THREE WEEKS AFTER the funeral, I drove two hours north to a town I’d never heard of, to a door I’d found through a DNA site and a lot of luck.

I knocked. A man answered, late forties, my mother’s nose exactly. My stomach dropped.

“Daniel Marsh?”

“Yeah.” He looked at me the way you look at someone you’re trying to place.

“I’m Claire Hennessey. Our mother…” My voice broke there. “She passed last month. She asked me to find you.”

He said nothing for a moment. Just held the door and studied me.

“You’d better come in.”

His kitchen smelled like coffee and wood smoke. He poured two cups without asking.

We sat across from each other at a table with a deep scratch running diagonal across it, and I told him about the deathbed, the confession, the twenty years she’d known he’d been searching.

He listened. He didn’t interrupt. When I finished, he set his cup down.

“Can I show you something?”

He came back with a shoebox. Inside: birthday cards, Christmas cards, a few letters in my mother’s handwriting, her looping g’s, her habit of underlining for emphasis. A photograph: my mother and this man, younger, standing in front of a harbor somewhere, both of them squinting into the sun.

I picked up the photo.

“When?” I said.

“Seven years ago. She reached out to me.” He sat back down. “We’d been meeting twice a year since then. She’d come up here, or I’d go down. She never told anyone. Said she would, when she was ready.”

I turned the photograph over. My mother’s handwriting on the back: Danny and me. April 2018.

“She never told my father,” I said. “She never told me.”

“I know.” Not an accusation. “She talked about you a lot. She was…” He stopped, pressed his mouth together. “She was proud of you.”

I sat with that. The shoebox. The scratch on the table. My mother carrying a secret about each of us for seven years, waiting for some right moment that never arrived.

“She asked me to find you,” I said again, more to myself than to him.

Daniel reached across the table and set his hand over mine. Not like a stranger. Like someone who had been grieving her longer than I knew.

“She wanted us to find each other,” he said. “I think she knew you’d do it. I think she counted on it.”

Outside his window, a garden, bare in November, some kind of lattice frame against the fence. I thought: she knew him. She loved him and kept him, just differently. A whole piece of her life I’d never been given, and she’d taken it with her.

Except she left me a door.

And I knocked.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Author’s Note

Some secrets aren’t kept out of shame. They’re kept out of a complicated love that doesn’t know how to explain itself; not yet, not now, maybe never.

This story started with a single deathbed confession and the question underneath it: what if the person you were sent to find was never actually lost? Claire doesn’t get the tidy grief she came for. She gets something stranger and harder and, maybe, more.

Upcoming…

• A poem about what grows beneath:

  ROOT SYSTEMS, 25 July 2026

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Rock-a-bye Baby

In the treetop, cradle sways,
As wind's whispers fill the leys.

Cradle rocks, fragile and light,
Bough breaks, a fateful plight.

Down they tumble, both entwined,
A tragic end, destiny unkind.

Silent lullaby, mournful refrain,
Life's fragile thread, severed again.

WINTER CAME INTO the house sideways, threading under doorframes, finding the seam in every wall it touched.

Amy sat by the window in Emma’s room. Frost crawled the glass, smearing the street into smudges of grey and white. The shawl on her shoulders did nothing against the chill seeping up through the floorboards.

Across the street, someone had chalked a fresh red circle on the neighbor’s door. Measles, then. The children over there had stopped shrieking and chasing each other days ago. Now there was only the wind.

Emma lay curled in the old cradle, blanket tucked to her chin. Amy knelt, one palm against the heat of her daughter’s forehead, the other locked white-knuckled around the cradle’s rail. Emma’s breath came in thin, uneven scraps, her chest rising like something fighting its way uphill.

The wind climbed from a whine into a full-throated howl, hurling itself against the house, rattling glass, wrenching at the bare arms of the oak outside.

A crack split the air; wood giving way somewhere close.

A branch came down on the wall hard enough to shudder the floor.

The cradle bucked. Amy’s pulse slammed into her throat as the legs buckled and the whole thing pitched sideways. She lunged and caught Emma half a second before the wood hit the floor, splinters scattering like teeth.

Emma’s breath caught, stuttered, kept going, barely. Amy pressed her lips to her daughter’s cheek and rocked her, humming something tuneless and broken, her hands betraying her with their shaking.

Outside, the wind finally let go of the house. Inside, the humming gave out too, and what was left was a silence so total it had weight.

Then Amy made a sound that didn’t belong to a person anymore.

Little Miss Muffet

What a cruel surprise—
Little Miss Muffet's demise!
On her tuffet she sat,
Curds and whey, just like that.
A big spider appeared,
Her heart filled with fear.
Frightened, she fled,
In its web, she's now dead.

JO MUFFET SAT on a stool that complained under her, its crooked legs sinking into garden dirt softened by last night’s rain. Beside her, oatmeal cooled untouched, steam giving up into the cold morning air. She turned the gold ring on her finger; her mother’s, handed over one ordinary afternoon that had somehow become, without warning, important. The ring meant nothing on its own. It was just something to hold.

She didn’t know yet what waited past the garden fence. Only that something out there pulled at her ribs like a fishhook she couldn’t work loose. Branches stirred overhead. Her gaze kept sliding past them, out toward whatever world was waiting to be earned.

Years collapsed into each other, each one shorter than the last.

In a courtroom thick with faces—some hopeful, some past caring—Jo stood and spoke for a family about to lose their house. Her voice had gone rough from overuse. In their eyes she found something fragile that refused to die anyway. When the judge nodded, the win sat in the room a moment, sharp and short-lived, before dissolving into paperwork.

Behind closed doors, deals changed hands. Rules bent until they cracked. She watched lawyers grin too easily after losing, watched others spin a case into something unrecognizable for the right price. Every time she tried to plant her feet, some unseen hand tightened around her ankle and reminded her who actually ran the building.

Her mentor cornered her once in a hallway lit by a buzzing fluorescent tube.

“Jo.” His voice had gravel in it. “Good intentions don’t pay rent here. You want to move up, you play it their way.”

