Not Unprepared

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(Photo: Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash)

 

She was up all night.

Words crowded her mind. Piled atop each other, they kept coming

Impatient. Wanting to be picked.

Even the discarded ones pressed behind closed lids, trying to repeat.

A few slipped, surprising and lubricated by unexpected tears.

Of worry.

Of hope.

Of fatigue.

She tossed and turned. She wrote. She paced.

And still words tumbled. Filling every space.

In the small hours she ran the tub.

Soaked.

Prayed to soften the callouses

And the rough edges

Snagging nonsense

In her mind.

As dawn rose, she was bare.

Exhausted.

Script mulled.

Not quite ready,

But word lulled.

 

 

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt of: Script in 100 words

 

Sweet Redress

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(Photo: Hannes Wolf on Unsplash)

 

She didn’t mean for it to happen. Or she did.

She was no saint.

Sure, decades have passed. Much water under bridges.

A better person would have let it go.

Not Linda.

Not when Marilee had deliberately spilled nail polish onto Linda’s gown on competition day.

Twenty years of rumination.

Until … Marilee’s brand new car.

Linda gifted a young neighbor with spray paint.

An aspiring painter with bad aim.

Sweet revenge.

 

 

 

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt of: Revenge in 72 words

 

Unlocked

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(Photo: Deann DaSilva on Unsplash)

 

She knew she never should have let it run

Amok.

Should have kept it

Always

Locked.

But she wobbled

At the sight of keys under the

Rock.

It ran,

Before she could even feign

Shock.

 

 

 

 

For Sammi’s weekend writing prompt of Amok in 35 words

 

Almost Viable

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(Photo: Gabriel Jimenez on Unsplash)

 

She was almost there.

The core of her was almost

But perhaps not quite. Viable.

It took so much of her. To form. To build.

To be.

To sift the valued from the wreckage.

The meaning

From the hurt.

That there was little left.

Yet.

For viability.

Nonetheless it was still in there.

Nascent. Waiting.

For the rain.

For the sunlight.

For the nourishment.

For what had already sprouted and was on its way

To the life

She was.

And could

Sustain.

 

 

 

 

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Viable in 82 words.

 

Road Ready Monologue

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(Photo: SOCMIA Fotografía on Unsplash)

 

Get the kids. Get the bags. Pack the boot. Start the car.

And save that look for your Mother,

For having her jamborees so far.

Did you pee? Did you wash?

Are you sure the doors are locked?

Where’s your brother? Why right now?

Where does he think we’ll squeeze in his guitar?

No, you won’t.

Not you, too.

Don’t care if the harmonica will be something to do.

Off we go.

Off we are.

Right into bumper-to-bumper trucks.

We’ll never make it.

Best turn back.

 

 

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt of: Jamboree in 86 words

 

Annum

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(Photo: Jill Sauve on Unsplash)

 

They named her Annum.

For being born just as the year turned time onto its head

To start anew.

Just as the numbers tumbled from the duos to the singles

To the very first

Of firsts.

A new beginning.

Just as she was,

Finally,

For them.

 

 

 

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Year in 46 words

 

Not His Kind

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(Photo: Daniel Diesenreither on Unsplash)

 

When he first saw her, he thought, no way!

After all, he preferred the quiet kind who’d let him listen to the crackle, to the silence, to the breathing of the cabin’s logs.

He thought her flippant. Voluble.

Disrespectful of tranquility. Wasting words.

But she’d been sent, and his household needed a woman.

So he endured.

Till he heard her soothe a monologue of comfort into his orphan’s ear.

And his heart turned dear.

 

 

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt of Flippant in 74 words.