Where you belong

I had to leave. When the world became too small for us both to exist in, I knew it was time.

You asked for space to think in, to find out who you were and where you belonged. I already knew. You belonged with me, and I belonged with you.

That space was suffocating me. The emptiness without you crushed the life out of me. Not seeing you, not talking with you, not tasting you, was like being drained of my humanity.

I survive far away from people now, on my own. Existing only to sleep and dream of you.

Inspired by “Ho Hey” by The Lumineers

Dark and dreary

Dark thunderclouds closed around me, the rain coming down in tsunami waves. I had to fight the wheel of my car to keep on the road, the wind threatening to push me over the bridge railing.

No matter how fast I set the wipers, it couldn’t keep the windshield clear, forcing me to drive precariously slow. The car behind me was following so close, I couldn’t even see its headlights.

Stress bunched the muscles in my shoulders and neck, giving me a hellacious headache and making it hard to concentrate.

I was headed home, if I still had a home.

From Lance, this week’s prompt inspired by Hey Rosetta’s “Carry Me Home”

This week’s Studio30 Plus theme is “stomping glory,” and/or “headache”

Submitted to Skywatch Friday, Season 6: Episode 24

Words can’t hurt me

He disgraced himself at their last soirée, corrupting keywords like some malapropian, backwoods rube. The muted snickers and blatant guffaws confused him, until someone finally corrected one of his faux pas.

All he needed was one ally. He had worked too hard to go back to being just okay. He wanted it all. He wanted to be part of the intelligentsia, not a target for their contempt.

Finagling a reluctant invitation to a holiday fête, he wended his way among the more affluent guests, dropping bons mots like bread crumbs, trying to find his way back into their erudite coterie.

Inspired by The Afters, “Never Going Back to OK“

Dear John dinner

I should’ve ended it months ago. There’s no fire with him, no spark. He’s attractive enough, but he’s just too nice. I even pick fights to see if he’ll stand up for himself. Instead, he simply acquiesces.

I have no sympathy for him. I need a man who will argue with me.

When he brought up the idea me making him dinner, I was so surprised he actually asked me for something, that I agreed, all the while knowing I’d dump him that night.

Rachel came over to help me with meal prep. “What are you serving?”

“Tea and disappointment.”

Submitted to Lance and robot Leeroy: This week’s challenge is inspired by Fiona Apple’s “Criminal”

Crossing over

She stayed in bed watching the ceiling fan make lazy circles above her, tracking each spinning blade as motes of dust flitted down, smudging her clean white sheets.

At 3 a.m., she was as awake as she’d been four hours earlier. Closing her eyes, she tried to shut off the muddle of voices and images running on a continuous loop in her brain.

Just as sleep finally took over, she saw him, dressed all in black, at the periphery of her consciousness. Her arms and legs like lead, she was helpless as he lifted her up and spirited her away.

100 Word Song, is a writing challenge from Lance based on a weekly music prompt. The Challenge is to compose a story in exactly 100 words. This week’s challenge is inspired by ZZ Top’s, “Sharp Dressed Man.”

Pay-per-view

I turned out sofa cushions and emptied overflowing coin jars, trying to find as many quarters as I could, cashing in any remaining change for rolls of 25¢ pieces.

Dropping my coins into the slots of a pay-per-view telescope trained on the horizon, I tried focusing on faraway images floating just out of sight. Fading from memory, these dreams evaporated like diamonds of dew in the hot, morning sunshine.

With my cache of riches, I could’ve bought new dreams. Pretending the old ones didn’t matter any more. That I didn’t regret their loss, mourning what could’ve been.

100 Word Song, is a writing challenge from Lance based on a weekly music prompt. The Challenge is to compose a story in exactly 100 words. This week’s challenge is inspired by Ben Harper’s, “Faded.”

All we need is love

“You’d do it if you loved me.”

Those seven words changed her life forever. Once she gave in, he wouldn’t answer her calls or talk to her at school. She was a nobody again. Then the nausea started, and her flow stopped, and she knew. He called her names and refused to believe her.

Her friends abandoned her, her family was ashamed of her, but she welcomed the life growing inside her. She practiced singing lullabies and reciting nursery rhymes, waiting to love this tiny person with her whole heart.

“We’ll do it all, everything, on our own,” she promised.

The 100 Word Challenge, a writing prompt created by Velvet Verbosity, takes a single theme to tell a story in only 100 words ~ no more, no less. This week’s theme is inspired by Kurt Vonnegut’s 8th Tip on How to Write a Great Story, ‘Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water..’

100 Word Song, is a writing challenge from Lance based on a weekly music prompt. The Challenge is to compose a story in exactly 100 words. This week’s challenge is inspired by “Chasing Cars,” by Snow Patrol.

Long before a little blue line on a pee stick told me I was pregnant, I knew. I knew the exact moment my husband and I conceived both of our children. I ‘felt’ it – long before my OB confirmed conception, long before I heard their swishing heartbeats, and long before they were big enough for me to feel them kick. And I knew… this was what I wanted, was meant, to be… a mother, their mother.