He pushed a red folder into her hands. “Real estate. Messy. Could open doors; none of them clean.”

She flipped through it, red dye bleeding faintly onto her fingers. The faces she’d fought for rose up behind her eyes, every win and loss she’d carried home. Her heart thudded out something that wasn’t quite fear and wasn’t quite its opposite.

Her hand shook when she signed.

The years kept moving, sanding nothing smooth. Now glass walls surrounded her, the city laid out below like something she’d conquered. Her hands sat folded on the desk, one thumb worrying the ring. A letter waited, its edges still sharp from the printer. Across from her, a partner leaned forward, his smile pulled tight as wire.

“I’ve had my eye on you, Josephine. Partner material.” He nudged the letter closer. “A senator, tangled up in a real estate mess. Big names. Bigger stakes.”

He waited, watching her like a man who already knew the answer.

“This is the door, Jo. Walk through it.”

Her fingers closed around the pen, knuckles bleaching pale. The tired faces surfaced again, the people she’d sworn to protect, their voices rising rough and unwanted in her memory. She held his gaze and felt the old pull take her by the wrist, the same net she’d never wanted and now couldn’t cut free of.

Her hand moved anyway.

Little Boy Blue

little boy blue's slumber deep,
      amidst the meadow secrets keep.
sheep wander, cows graze away,
      he’s in the haystack, lifeless they say.
silent dreams, eternal rest,
      little boy blue, a soul now blessed.

UNDER A SKY gone the color of skimmed milk, the fields ran on forever. Grass leaned in the wind like it was listening for something.

Luka sat back against a haystack, his jacket (blue once, now closer to grey) catching what light there was. He loved this stretch of pasture: the wide sky, the hills folding into each other, the sheep’s idiot bleating that never stopped. Far off, the river threw light like scattered coins. The air smelled of hay going dry and dirt going wet.

He breathed it in. Felt his shoulders loosen as the sky shifted color overhead, clouds dragging themselves east.

Then the field changed shape.

Boots hit the ground, not loud, but certain. Shapes peeled themselves out of the treeline, camouflage swallowing them into the grass until only their eyes stayed visible above the black masks, flat and unhurried.

They came like men who’d done this before, closing the distance step by deliberate step. Grass folded flat beneath them.

Luka’s lungs locked. He bolted for the river’s far glint, breath tearing through him in ragged pulls. Behind him: boots crashing through haystacks, voices barking at workers, one voice that seemed aimed at him alone.

He dropped behind another haystack before he’d covered half the ground, heart slamming, throat raw, the stalks biting into his arms as he pressed himself flat.

A hand closed on his collar. A voice leaned in close enough to fog his ear: Little boy blue, no one’s coming.

Luka never registered the boots driving into his back, his stomach. Never heard whatever laughter came after.

The sky above him kept right on not caring, and his breath went out of him like something finally let off a leash.

I first posted the dark nursery rhymes (poems) in June 2024. You can read others in Part 1.

Author’s Note

This week I decided to lean into despair, just for a moment.

These three stories take inspiration from familiar nursery rhymes, reshaping their simplicity into darker reflections of today’s world. Each tale draws on real struggles beneath the surface.

Amy’s quiet vigil captures the fragility of life amid an outbreak made worse by gaps in public health and social support. Per CNN Health: The US surpassed 1,100 measles cases in two months. Expect more deaths next. Jo Muffet’s path shows how ambition can slowly erode one’s values when faced with the pressure of power. Luka’s experience shines a light on the harsh realities of ICE raids, where fear and injustice fall heavily on those caught in the crossfire, where identity becomes a risk, and justice feels out of reach regardless of legal status.

By weaving these narratives, I wanted to capture how shadows can stretch from childhood memories into the challenges people face now; how innocence meets harsh truths in unexpected ways. These stories aren’t just retellings; they’re calls to notice the human lives behind headlines, to feel the weight of choices made by individuals and systems alike, and to remember that beneath every name is a story.

Upcoming…

• A poem about nurturing love:

  Heartbreaks, 14 March 2026

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Love is an action, never simply a feeling.—bell hooks

Claire and Tom

“Hot chocolate from scratch again?”

Claire dragged a stool from the island and dropped onto it, biting back a grin.

Tom balanced two mugs across the counter, steam curling off them in thin ropes. Cinnamon and pine from the wreath hung in the air between them.

“You know I don’t do instant.” He set the mugs down lopsided, one a little higher than the other, and didn’t bother fixing it.

She cupped hers in both palms, the chipped rim cool against one finger. Outside, snow had buried the garden flat, and birds worked the hedge in short bursts, stabbing at berries gone hard with frost.

“Why the fuss every year?”

He lifted his mug an inch off the counter, like a toast nobody asked for.

“Because it’s worth it.”

Neither of them said anything else. The chocolate steamed between them, and the window framed the yard going blue at the edges.

Harold and Jaime

“Okay, my boy. Ready for the next chapter?”

Harold dragged the chair close, careful of the lines taped to the back of Jamie’s hand. Antiseptic cut faint and sharp under the blanket smell. The room’s air sat cold against skin that the blanket couldn’t quite reach.

Jamie’s eyes were puffy, fixed on the paperback in Harold’s hands. The spine had gone soft and gray from rereading.

He nodded and pulled the blanket to his chin.

Harold’s thumb traced the cover once before he opened it. His voice caught twice reading the part where Frodo offers to carry the ring alone, and he had to clear his throat to get past it. Jamie’s fist closed tighter around the blanket’s edge.

Somewhere past the curtain, shoes scuffed the floor, a cart wheel squeaked, voices rose and dropped. All of it thinned out until only Harold’s voice and the machines’ hum were left, running alongside each other like two instruments that had learned, somehow, to keep time.

Jamie’s hand found Harold’s. Squeezed once. Squeezed again.

Jack and Mary

The tin of tea, wedged behind the cereal boxes, set Jack laughing.

“Still hiding your blend back here.”

Mary lifted the kettle, not even glancing over. “You always take it without asking.”

They carried their cups out to the porch, where leaves spun loose off the maple and afternoon light cut long stripes across the boards.

