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“Write a story in which grief shows itself in an unexpected way, or becomes a tangible object.”

Posted in Sad on Aug 21, 2026

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✍️ 99 stories

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Weekly Contest #369

The kettle clicks off and her daughter reaches for two mugs from the cupboard, the chipped one and the one with the fox on it, the same two they always used. She sets them on the counter, drops a bag in each, fills them without measuring, the way she used to when she was in a hurry to get back to whatever she'd been doing before the tea occurred to her. Steam curls up from both cups. Outside the window over the sink, someone's sprinkler ticks on, off, on. Her daughter blows across the tea and says something about the neighbor's dog getting l...

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The Eel

Weekly Contest #369

What is it that people say? Something about there being seven stages of grief? I’ve looked them up and whatever this stage is is not one of the widely acknowledged stages. In fact, nothing I could find online mentions this in relation to grief at all. Let me explain.I have a… cumbersome burden around my neck. It was the day after David’s funeral, a Saturday, and I was in my parents’ spare bedroom. More specifically, the en suite, being violently sick into the toilet. David’s wake had naturally turned into a massive piss-up. Just as...

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Grieving the Living

Weekly Contest #369

Grieving the LivingThe first flower appeared on a Tuesday.It bloomed beneath her collarbone while she was making coffee, small and white, with five perfect petals and a yellow centre.She stared at it in the mirror.Then she touched it.It was warm.Not painted on. Not tattooed. Not attached to her skin.Growing.She pressed her thumb against the stem.The flower trembled.By the time she left the house, it had opened completely.Everyone noticed.The woman at the bakery smiled at her for longer than usual.“Beautiful,” she said.She thanked her.She did...

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Carrying Capacity

Weekly Contest #369

The man opposite me had brought three photographs, though nobody had asked him to, and in all three his dog was asleep somewhere inconvenient — under a car, half in a flowerbed, wedged into a gap behind the sofa too narrow for anything with a spine."He slept like that every night," he said, and touched the edge of the top photograph as if straightening it might make it more true.Arthur. A whippet, fourteen years old. Kidney failure, nine days ago."Thirty-two percent," the technician said, and the man's eyes went to the display between our ch...

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The Concert Chairman

Weekly Contest #369

It was a bugger being old, Billy thought as his ragged breath struggled in the blustery wind. He was climbing the hill to visit Pithouse Club for the last time. Harry had told him he would be there. No doubt there would also be a few others to mark the club’s passing and enjoy the reduced beer prices paid for by the now disbanded club committee.As he reached the peak of the hill, the club came into sight, a squat, largish redbrick building next to the old Co-op recently converted into council offices and behind it a row of terraced houses le...

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Rachel's Hope

Weekly Contest #369

ISkipper gripped the wheel with both hands as the old fishing boat slammed through the choppy water. The storm behind him was growing, a dark wall swallowing the horizon inch by inch.He glanced at the monitor, the stern‑mounted camera aimed straight at the approaching monster.“It won’t catch us, old pal,” he muttered.The boat rocked violently, climbing each wave like a tired horse forced into one more gallop. He shoved the throttle forward and laughed out loud as the engine roared.“You got this,” he said.Then—Everything stopped.Not the engin...

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Pigeon Dance

Weekly Contest #369

It was an unseasonably bright spring afternoon. Though it had just snowed, like the April Fools blizzard I was nearly born in, the snow stood sweating in the midday sun. Trash strewn on blackened mounds of ice marked the road. Cars hummed on Ocean Parkway, the whirring leading right to the beach.My dad took a half day to get me after school. If he could wrangle another day off, we might walk around the zoo of Williamsburg’s streets of foreign tourists, stopping to eat too much from cafes that smelled like burnt butter.I was born when they we...

