haunting. They follow. Each footfall leads closer to that line, the one where ghosts tread. It is dusk. Jackson Square awakening to all its infinite possibilities. Tarot card tables are strewn along the cobbled path. Candles flicker below the rising smell of sweet incense. Accosted by a putrid scent of human refuse. Debauchery with a mix of sainthood. I like to think I lean toward goodness, but I know the sins I am capable of indulging. This is my New Orleans. The sun slanting to the west is a foregone conclusion. The ...
Winner of Weekly Contest #343 🏆
Wasted moments are sins. I am cursed by each one that I have slung with casual indifference. Her smile broken by my temperament. My thoughtless disregard. Instead of being hollowed out by regret, the fear stirs and sinks its claws into what is left of me that feels.I can’t see.Backing out of the driveway, the light refracts. It is stunted by the heaviness of drifting clouds. I grip the steering wheel tighter, knowing I have no choice but the road ahead. The weakness of my brother-in-law. Summoning me to the hospital to be the one to render t...
Shortlisted for Contest #341 ⭐️
When the sun slips below that horizontal threshold, my body convulses, an involuntary movement that wrecks the quiet. My palms are sweaty, my breathing labored into a yearning gasp. I want nothing more than to become the darkness. I want to disappear.Instead, I lie in bed watching the perpetual revolution of the ceiling fan. The constant spin is lulling. A predictability discerned. All I feel is anxiety borne into motion, followed by the tingly sensation of fear, as it skirts along the back of my neck. Then it happens, without precursor or m...
Weekly Contest #324
Elias sat perched in his seat, eyes intent on the vast stretch of water that melded into the horizon. The tides were forceful, smashing the rising waves against a blanket of fine, white sand. He raised his coffee to his lips and savored the bluntness of the morning, the familiar taste of resolution. He wanted something beyond grasp, a fleeting thought that retreated with the pull of the water back into its primordial depths. His instinct was to follow, rocking with the steady drone of the ocean. It was a gentle lulling that bought time for h...
Weekly Contest #311
She cracked the ice tray with her thumbs. It was a jarring sound. Her focus brought inward, she reached for the glass tumbler. She looked at the splintered cubes, the way they had fractured into delicate slivers. In front of her was a cloudy, murky mess of water, solidified into something hard and cold. There was a longing for it to be pristine, a frozen moment like the first time their eyes met. Her heart wilted under the weight, not of the memory, but of her sunken reality. He proffered many words, and they had sustained her, the way he gr...
Weekly Contest #297
After the explosion, time ceased to be linear. It collapsed on itself, pulling and forcing everything into a shifting nothingness. The acceptance of time in its original, primordial flow was never questioned. The laid-out sequence, the logical plan of that forward momentum, was an unconscious choice, but perhaps choices are driven by force.Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.There was comfort in its predictability, one that no longer exists. I hunker down in the past only leaving the confines of my bedroom when it is necessary, when it becomes an absolut...
Weekly Contest #279
“You take a right at the end of this block (heartbreak). Then, you go about a quarter mile down, past the old Blackwell mansion with its decaying fence-line (internal suffering), and make a hard left. You’ll meander through the wooded property for what feels like forever (memory sifting) until your legs are weak, lungs gasping for air (anxiety-fueled panic). Through the clearing, you’ll find a stream where you can indulge in refreshment (selective remembering). Don’t be alarmed, at that point, you’ll be close. What you’re looking f...
Weekly Contest #277
The secrets of the universe are locked up in some fantastical equation or algorithm, a cadence of numbering yet discovered, while the wiles of man are purest in word form. The careful articulations, yes, those subtle utterances are the spaces between heaven and hell.“I’m afraid.”“What are you afraid of?”“I’m afraid of falling for you.”And I kick you in the gut with a hard dissonance, because the words don’t align. There is a cosmic discord between the syllables sprung to life and the daily actions. You know this isn’t truth-telling, but you ...
Weekly Contest #273
“Don’t tell anyone,” the words whispered from her lips with a longing desperation. She had repeated the phrase to herself innumerable times over the years, hiding away a hurtful secret. She stared at Rory, challenging him to be present in the moment, to acknowledge her sacrifice. “I never did forget you, even after all these painful years,” she wrung her hands, her upper teeth digging into her lower lip, a blunting of physical hurt to quell the tears.Night was advancing, and she strained to see his form in the shifting light. She w...
Weekly Contest #270
Category: Main DishBest Paired with: strife, doubt, and heavy hors d'oeuvresPreheat: to an unbearable temperature; most likely to come to fruition during summerPrep time: a sad, exhausting spans of a lifetimeCook time: less than thirty secondsIngredients:-one failed marriage (optional: can include other failed marriages if available)-1/10 of your self-esteem (that’s all you have left)-ten heavily mixed drinks (stout, I mean, really stout)-a dash of stifling insecurity (dash = the whole salt shaker fell in)-two loathsome jobs (could any other...
Weekly Contest #268
I’m not the best with words, not necessarily the spelling or grouping into a grammatical whole, but the pairing of them together into meaning. I have this sense of what holds in my heart, but then it comes out in an abbreviated awkwardness, the sounds coupled with sighs and stammerings, and I end up leaning into silence, a reluctance to own the sharing or the outcome. It is probably easier to say that I am the opposite of glib.—“I didn’t want to lose you,” that phrase keeps cycling through my head, a bunched heap of emotion.She is my excepti...
Weekly Contest #255
Richard had ignored the signs. His had been a demise that crept upon him slowly, his self-worth stolen in the lonely work hours, validation kept from him at home. If it wasn’t the expectations of his career peeling back the last of his resolve, it was his high-strung wife with her exhaustive demands. She taxed him to the brink of collapse. His three children had pushed him to the edges of bankruptcy with their private schools, designer clothes, and rehab stints. He loved them, but they had drifted from his reach, caught in the rip current of...
Shortlisted for Contest #241 ⭐️
The betrayal needled me at a 45-degree angle. It was caustic and driven, sinking its teeth into my flesh, razor-sharp in its edge and piercing. I sat there, staring at the Skype screen, wondering if I had heard my sister correctly, an out-of-body experience that had me floating between a time when I was complete and this moment when the wind was sucked out of my lungs. I couldn't breathe; I couldn't exhale. I was suspended in a repetition of a phrase, "We are flying into St. Louis first. We won't be arriving in Memphis until the fourth of Oc...
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