A gust caught the hem of Mary’s cardigan. She set her cup on the railing and reached for Jack’s scarf, yanking the wool snug under his chin.

He caught her wrist before she let go, holding it there, his palm warm against the cold coming off her skin.

Ellen and Grace

“Remember the first time I made your toast like this?” Grace didn’t look up from the pan.

She swirled butter across the bread in slow circles until it shone.

The smell climbed the kitchen walls. Grace slid a mug across the table.

Ellen wrapped both hands around it, blew once across the surface, then took the toast off the plate with her fingers, not bothering with a knife.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you fixing my mornings, luv.”

Margaret and Richard

“Look at us.” Margaret held the photo up, its corners curling like old leaves.

In it, they stood hip to hip, sunburned, hair yanked sideways by wind off the ridge.

Richard leaned in and ran a finger along the curve of her smile in the picture, then along the smudge of dirt frozen there on her cheek, decades old and never going to wash off now.

“Girl, you still got that streak.”

She glanced sideways at him. “That’s my motto. Never give up.”

He laughed, the sound dropping into his chest. “Yeah. That last ridge nearly had you. Your legs were begging you to quit.”

She let the photo settle on her lap, one fingernail catching on its torn edge.

George and Sam

The sun slid behind the tree line, throwing the porch into long shadow.

George turned the old thermos over in his hands, scratches catching what light was left.

“Can’t believe you still bring up the tent poles.”

Sam’s grin split wide. “Bet I do. You were too busy chopping wood to notice you’d jammed the stakes in backward.”

George’s laugh came out rough, almost a bark, and his shoulders dropped an inch when Sam’s hand settled on his wrist, fingers rough and sure from years of work.

“That’s the one. Whole thing blew clean over before we got the gear inside. I’d have chased it to the lake if my knees let me.”

Sam shook his head, still grinning, and didn’t let go of his wrist.

Author’s Note

This collection is a quiet invitation to notice the subtle ways love shows up in our lives. It’s in the soft rhythms we build with another person, the shared routines that become anchors, and the comfortable silences that feel like home.

The quote by bell hooks, the Black American feminist, cultural critic, teacher, and writer, was my inspiration. I wanted these stories to remind us that love lives in those actions—in the unspoken care, the gentle touch, and the everyday moments where two lives meet and hold steady.

Thank you for stepping into these spaces with me.

Upcoming…

• A poem of love and loss:

  A Haunting, 14 February 2026

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THE BENCH HAD gone cold enough to numb her through her coat, and still she sat there, watching her own breath unravel into the dark. Her chest pulled tight, some fist closing under her ribs without asking permission.

Winter solstice. Longest night of the year, and every year it dragged the same ghosts behind it: her mother’s laugh from another decade, a hand lifted once at an airport gate, the leash still hanging by the door because she hadn’t found a reason to take it down yet. The gaps between those memories had widened again, the way they always did, a little more room for the cold to get in.

Her phone lit up on the wood beside her. Sarah.

There’s a thing tonight at Branford Hall. For the solstice. Come.

She read it twice. Crowds usually scraped against her like wrong-grit sandpaper. But something about the bluntness of come, no exclamation point dressing it up, made her stand.

Branford Hall hit her with heat the second she opened the door, heat and the low scrape of folding chairs and too many voices doing too many things at once. Sarah found her before she could retreat into the doorframe, pressed a paper cup of cocoa into her hands, stood close enough that her shoulder counted as ballast.

People had clustered into knots around the room, each one trading a piece of themselves like currency.

A man with hands like cracked leather described the night his roof folded under a storm, how three neighbors he’d barely spoken to before showed up at dawn with a truck full of tarps, and how one of them just said take the back bedroom, no rush on leaving until the insurance caught up.

A woman near the window kept tugging her beanie lower over the patchy new growth coming in, talking about the year of chemo like it was a long commute she’d finally gotten off, and her laugh came out anyway, ragged and real, like it had survived something.

A teenager with blue paint ground into his cuticles passed around a sketchbook full of rivers cutting through cities that didn’t exist yet, parks growing up out of concrete that hadn’t cracked for them.

She felt each story land somewhere she’d stopped checking on.

Then a kid’s voice cut through, high and unbothered by the adult noise around him.

“Why’s today special?”

His father crouched a little. “Winter solstice. Longest night, shortest day.”

The boy considered this with the seriousness only six-year-olds can manage. “So the sun’s sleeping in?”

“Something like that.”

“It’s the sun’s birthday,” he announced, already certain, already moving on to the next thought before his father could answer. His mother laughed into her cup.

“Can we light candles so the sun doesn’t get lonely in the dark?”

“That’s a good idea,” his mother said.

“Will there be more stars since the night’s so long?”

“If the clouds clear. Don’t bet on it tonight.”

He went quiet for a second, scuffing one shoe against the floor, and when he spoke again his voice had dropped its bounce. “I think the cold’s just the earth getting ready. For spring.”

“That’s exactly it,” his mother said. “The earth rests so it can come back stronger.”

“I like the solstice. It’s a promise the light’s coming back.”

Something in her chest that had been clenched since the bench let go, not all at once, just enough to notice.

She crouched to his height. “I like that promise too.”

He blinked up at her, surprised that a grown-up had been listening, then grinned like she’d passed some test he hadn’t known he was giving.

Snow had started by the time she left, fat unhurried flakes settling on her shoulders. The cold still bit, but she didn’t bother pulling her coat tighter. She let her pace drop to nothing, watched the snow collect along a fence rail, on a mailbox, on the bare knuckles of a tree she passed every day without seeing.

At her own door she stopped, palm flat against the wood, and let the night come in without flinching from it.

Her phone buzzed. Glad you came. Same time next year?

She went to type back, and her thumb found the wrong thread first; the reminder app, still set from August, still asking WALK MILO 6PM every evening at six like clockwork. Her thumb hovered over the delete button. Four months she’d meant to do this and hadn’t.

She deleted it now, watched it vanish without ceremony, and felt the small unfair sting of how easy it turned out to be. Then she opened Sarah’s message.

