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Daily Writing Prompt

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Daily Grind #12: Donuts

Hello winter sun. Konnichiwa 7 o’clock. Come out but wrap up, baby it’s cold outside. You have places to go and no one you know. Your steps are dots and lines on a moving map. Make sure you can retrace them. Only you can know the way back, and your hands are cold. ‘I have donuts to find today,’ you say. ‘Old clothes to try, art to touch.’ The cafe is hidden among crooked paths, wandering men and weathered streets. But you find it. You settle in. The coffee is ok, the song they’re playing is better. It’s just the one song, playing over and over and over and over and over. Like a thought on loop. Like a dream on repeat. Like that haunting sound, that fleeting thing that folds beneath you when you attempt sleep. By your fifteenth minute, you have memorized the words. You step out and you’ve forgotten them all. How easy for beautiful things to slip away. You look for the train, squeeze your way in, find your next stop. You see the neon lights, the singing billboards, the faceless rushing mob and it feels like home. The sun has long gone and the moon refuses to show and it’s cold, baby it’s so cold. The lights flicker and die, storefronts saying good night while you, you, you press on. Onward, forward, move. Surely there’s one more open door, a cafe, its warm yellow light, a final cup of coffee and a song to make you feel less alone.

 

 

 

 

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June 20, 2018 and February 25, 2018

 

Writing Now

Daily Grind #11: From Now On

There’s a lot you can say in two and a half hours. You can say ‘I miss you. I can’t believe you’re gone.’ You can ask all your questions. ‘How could you why didn’t you WHY where the fuck was I?’ You can make statements. Promises. Say that you’re letting go and holding on and for today they mean the same thing. Say you’ll keep going as best you can while keeping love close. Never lost, always warm, around. Say that grief is an awning window and the wind tears it open some days but when it does, won’t you also glimpse the dazzling moon?

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February 26, 2018, Tokyo Dome for the prompt. Photo by @imAshawol. Thank you so much for letting me use it <3

Writing Now

Daily Grind #10: #ChokieHazelKnot

There is a light so blinding that it takes what it shouldn’t and leaves me with burns on my skin, angry lashes on the ground, trenches on the earth, ashes in its wake. Pieces of my heart left shattered and broken, my soul left in deep shadow.

And then there is you. You are a star, bright and warm. Like the sun at dawn, that haunting time when its rays pierces the clouds and chases the night away. When its heat hovers over the earth, warm and loving in its embrace, its light making prisms out of dewfalls, touching tears in my eyes. Everything is full of promise.

You are the sun, a star, bright and warm and everlasting, and your warmth feels like home.

 

 

***

November 25, 2017, Chokie and Aze for the prompt.

Writing Now

Daily Grind #9: Roses in the Rain

Today was kinder than the day before. There was more cloud than sun, but the sky was not without light. The wind not without heat. The kind that hovers over your skin and grazes the crook of your nose and lights up the ends of your fingertips. There is a song playing inside your head. Over and over. You sing along with a smile in your eyes, ready to gift to a stranger. You imagine dancing like you don’t care who sees. But you don’t do it.

Maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow will be even better than the day before. You look up as the clouds hug the sun and rain meets the ground, soft as a memory.

 

 

 

 

October 13 for the prompt.

Writing Now

Daily Grind #8: Math

When asymptotes fall in love, how tragic. Two lines coming closer and closer and never meeting. He leaps out of the graph and finds the angle that computes you. Adds his devotion, undivided attention. Affection is irrational, the limit does not exist. But only for today. Tomorrow it’s a new page. You add your fears, his time is halved. Multiply love by the power of all the things you should have done. Two lines collide then come apart, asymptotes to the end. Never to meet again.

***

The problem with love is that the equation is never balanced.

 

 

 

 

October 12 for the prompt.

Writing Now

Daily Grind #7: Crying in Public

There is a light somewhere that flickers before it bursts into flame. Wildfire. It consumes and it hurts worse than darkness. You walk half a mile seeking escape, but the voices follow. Nagging. Relentless. You lay down and breathe in and out. In and out. ‘Listen to the sound of your breathing,’ she says. ‘Throw everything else away. Focus on mindfulness.’ ‘Isn’t that redundant?’ you think. But that’s a thought about words again, isn’t it? And you need to throw that away. At least right now, in this slow, short hour. In this quiet room full of strangers each carrying their own burden. Breathe in. Breathe out. Your body is a tight ball, your mind unraveling. Everything is a fight and you figure, this time, winning is in losing.  Breathe in, twist this way. Stretch out. Ease. Ease. Ease. You feel the warm floor beneath you, the sharpness of your elbows against your ribs, the feel of your tongue against the roof of your mouth. It’s salty. How strange. Twist this way, grow long like so. Close your eyes. Reach out, expand. You will win only if you keep up the fight. Open your eyes. The darkness will not hurt this time.

 

 

 

 

Stress Free Gentle Flow, 10/8/17 for the prompt.