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Weekly Contest #366
The Woman Before Me I still get your letters.The first year, I started collecting them in a small wooden box I'd bought at a flea market in Seattle, long before either of us had anything to do with this house. It was painted with a large tribal fish, faded at the fins, and I never found a real use for it — I imagined it once held dried fish, shipped somewhere, sold somewhere, emptied and forgotten somewhere. It felt like the right place for your letters. Unopened. Waiting. In case you ever came back for them.I never opened one, though someti...
Weekly Contest #365
Two years since Richard came inside her without asking, then rolled onto his back, shirt still on, and mentioned, almost as an afterthought, the way you'd mention you were out of milk, that he wasn't into her "physical body type." One year since Andrew asked her to his mother's funeral, then forty-eight hours after she'd spent an afternoon plating deviled eggs for people who would never learn her name, told her things were "moving too fast." Six months since Dan wanted a break to focus on a job he didn't get and a move he never made. Two wee...
Weekly Contest #356
I pushed open the door, its hinges announcing my arrival with a squeak that echoed through the stone stairwell. Carlos, the hostel host, had sent a poorly transcribed text message earlier with instructions for the lockbox and a cryptic note warning there would be "another guest." He hadn't elaborated on age, nationality, or sex, which I was choosing to interpret as charmingly minimalistic rather than ominous, mostly because my legs were too tired to care. The apartment was small but had high ceilings and plaster walls that held the cool moun...
Weekly Contest #343
The egg began to sizzle beneath the plastic spatula. The yolk trembled, blistered, then started popping in small, frantic bursts. Oil leapt from the pan and freckled her bare forearms. Normally, that sharp sting would have her hopping back, laughing under her breath, doing that small, practiced dance across the kitchen tiles until the yolk settled into itself. She would tip the egg just so, being sure to break it, and slide it onto the same small white porcelain plate. She’d pair it with two pieces of white bread, the kind he liked, from M&a...
Weekly Contest #340
I wish I could speak to you. To tell you that I knew what you were saying. That I understood every word, every sigh, every story you told me while tying your shoes or rinsing a mug at the sink. I wish I could tell you that I, too, had lived a human life… before this one. That once, I roamed the world the way you do now, in a human body.My life then was different. I had a family. A wife and two children. Two girls, Alfa and Mia. We lived simply in the countryside in Cork. I was a professor at the local college and spent my days talking about ...
Weekly Contest #337
There was a time. Somewhere between pigtails and training bras, where I remember kindness. A softness that is only offered to a child, or at least a texture I haven't experienced since. A time when skinned knees and palms were marks of joyful afternoons in the sun and not evidence from nights where dishes were broken, and the driveway was the only escape. I remember that day so clearly, it feels preserved. My memory somehow sealed it off from everything that came after. The smell of sun-warmed black plastic. The way it radiated heat was like...
Weekly Contest #336
“It’s just…”The words stalled in her mouth. They felt unfinished and suddenly fragile. Maeve let the thought hang there while her eyes drifted around the room. She searched for a gentler sentence. Nothing came to mind. The room was suddenly too small tonight. Or maybe it always had been that way, and she was only just noticing. Noticing while she was standing there, feeling exposed. Unable to find anything softer, anything kinder, she swallowed and finally said it.“This just isn’t what I signed up for.”The words sounded dull as they landed. ...
Weekly Contest #333
What it said:It isn’t anything fancy. If you are looking for good, fresh pizza, Villa Capri II is a good stop for a pie or a slice. Okay parking and decent prices. Quick service… but be sure to get a garlic knot while you’re waiting. Would come again.What it meant:You will spend some of your most meaningless Tuesdays here.Sundays after soccer, shin guards still half on, socks stiff with dried grass and sweat. Your cheeks are flushed from the cold, or the heat, depending on the season. New Jersey weather never fully committing to one thing or...
The fork lay at a forty-five-degree angle, gently nestled into the crook of her hand. Still, it clutched the twirled pasta tightly within its tines. The fresh parmesan shaved generously by their waiter was beginning to disappear into the red sauce. What had recently topped the noodles like fallen snow was now dissolving and becoming indistinguishable from the vodka sauce beneath it.She placed the fork along the edge of the plate. It made a small and precise clink as it met the porcelain rim. She reached for her wine glass and took a long sip...
Weekly Contest #328
She looked down at her father, almost lifeless, in the hospital bed. The steady beeping of the monitor seemed to sync with the rhythm of her own heartbeat. The sound was both grounding and unbearable. His face, once so sharply defined, had softened and hollowed with illness until it was nearly unrecognizable. The skin clung to his bones like damp paper. What she did recognize was his nose, the one she shared, covered by a breathing tube. His ice blue eyes were closed, likely never to open again.Her family had told her she would regret not co...
Weekly Contest #327
Painfully hungover, I pushed the black Ray-Bans over my eyes in hopes they would shield some of the fluorescent lighting from the Queen Street Bodega. I roamed the aisles slowly, as if the cure for this malevolent hangover might reveal itself between the Lays and the random rack of off-brand plungers. Although I had been in here almost every day for the last five years, I scanned each shelf with unbridled determination.I grabbed a Protein Lean bar, whatever the fuck that is, and dragged myself to the cooler. Two Gatorades, yellow and red, on...
Weekly Contest #325
She awoke under the cover of trees, blanketed in soft dew, their dark green colors not yet exchanged for crimson. She opened her eyes and was met with the harshness of the morning breeze, brushing against her exposed skin and pulling small strands of hair from behind her ears.“You shouldn’t pull your hair back too much,” she heard her mother’s voice ringing through the trees. “People will think you’re a boy.”It appeared her mother and the wind had made some sort of deal that day...to expose Eliza as the woman she was. But neither the wind no...
Weekly Contest #324
The sea was a constant hum beneath her thoughts. Even now, as the tide pulled in, Maeve stood at the edge of the rocks, her skirt whipped by the wind, a wicker basket pressed against her hip. The air was sharp with salt and seaweed the kind that burned your lungs clean and left your lips chapped. Below, the waves licked the stones, each retreat leaving a glimmer of foam that looked, for an instant, like the lace at her hem.Inside the basket lay the fish...or what the people of Ballycarra called fish. Caught not from the sea, but born from me...
Weekly Contest #323
The chamber hummed with a low, electric pulse, the sound vibrating through the metal floor and up into her bones. The walls loomed around her, a dizzying tower of blank screens stretching floor to ceiling, waiting, watching. They glared white and empty, static flickering like snowfall in the silence. It was suffocating—an endless void, reflecting nothing back at her. The only color, the only movement, came from the steady blink of a small red circle in the corner. The ReBirth Button.Marabell’s breath caught. She had heard whispers of it sinc...
Weekly Contest #322
“You’ll find him when you’re not looking,” she said, squeezing my arm before floating off in her pastel chiffon to join the other bridesmaids.It was the third time that night someone had asked me the same question: “So, when’s your turn?”Fair, I suppose. This was my third wedding of the summer. At this point, my college friend group had officially been paired off and shipped away like carefully wrapped packages - addressed to “Forever After,” postage paid, fragile but insured. And I was the lone box left behind at the post office, battered a...
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