Yes. Next year.

She pocketed the phone, stepped inside, and didn’t bother turning on the light right away. The dark could wait a minute. It wasn’t asking anything of her tonight.

The longest night unfolds without a sound,  
And stillness settles deep across the land.  

We watch as shadows stretch and fold around,  
While distant light prepares to take its stand.  

A pause within the turning of the earth,  
A quiet breath before the coming dawn.  

The Sun, though hidden now, begins rebirth,  
Its journey back to life not far withdrawn.  

We gather close to honor this return,  
To mark the moment when the dark grows thin.  

From cold and silence, warmth and light will burn,  
A new year’s promise rising from within.

Author’s Note

When I wrote this story, I wanted to explore how the darkest times can feel overwhelming, but also how small moments and connections can shift that feeling. The woman’s loneliness at the beginning is something many of us have felt; carrying a weight that makes even familiar places seem colder.

I chose the winter solstice because it naturally represents a turning point, the longest night before light begins to return. It felt like the perfect backdrop for a quiet change inside someone. It is a time to pause and reflect on cycles beyond ourselves. In many cultures, this day holds deep meaning, a chance to honor the Sun’s journey through darkness toward light.

At Midwinter, we recognize how even in deepest night, life holds a promise. The Sun, though hidden, begins a new cycle, ready to rise again. This rebirth brings hope and a fresh start; a reminder that growth and renewal follow times of rest and quiet.

Rituals often center around welcoming this return, lighting fires or candles to celebrate emerging light. These acts connect us to rhythms of nature and to one another, fostering a sense of renewal and belonging.

Thank you for taking the time to read the story and the subsequent poem. I hope they offer a bit of comfort or light when you need it most.

Upcoming…

• December’s writing prompt:

  One Hundred-Word Wonders, 17 December 2025

  For those who want a head start, this month’s prompt: BRIGHT LIGHT. Write in exactly 100 words, a story, poem, or creative non-fiction in any genre, using the prompt. Pieces should be exactly 100 words, no more or less. The 100-word count does not include the title. Hold your piece until the 17th!

Thanks very much for reading, subscribing, and sharing the stories, poetry, and essays in this space. If you like a story, poem, or essay, please click on the heart. Also if you are so moved, please leave a comment.

Subscribe now

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FOG ATE THE road in front of Allie’s headlights, swallowing ten feet, then five, then nothing at all. She’d taken this cut-through to dodge the Beltway crawl, the way she always did after a day that left her chewed up. Three meetings. A pitch the client had picked apart line by line, polite the whole time, which was somehow worse. She kept hearing the client’s voice loop in her skull: I just don’t think it lands.

The road narrowed where the trees crowded in. Allie hummed something tuneless to fill the quiet, fingers tapping the wheel, and that’s when the shape broke from the treeline.

White. Low to the ground. There, then under her bumper.

The thud went through the whole car.

“No…no, no, no…”

She stamped the brake. The car fishtailed a foot and stopped crooked across the centerline. Her hands shook on the wheel for three full seconds before she could make them let go.

The deer lay in the gravel shoulder, one back leg bicycling slowly at nothing. Its coat threw back the hazards in a strange, bone-pale shimmer, almost wrong, like something lit from under the skin rather than over it.

Allie knelt beside it before she’d decided to. Up close the animal’s breathing came in fast little hitches, and its eye, enormous, found her face and held there.

“I didn’t see you. God, I didn’t see you…”

You weren’t the one looking the wrong way.

The voice arrived behind her chest, not in her ears. Allie’s knees buckled and she sat down hard in the gravel.

“What…”

I was looking at the road too late. Not you.

She stared at the deer’s mouth. It hadn’t moved.

“Am I losing it. Did today finally break something in my head.”

You’re not broken. You’re listening. Most people stop being able to, somewhere around seven.

The leg had stopped its slow bicycle. Allie put her palm flat against the animal’s ribs and felt the space between breaths get longer.

“Please don’t die. Please, I’ll call someone, there’s a vet in…”

There isn’t time for that, and we both know it.

“Then what am I supposed to do? Just sit here?”

Sit here. That’s the whole of it, actually.

She did. The fog pressed close around the two of them like it was trying to get a better look. Somewhere past the treeline a screech owl complained twice and quit.

I want to leave you something, since I took the evening from you.

“You don’t owe me anything. I hit you.”

That’s not how owing works, but I won’t argue it with a half-broken spine. The thought carried something that might have been a laugh, dry as leaves. Here. You’ll start hearing what people don’t say. The space under the words. Don’t waste it being impressed with yourself.

“I don’t even know what that means.”

You will by Thursday.

The eye dulled by degrees, like a held breath letting itself out. Allie kept her hand on the ribs until there was truly nothing left to feel, and then a while after that.

When she stood, the fog had thinned to a haze she could see clean through, and the road ahead lay open all the way to the bend. She didn’t examine that too closely. She got back in the car, and her hands had stopped shaking, and she drove the rest of the way home with the radio off.

Thursday, it turned out, meant Thursday.

She cut through Patterson Park on her walk home from the train, same as always, and the bench by the dogwood had its usual occupant: a guy maybe thirty, army coat zipped to the chin even though it wasn’t cold enough for that, knee going up and down like a sewing machine.

She almost walked past. She always walked past.

Instead she heard it; not words, nothing so clean as words, more like the pressure change before rain. Fridge’s been empty since Tuesday. I keep doing the math on the security deposit and it keeps not working.

Allie stopped walking.

“Rough one?” she said, because that was a normal thing a normal person said to a stranger on a bench, and she needed normal right then.

The guy looked up like he’d forgotten benches could be addressed. “Sorry?”

“You looked like you were doing math you didn’t like.”

Something in his face folded, just at the edges. “Marcus,” he said, and stuck a hand out like he was at a job interview, then seemed embarrassed by the formality of it and pulled it back halfway. “Yeah. Rough one’s generous.”

