written in thirty minutes, using these prompts and trigger words: "a man receives a letter in the mail"; the color green; smooth gesture; a dumpster.The mail arrived earlier than usual. Henry slowly rose from his chair and shuffled his feet across the faded carpet. It was a beautiful day. His cat Francis raised his head from his usual spot on ( Read more... )

prompt: steal the first line of a book you haven't read before. keep writing.

i chose isaac bashevis singer's the slaveA single bird call began the day. Isaac reached over his wife, sleeping flat on her stomach, and picked up the phone. He fell lightly back into place on his side of the bed and looked at Sophia. How she could sleep with her ( Read more... )

Dad and I are watching This Boy's Life, a movie about step-parental domestic abuse. DiCaprio is getting the shit beat out of him by DeNiro when we hear a gigantic thud from the kitchen. I already know what we're going to find, but no mental image could quite prepare me for that disgusting position my grandmother is holding. Her right leg is resting ( Read more... )

I left him in the afternoon. He was never expecting me to give up on him. I wish there were a better phrase to use, but that is exactly what it was: giving up. I gave up and I didn't realize it until I was in my car and halfway down the street. I didn't feel guilty. That was it, really. I didn't stay to hear him out, to see if he was going to ( Read more... )

Time answers every flighty concern. With that familiar ding dong sound I hear every day, the café door swings open, and I am awakened from my momentary lapse into worrying about what the rest of the day brings: grandmother's shortened breaths, hastened phone calls from across the state, my father's medical bills, yet another death, another cry, ( Read more... )

instead of sitting here with all these negative thoughts and bad music and boredom in the dreary fluorescent light all by myself i would like to be having sex in the quiet rocking warmth of our apartment with its old dusty radiators and cat hair and natural light, even in the gloom of a snowy march afternoon, your hair looks dirty blond/almost gray ( Read more... )

she sat in the room thinking nothing but how could she just sit here and do nothing while they all died around her? in hospitals with tubes up their noses and into their hearts were her uncles, her favorite uncles -- jazz drumming and bunny cakes, gum drops, fancy french cigarettes, steaks on the grill and turkeys in the yard. she didn't hate ( Read more... )

and i think of things that are never thought in the darkness i am lost amongst the trees and i see that we are stuck in a maze of intentions never discussed and we discuss things that don't matter while sipping our coffee, our tea, or our alcohol probably and never question our lack of depth. we look at one another and see that we are the same, ( Read more... )

mother mother sang her songs in sweet honey and coughed till she exploded into thousands of flowery bits that were swallowed up by the mouths of flies in the sky filled with purple and pink and streaks that look like god in the early hours of summer evenings ( Read more... )

now i do feel the need to write, probably because it's raining outside. maybe also because tonight i yelled at jared simply because i didn't know he was planning on going to bed so soon, and i miss him. he's been working a lot. maybe because i read about a hundred pages of extremely loud and incredibly close today, and i don't know how to express ( Read more... )