Browsing Category Written Promptly

city song

right now there’s ringing in my ears, and besides that the drip of
the cat’s water fountain and the hum, perhaps, of a water heater,
and i want none of those sounds, i want silence unless it’s something
i’ve been wanting to hear.

i want to travel to florida and see my friend Todd, i want to hear the
dull roar of a plane cruising at altitude, i want him to hear his eggs
crackling over easy, spitting and popping butter, before the whoooosh
of him pouring my scrambled ones into the pan. And the drip of his
coffee pot, … Read the rest

here you are

here you are. you had one foot over the fence and now here you are. 
no more of that painful limbo, no more wondering “what will happen
that will make him leave again?” even if you are the one to facilitate the leaving.
set it and forget it, you tell yourself. you get what you get and you 
don’t get upset. if you start to stray into thoughts that cause you fear,
remember the times you were comforted, and remember the things that count.

tell yourself you don’t need anymore manifestation or magical thinking, 
you just need to be the … Read the rest

no matter what

no matter what it looks like when things finally 
get shook up and then settle down, I will be here by your side.
I will be the one who keeps loving you and loving you
and showing you love, and no one can possibly say we
deserve anything worse than this, or anything more than this.
there are plenty of people in this world I could have met and made a 
makeshift life with, I would have laughed and smiled at their jokes 
the way I smile at you and laugh at yours, you ridiculous little boy. 
so no matter … Read the rest

our parents were lucky

Getting older, and watching my parents and grandparents age, is incredibly hard.

I’ve always been very aware of my age and the passing of time.

These days it feels like time is flying by so much faster than I want it to; I want it to slow down. I want to be able to appreciate and savor more of the good things before having to move on to the next.

Day after day, most things stay the same.

Wake up, work, dinner, whatever, sleep. Repeat four times until Saturday. Rest.

I worry every day about getting bills paid and not … Read the rest

eat the rich

I hate authority.

I absolutely hate it.

The fact that I have a boss is one of the worst things in my entire life.

It doesn’t even matter who the boss is.

The boss I have now has her Jekyll and Hyde moments… or hours, or days… But overall, she’s a nice, pleasant, funny woman.

I often think that if we had met each other when we were children she would have been a friend I would have kept forever.

However, when she talks to me in a tone and looks at me like she believes I’m stupid, I forget … Read the rest

i want to go home

About a year and a half ago my parents sold the house that I grew up in.

It wasn’t just the house that I grew up in.

It’s the house where my sister, and then many years later, my daughter, were brought home to sleep in a crib within walls that had already seen the beginnings of two other women in my family.

The house was in my family for four generations, although at one point, there was a fifth.

My childhood was spent in that little (kind of too little) Cape on a hill. I lived with my great-grandmother, … Read the rest

you can’t win if you don’t play

I’m not a lucky kind of person.

When I was younger, I used to go to Foxwoods to play BINGO quite often.

I loved the whole experience of it – waiting in line to get my cards, then going over to the two-dollar dobber store and picking out which color I wanted (usually pink or green), and then finding a place to sit in the massive room that had a haze of cigarette smoke hanging above everyone’s head.

My friend(s) and I would set up somewhere and then look around and make fun of all the people who brought entire … Read the rest

nothing is forever, not even close

“All I’ve ever wanted is to be a writer” is a sentence I’m sure I and many other writers have uttered throughout life, and it’s true but also not true.

There was a time in childhood when I watched the movie SpaceCamp over and over and over again and then was taken to the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. where I doubled down on my dream.

I took home posters of the Milky Way and a Space Shuttle pointing at the sky, its bottom engulfed in the flames from the rockets about to take them away.

I Read the rest

perfect for me

If I think hard about it,
you are perfect.

You bring everything
to the table
and offer everything
that I want.

You are dependable.
No matter what, or when,
or with who, you always
provide the same comfort,
the same sweetness
that brings me peace.

You make me melt,
you make me feel addicted,
like I have to clutch you
in my hot, hot hands
to keep you mine
to keep you you
before you’re gone.

When you enter me
there is a shock of sweetness –
sugar, plain and simple.
But the longer you linger,
the more delicious you … Read the rest