He told her about the warehouse closing in March. About his mother’s hospital bills eating the cushion he’d spent four years building, and then his mother going anyway, in May, and the bills not stopping just because she had. He told her in pieces, looking at the dogwood more than at her, the way people do when the truth is heavier than the eye contact required to deliver it.

Allie didn’t say I understand or that sounds so hard, the things she might have said a week ago. She found she didn’t need to. She just kept her mouth shut and let the silence between his sentences stay open instead of rushing in to plug it, and somewhere in there his knee stopped going.

“There’s a place on Eastern Avenue,” she said eventually. “Good Shepherd. They do a hot meal Thursdays, and the woman who runs intake, Denise, she’s not going to make you fill out fourteen forms first. I can walk you, if you want the company. Or not, if you’d rather just have the address.”

“Why would you…” He stopped. Started over. “You don’t know me.”

“No,” she agreed. “But I heard you anyway.”

He laughed, short and surprised at himself for it, and stood up. The knee didn’t start again.

They didn’t fix anything that mattered in any permanent sense, walking those eight blocks. He still owed four months on a deposit nobody was giving back. His mother was still gone, and would stay that way no matter how many hot meals he ate on Thursdays.

But Allie had spent thirty-four years believing that being useful meant having the right answer ready before anyone finished asking the question. The deer had not given her answers. It had taken the answers away and left her with nothing but the listening, and somehow that turned out to be the part that worked.

She thought about the white shape in the gravel for a long time after, the strange underlit shimmer of it, and never once tried to explain how a hit-and-run on Route 32 ended in a man eating dinner he could afford for the first time in months. Some things didn’t survive being explained. She’d learned that on a Thursday, on a bench, from a man who needed someone to do the math with him instead of at him.

She kept walking through the park on her way home, after. Most evenings nobody on the benches needed anything from her at all.

That was fine too. The gift, it turned out, wasn’t in being needed.

It was in staying able to hear it when she was.

Author’s Note

In Scottish stories, the white deer is a rare and mystical creature that often symbolizes purity and mystery, a gentle guide from another world. People think it guides those who are open to discovering new paths or a deeper understanding of life. In my fable, the white deer acts as a silent messenger, inviting Allie to look beyond what’s immediately visible and to truly feel the pain and hope that others carry inside.

Empathy is a value we all carry within us, but sometimes it needs a little nurturing. Life and our experiences teach us how to listen more carefully and care more deeply for those around us. Sometimes though, we all need gentle reminders to slow down and really SEE the people in our lives.

As we enter a season where many are facing harrowing challenges (losing jobs, struggling to find food) opening our hearts becomes more important than ever. In each small act of kindness and in each moment we choose to reach out, we can help each other bear these burdens. Even the simplest gestures can make a world of difference, helping to heal wounds and shed light in places shadowed by hardship.

Upcoming…

• A poem about the improbability of existence:

  A Miraculous and Precious Gift, 15 November 2025

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Refer a friend

THE BANANAS HAD gone past yellow into something mottled and dark. Grace left them where they were.

Three weeks since the funeral. She kept starting sentences in her head, Mom would have said, and then not finishing them. The kitchen carried a quality of wrongness she couldn’t fix by rearranging anything.

Katy’s bed still sat in the corner. The fleece held the impression of her, that bowl-shaped indent where a sixty-pound dog had circled and settled and circled again. Grace’s hand had rested on her ribs long after the breathing stopped, right there in that same corner.

Two griefs at once. They didn’t stack neatly. They fought each other for room.

The easel stood against the wall, brushes stiff with old paint, palette cracked and dry. She hadn’t painted in…she didn’t remember. Before her mother got sick, probably. Before everything got reorganized around sick and then sicker and then gone.

She picked up a brush. The bristles resisted. She worked them in water until they gave.

Because things matter to us, we suffer.

She’d read that somewhere recently, and the sentence had lodged in her chest like a splinter she couldn’t find to pull out. She said it aloud, just to hear it. “Because things matter to us, we suffer.” The kitchen didn’t answer.

She squeezed cornflower blue onto the palette; summer-sky, the blue of her mother’s old cotton dress. Loaded the brush heavy.

The first stroke went wrong. She didn’t fix it. She put another stroke over it, and then another, and her shoulder unlocked. Her arm moved the way it used to, that loose-shouldered swing, the brush going where it wanted and her following. She stopped thinking in words. The blue turned green, turned gold, turned the particular brown of a Labrador’s eye in afternoon sun.

She painted Katy’s nose in the air, that ridiculous upturned snout, ever-optimistic. She painted flowers the way her mother loved them, going at them thick and unruly. She painted badly and kept going.

When her arm ached enough to stop, she stepped back.

Blooms pushed toward the top of the canvas, aggressive and alive. And in the middle of them, Katy mid-sniff, face idiotic with joy.

Grace’s eyes burned. She didn’t look away.

Her mother and her dog were still gone. Nothing fixed that. But here on the canvas they occupied space. They took up room. And Grace—hands paint-stained, feet cold on the kitchen tile—had put them there. Not to keep them. Just to say: you were real, you mattered, this hurt.

The bananas sat on the counter. She’d make bread with them tomorrow.

Author's Note

My flash fiction was inspired by recent personal events and by a friend asking me to join her in an art class.

I have a confession: I've been leaning a lot on my older poems and prose that I wrote months and even years ago. It's been nice to revisit those feelings and the words I created back then. Honestly, I found it a bit easier to share those pieces rather than starting something fresh. I struggled. The past month was a breakthrough of sorts. I actually wrote some new pieces! So you'll get to see a mix of both old and new work from me moving forward, which I'm really excited about.

Also, I’ve decided to be a little kinder to myself this October. Instead of focusing on writing poetry or prose, I’m planning to introduce some amazing guest authors. Stay tuned for more on that. I can’t wait to share it with you!

Upcoming…

• A poem about hope:

  Tomorrow and Tomorrow, 27 September 2025

Thanks very much for reading, subscribing, and sharing the stories, poetry, and essays in this space. If you like a story, poem, or essay, please click on the heart. Also if you are so moved, please leave a comment.

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Refer a friend

LILA DREAMED IN salt.

