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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2025
Submitted to Contest #334
Once Upon a Time…Once upon a time… I thought I had life figured out. Not the big, existential kind—just the small stuff. Lunchboxes, grade reports, color-coded planners, saying “thank you” even when you didn’t mean it. I was the girl who triple-checked permission slips, kept a spare pencil in every pocket, and made mental lists of everyone else’s mistakes so I could avoid them. I thought that was enough to survive.And then there was Ezra Quinn.He showed up in third-period history like he had wandered in from a different planet—or maybe a pla...
Submitted to Contest #333
The village stank of smoke and salt, a thick, clinging odor that seeped into everything—clothes, hair, even dreams. Low tide left the harbor naked, exposing the muddy bottom where boats slumped on their sides like old men after a brutal fight, keels cracked and barnacled. Pilar picked her way over the slick cobblestones, boots sliding in the treacherous mix of mud, fish guts, and seaweed. She watched every step carefully—shards of broken glass, rusted nails, anything sharp enough to rip open a dog’s belly or her own skin if she wasn’t vigila...
Submitted to Contest #332
I was standing in the rain.Not storm rain, not heavy, angry thunder rain—just that quiet, steady kind that seeps into everything without announcing itself. It hit my face like cold fingertips, slid into my collar, dripped from my sleeves. I didn’t care. I just stood there and let it wash over me because something in my chest had cracked open again. Once those memories push through, there’s no stopping them. Rain always brings me back.Snow too.Any weather that softens the noise of the world pulls me straight into the past. And suddenly I’m a ...
The wind hit the house again, hard. Branches slapped the siding like fists. Rain cut sideways and soaked the porch. My hair plastered to my face, mud squished between my toes. My knees were pulled up, arms wrapped around them. My chest tightened. And suddenly, I heard him. Not in person, not in the room, just in my head. “You’re imagining things,” he said. I flinched. The words were burned into me. Too calm. Too cruel. Too precise. Every storm, every loud noise, every shadow in the corner came with those words. “You’re too sensitive.”“You’re...
Rain falls. What if a single yellow rose—plucked on impulse, thorns and all—could crack open a stranger’s guarded heart, spilling secrets that rewrite your own forgotten story? On this cold, rainy, windy November day, I stare out the window, watching autumn leaves swirl like dying embers, my tea steaming up like a quiet exhale. Autumn’s got this way of wrapping around you, reminding us how letting go can spark something real—those stubborn embers fighting the freeze. Your old playlist just hit shuffle—“Lovers in Paris,” that song you texted...
My dad lived past a hundred, but if you knew him, you’d never guess his age. He didn’t move like an old man, didn’t think like an old man, didn’t talk like an old man. He remembered everything. He walked on his own. He argued, joked, laughed—right until the last week of his life. He had five boys before me, two alive and he loved them, of course he did, but he always wanted a little girl. Everyone in the family knew it. My mom used to roll her eyes and say, “Lord help us if he gets the daughter he wants. He’s gonna lose his mind.” And she wa...
Submitted to Contest #331
The snow started falling right after I ate that stupid frozen lasagna that tastes like cardboard no matter how much cheese you pile on top. Big, fat, sloppy flakes smacking the kitchen window like they’re pissed off at the glass. I’m standing here barefoot on the cold tile, tea gone cold in my favorite chipped mug the one you said looked like a prop from a 1970s diner—and I’m fifty-one years old and my chest hurts the same way it did when I was twenty and too stupid to know what I was throwing away.I can still smell the garage where we first...
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