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Growing Pains

Weekly Contest #369

The plant was set carefully on her desk. It was a small, unassuming thing, yet it stood out in the small bedroom of May’s second-floor apartment. It brought color to the white drywall she hadn’t been allowed to paint.   It was its newness to the room, perhaps, that explained why it overshadowed the rest of the furnishings. The blue bedspread had faded from many washes, and the sun had taken its toll on the posters and pictures that were tacked up on the walls, but they were still colorful. They had no reason to look as dull as they...

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The Long Keeping

Weekly Contest #369

The pen trembled between Kitty’s fingers.Her usually meticulous script felt impossible to etch onto the tiny sheet of paper. The precise, graceful letters that usually came so easily to her tumbled onto the page, alive and trembling.She’d already begun, though. And soon, she would need to leave the parlor to begin preparations for dinner. She steadied her wrist against the desk and looked down at the watch on the writing desk.The timepiece’s gold case had become softened with age, worn smooth where Kitty’s father-in-law pulled it from his po...

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Dragging Feelings

Weekly Contest #369

There are those times when life gets far too suffocating to deal with. A mental weight so catastrophic that it pushes down on the shoulders, creating a bubble of cursed air that burns the lungs and a pressure behind the eyes that invites tears to gather. This feeling can be as soft as a blanket, as swooping as a rollercoaster, as insurmountable as craggled mountains, and as piercing as a butcher knife, all in a rotating cyclone that seemingly never ends.  Cecelia has never felt such an encapsulating emotion in her entire life. She has s...

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Not Now

Weekly Contest #369

“Miss Jenny.” “Not now, Susan. Let’s go back to one and try it from the beginning.”  “Miss Jenny.” “Susan, we will get water after we do the dance one more time.”  “No, Miss Jenny. I have a question about the dance.”  “Let’s just run it through and see if your question works itself out.”  Miss Jenny starts the music, a piano-heavy instrumental version of an old Radiohead song that none of the kids would have known even in its original form. The speaker in the back of the room dances with color, bursts of green and yellow ...

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When Your Love is for Someone Else

Weekly Contest #369

Prompt: Write a story in which grief shows itself in an unexpected way or becomes a tangible object. When Your Love is for Someone Else “Nothing I say or do seems to help,” I said to my therapist.  “I am at my wit’s end. Patty’s drowning in her grief and nothing can rescue her from the tidal wave of despair that has grabbed ahold of her.  It grieves me to see my daughter spiraling out of control. My daughter’s grief has changed into bitter hatred for me! I know she was so close to her Nana.  Patty and my mo...

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Grief is a Stone

Weekly Contest #369

*There is a brief moment of self harm, and mental health reference in this story. I want to fold over and close my eyes. To scream until he gets up and walks away. I want to flip the coffee table, and tell him how much I hate him. I breathe instead. Deeply and slowly, until the squeezing in my lungs loosens up enough for me to speak again.“I understand,” I say to him. “I am worried too. We are trying to fix this, and we are doing everything that Cathryn told us to do.” Those are the things I say aloud. Inside, I say, We’ve talked abo...

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An Empty Box

Weekly Contest #369

Content Warning: Animal sickness and death. I held a small dusty box in both hands. It was green and red with shapes evocative of Christmas. It was small enough that I could almost wrap my hands around it completely. The six sides bore six words scrawled in an uneven hand: Taquito. Hopper. Diamond. Midnight. Pot Roast. Bean Dip. They were mostly foods. Was it a recipe box? But there were no recipes inside. There was nothing inside. I ran down the attic stairs and into the living room. “Daddy, daddy. What’s this?” I asked holding out the box...

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An Etch A Sketch I Carry

Weekly Contest #369

The sun catches the orange pill bottles scattered across the counter, lighting them like tiny lanterns of hope or faith. But they are also a reminder that each day, I am rehearsing for his death. My heart breaks now because he fades a little each day, like an Etch A Sketch I carry through the house with both hands, afraid that one careless movement will erase what remains. No matter how delicately I hold him, he continues to disappear. What do you call grief before death? Is it permissible to mourn the living? Am I selfish for doing so? What...

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