Grand Cayman held her the way a held breath holds a body, and Mia cut through the water beside her, laughing at nothing, the way she’d laughed since they were girls splitting a single bag of chips on the back step in Toronto. Below them, stingrays crossed the sandbar in slow processions, wingtips stirring up little ghosts of silt, the kind of sandbar tourists flew in from three continents just to stand on.

“Look at them,” Mia said. “They’re not even scared of us.”

One peeled off from the rest and came straight for Lila’s outstretched hand. Its skin met her palm like wet suede, cool and alive, and something in her chest loosened that she hadn’t known was clenched. The ray’s eye, black and lidless, held hers a beat too long for an animal that was supposed to know nothing.

Then a man’s voice cracked the morning open. He stumbled in from the shallows half-dressed, a bottle swinging from two fingers, hollering at a joke only he could hear. The rays scattered like a held thought. Lila spun to look for Mia and a barb caught her instead, a thread of pain stitching straight up through her ribs.

She woke up gasping in her own bed.

Dawn was doing its slow gold thing over the water outside the window, and Lila’s heart was going like she’d run somewhere. Her chest still ached, low and specific, right where the barb had gone in. She pressed two fingers to the spot. Nothing there. Skin, ribs, the ordinary architecture of herself.

“You good?” Mia’s voice came muffled through the wall.

“Bad dream.” Lila’s own voice sounded like it was arriving from another room.

She got up anyway, because the smell of coffee was doing what alarm clocks couldn’t, and stopped halfway across the floor when her forearm brushed the doorframe. The skin there had gone strange. Not numb, not quite tingling; something closer to waiting, the way a foot feels right before it falls fully asleep.

In the bathroom mirror her face looked like her face. She told herself that twice.

Lila had spent three years at Vic learning to distrust exactly this kind of thought. Bio-research trained a person out of omens. A body did what cells told it to do, and cells answered to chemistry, not to dreams about rays with old eyes. She’d built her whole adult self on that premise—evidence first, feeling later, if at all—and she clung to it now the way she’d clung to handrails as a kid, knuckles white, refusing to admit the boat was rocking.

Mia, two years into her new life as assistant manager at a bank that overlooked a different shade of blue than anything Toronto had ever offered her, had planned this whole visit around showing her sister why she’d stayed. Snorkeling. Rum cake from the woman down the road. A hammock that didn’t care what either of them had majored in.

“Beach again?” Mia asked over breakfast, already in her suit. “Or are we finally doing the thing where you read a book on the porch like a normal vacationing person?”

“Beach,” Lila said, and surprised herself with how much she meant it.

The pull had nothing to do with sunscreen or scenery. It sat under her ribs like a tide table she hadn’t consulted but somehow already knew. By the time they reached the sand, her legs had gone unreliable beneath her, not weak exactly, just wrong, the joints answering to some other set of instructions.

“You’re walking like you borrowed somebody else’s knees,” Mia said, laughing, and waded in first.

Lila followed her into water the color of a held match flame, clear enough to see her own shadow stretched along the sand. Three steps in, her knees buckled. She went down soft, the water taking her weight the way it had in the dream, and she had one full second of clarity to think: this is not going to stop.

“Mia…” she said, and the rest of the sentence left her in a shape that wasn’t words.

Her spine found a new curve. Her legs forgot they had ever been two separate things and became one continuous, undulant muscle. The world above the surface smeared into a wash of gold and white, and the world below sharpened with a violence she hadn’t expected—every grain of sand suddenly distinct, every fish a separate fact.

She did not drown. That was the strange mercy of it. Her new body already knew how to read the water the way her old one had read a page.

Above her, oblivious for one more breath, Mia turned to point out a school of yellowtail and found the sea where her sister should have been.

“Lila?”

No answer came because no throat existed anymore to make one.

What followed for Mia belonged entirely to the world of people: phone calls that started calm and ended ragged, a constable who wrote things down in a notebook with a curling spine, flyers gone soft and curled at the corners after one night of rain. She walked the beach at both ends of the day, calling a name the water never gave back. Strangers grew tired of her grief before she did. That was its own particular cruelty, the way a missing sister becomes, after the second week, an inconvenience to other people’s vacations.

She stopped going into the bank. Her manager covered for her the first week, then the second, and by the third he stopped covering and started asking when she’d be back at her desk. Mia took the unpaid leave anyway, because clocking back in would have meant agreeing that this was over.

Below the surface, in a world Mia couldn’t follow her into, Lila learned her own body over again. She learned that hunger arrived as a current, that fear flattened her whole shape against the sand, that joy (and there was joy, sharp and undeniable, a fact she resented and welcomed in the same breath) moved through her like a second pulse. Coral stood up around her in shapes too intricate for any lab she’d ever worked in, color blooming in places that made no evolutionary sense she could explain, and for the first time since freshman year, she stopped trying to explain it.

She found the others. Not friends, exactly, not in the way she’d understood the word, but a company of bodies that moved the way she moved now, that knew the same tides by feel rather than tide table. They did not speak. They didn’t need to. A rib-deep awareness passed between them instead, something nearer to weather than to conversation.

Once, weeks in, she let herself drift close to the shallows at dusk, near enough to see the shape of Mia’s calves at the water’s edge, the woman still pacing that stretch of sand like she could wear a path back to her sister through sheer repetition.

Lila came right up against her ankle. Let her wing brush there, soft and deliberate, the way the dream-ray had once brushed her own palm.

Mia went still.

“Lila?” she said, to the water, to no one, to everyone.

The ray held the contact for three full seconds. Long enough to mean something. Then the tide pulled her back out, and Mia stood alone in water gone suddenly ordinary again, her hand pressed flat to her own chest like she could keep whatever had just touched her from leaving completely.

She never told anyone what she felt in that moment. There was no version of it that didn’t sound like grief talking to itself. She came back to that same stretch of beach every evening after, for years, waded in up to her knees at dusk, and waited.

Some nights, something came close enough to touch.

She always touched it back.

Author's Note

This is a story I began writing several decades ago during a period of personal upheaval. It’s not surprising that I dreamed of transforming into a creature without the burdens that threatened to overwhelm me. My therapist (at the time) and I had great sessions with that analysis!

Anyway, no cockroaches or any other kafkaesque transformations here!

I do have one very short creative nonfiction piece involving a cockroach that stars my father and an arch nemesis.

One more thing, swimming with stingrays is an exciting and safe adventure at Stingray City in the North Sound of Grand Cayman. This beautiful sandbar is where southern stingrays hang out and are used to friendly encounters with people. Guided tours allow you to swim, feed, and interact with these fantastic creatures in their natural habitat.

Upcoming…

• A prose poem read aloud:

  Last Run, 16 August 2025

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Refer a friend

THE CORN STOOD taller than Amy remembered, though nothing about her had grown to meet it. Ten years old in 1962 and ten years old now, however many winters had since iced over the pond behind the Hollis place. She counted seasons sometimes, the way other children counted coins, except her hoard never spent and never multiplied. It just sat there, cold and exact.

She’d come back to the field because the field was the last place her mother’s voice had sounded like itself.

Stalks raked her arms as she cut through the rows, leaving thin lines that welled red, then sealed shut before she’d gone ten more steps. That part she’d gotten used to. What she hadn’t gotten used to was the quiet that swallowed every name she called. Mom. The word went out flat into the dusk and came back to her unanswered, again, the way it had every night for longer than she let herself add up.

A girl had done this to her, here, the summer they’d flattened their backs into the dirt and swept their arms wide to leave corn angels, wings dragged through the stalks. The girl had no name Amy could hold onto anymore, just teeth and a laugh gone wrong halfway through, and after, a hunger that moved into Amy’s chest like a tenant who never paid rent and never left.

She broke from the corn into the tree line. The woods past the Hollis field had always felt rehearsed to her, every root in its place, every branch arranged like a stage set for whatever happened next. Tonight a fire had been lit somewhere off to the left, smoke threading up gray between black branches, and beneath that smell sat another one, older, warmer. Amy’s mouth filled before her mind caught up to why.

The clearing opened around an oak so wide three grown men couldn’t ring it with their arms. A woman stood with her back against the bark, hair loose around her shoulders, a cardigan buttoned wrong by one hole. Amy’s knees went liquid.

“Mom.”

The woman turned. Whatever name she’d been about to call out for died somewhere behind her teeth. Her hand rose to her collarbone the way hands do when a body needs proof it’s still attached to itself.

“Amy?” Sarah’s voice cracked down the middle of the word. “Baby, is that…how are you even…”

She crossed the clearing in four steps and folded her daughter into her arms, and Amy let herself be folded, let her face press into wool that smelled like the inside of a cedar chest and like home and like every Tuesday she used to fall asleep against this same shoulder during car rides nobody remembered the destination of.

Underneath the cardigan, a pulse beat against Amy’s cheek. Steady. Close.

The hunger that had been a tenant became a tenant with a key.

“I missed you,” Amy said into the wool, and meant it more than she’d meant anything in ten years stacked end to end like empty rooms.

“I never stopped looking,” Sarah said. “I told them you’d wandered off. I told them a hundred things. None of them were ever this.”

Amy’s fingers curled into the back of the cardigan. Her jaw ached in a way that had nothing to do with crying.

“Sweetheart.” Sarah pulled back an inch, just enough to study her daughter’s face in the failing light, and something in her own face folded inward, confusion sliding toward a fear she hadn’t named yet. “You’re cold. You’re so cold.”

“I can’t be by myself anymore.” The words came out of Amy thin and stripped, the way truth sounds when there’s no performance left in it. “I tried. I tried for so long.”

“You don’t have to be alone. Come home. We’ll fix whatever’s…we’ll figure it out together, we always…”

Amy struck before the sentence finished, before her own mind had voted on it, the way a hand snaps back from a stove a full second before the brain registers heat. Her mouth found the curve of her mother’s throat and the taste that flooded in was warmth itself, was every lullaby ever hummed off-key, was a decade of cold rooms going suddenly, finally, unbearably bright.

Sarah’s hands gripped Amy’s shoulders. Not pushing away. Holding on, the way you hold on to a railing when the floor tilts.

“Amy.” Barely air now, barely sound. “Amy, no…”

The pulse against Amy’s lips slowed, then stuttered, then went the way a clock goes when no one winds it. Amy didn’t let go until there was nothing left worth holding onto, and even then her arms stayed locked around the body that had gone soft and unfamiliar in a way no decade of imagining could have prepared her for.

She lowered her mother to the moss at the base of the oak. Tucked the cardigan straight. Smoothed one strand of hair from Sarah’s forehead, the gesture backward now, the daughter performing what the mother used to do for her on fever nights.

The fire she’d smelled earlier had burned down to nothing. No more smoke threading the dark.

Amy knelt there until her knees went numb against the cold ground, running the math she’d refused to run for ten years: that the loneliness had never been the corn, or the woods, or the years stacked up like unread mail. The loneliness had been her. It would keep being her, in every clearing, with every person she let herself love enough to need.

She rose. Wiped her mouth with the back of one sleeve, an old habit from when sleeves were for milk and not this. Somewhere beyond the tree line, real dawn or what passed for it would be working its way up over the Hollis farm, and somewhere past that, other people existed who had learned to carry this exact hunger without setting down everything they touched.

She would have to find them. There wasn’t a version of this left where she didn’t.

Amy looked once more at the shape under the oak, the shape that used to answer when she called, and walked out of the clearing the way a person walks out of a room where something has just finished happening. Not fast. Not slow. Just forward, because forward was the only direction that hadn’t already burned.

Author's Note

So, I have a lot to unpack here, but I’ll only touch on a few things.

I wrote a few posts ago about being unable to write horror. That still stands, as I don’t firmly put this story in that genre.

Two weeks ago, this story popped into my mind without a reference point (or so I thought). It clamored in my head, demanding I write the words.

I now believe the recent passing of my mother-in-law and my mother’s loss eleven years ago inspired me to tell this story of a young vampiress searching for her mother. At night, when the settling house was the only sound, memories of them brought sadness, yes, but also comfort, revealing the layers of love and loss I felt. Writing this story became my way of connecting with the mothers I wish were still in my life.

Grief isn't linear; it ebbs and flows, intertwining sorrow, anger, and guilt. Initially, their absence consumed me, but I eventually recognized that my grief reflects the love we shared. I confronted the void through rituals—planting flowers they loved, surrounding myself with memories, and conversing with them in my thoughts. Writing became my release and tribute, allowing their essence to thrive.

As I created the young vampiress’s journey, I saw my longing mirrored in her search—an exploration of love that persists beyond death. This story embraces the grieving process as a step toward healing, reminding me that grief signifies strength and deep love.

In seeking my mothers, I recognize their memory shapes my life and art. The young vampiress’s quest illustrates that every step taken in pursuit of understanding is evidence of enduring love, lighting the way through the darkest nights.

Upcoming…

• A poem about self-love and acceptance:

  Otherness, 14 June 2025

Thanks very much for reading, subscribing, and sharing the stories, poetry, and essays in this space. If you like a story, poem, or essay, please click on the heart. Also if you are so moved, please leave a comment.

Subscribe now

Refer a friend

THE RAIN HAD been going three days. Maplewood smelled like wet dog and disappointment, the particular damp that gets into walls and stays.

Harold Miller stood behind the counter at Curiosities & Crafts, waiting for customers who wouldn’t come. Twenty years, and he still collected that particular shame-heat when the bell above the door went unrung. He’d built the place himself—sourced the hand-painted mugs from a woman in Vermont, the carved walking sticks from a man in Asheville—and Maplewood mostly treated it as a curiosity in itself. Something between a pity and a joke.

He was rearranging old books when his hand knocked something behind the two ceramic gnomes. The gnomes had been there so long he’d stopped registering them. They tilted forward as he worked the thing free: a tome, black leather cracked like old skin, gold lettering on the cover gone brown at the edges. SECRETS OF THE ARCANE.

“Who on earth put this here?” He turned it over. Nothing on the back. He opened it.

The pages smelled like something underground. Diagrams crowded the margins—circles inside circles, creatures with too many limbs, symbols that kept almost resolving into letters. He found a long column of text in a language he couldn’t place, and without understanding why, he read aloud.

The words fit his mouth like they’d been waiting there.

The shop lurched. Not physically; nothing fell. But every object on the shelves seemed to sharpen, become more insistently itself. The mugs intensely mug-shaped. The light intensely light. Harold’s chest rang like a struck bell.

He set the book down. His hands shook. Not from fear, exactly. From animal recognition of something enormous.

The door opened. Liz Jenkins came in shedding rain from her coat, grey curls plastered to her forehead. She was the town librarian and she’d always been kind to Harold in the particular way people are kind to someone they feel slightly sorry for.

“Terrible out there,” she said. “Find anything good?”

He held up the tome. She crossed the room and squinted at the cover.

“Huh.” She took it from him and turned it over. “Where’d this come from?”

“Back of the shelf. Behind Gerald and Frank.” He gestured at the gnomes.

“You named them?”

“Gerald is the one with the chipped hat.”

She laughed. Harold’s chest did something complicated. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d made someone laugh without trying.

That night, above the shop, Harold sat at his kitchen table with the tome open and his coffee going cold. He’d read four more passages aloud. Each time, something below responded: a rustle, a creak, once the old radio cycling through frequencies until it found something. He’d gone down to check. The radio sat dark. Nothing out of place.

He dreamed badly.

In the dream, he stood in the shop while Maplewood streamed past the window—not walking, streaming, like a current—and every face was recognizable. Pete Weber, who called him “Harry” and once asked if the shop was a tax write-off. The Kowalski boys, who threw bottle caps at his window every October. The woman from the historical society who’d suggested he might consider “more conventional merchandise.” He opened the book. He read. Their faces changed.

He woke at four in the morning, drenched and breathing hard. The dream had felt so good.

Harold sat in the dark a long time with that knowledge.

Liz came back the next afternoon, which was unusual. She carried a paper bag from the bakery and wore an expression Harold associated with decisions already made.

“You tried something, didn’t you,” she said. Not a question.

“Read some passages.”

“And?”

He went to the shelf where a potted geranium had been dead since November. He found the marked page, read from it, low, like he was talking to himself.

The geranium straightened. Budded. By the third line it had a full red flower, open and slightly ridiculous in the January light.

Liz set down the paper bag.

“Harold.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

He looked at the flower. “I had a dream. About using it to…” He stopped. “To make people here afraid of me.”

Liz was quiet. Rain hit the window.

“Were they afraid?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And did it help?”

Harold pulled a dead stem from the pot’s soil, turned it over. “It helped while I was dreaming it.”

She nodded. She didn’t tell him to choose good over evil. She didn’t tell him power carried a price. She sat on the stool by the counter, opened the bakery bag, and pushed half a cinnamon roll toward him.

“I was terrible in high school,” she said. “Mean in the specific way girls get mean. There was a girl named Audrey. I still think about her.”

“Why are you telling me that?”

“Because wanting to scare people who made you feel small isn’t a character flaw. It’s arithmetic.” She looked at him. “What you do with it is the part that counts.”

Harold ate the cinnamon roll. Outside, a kid in a yellow slicker stopped at the window. The geranium was visible from out there. The kid pressed both palms against the glass.

He held a gathering the following Saturday. He didn’t advertise it exactly; mentioned it to a few people, let it spread the way small-town things do. By seven o’clock, a dozen neighbors crowded the shop.

He conjured small things. A candle that burned violet. Soap bubbles that held their shape forty-five seconds before going. He read a passage over Pete Weber’s dying succulent and watched it regreen in real time. Pete said “you’re joking” four times in a row without apparently noticing.

The children were the easiest audience. One girl, maybe six, held out her palm and Harold placed a glowing orb in it, warm, about the size of a plum. She looked at him like he was made of different material than ordinary men. That look landed somewhere in his chest and stayed.

By the end of the night, he understood something that surprised him in its plainness: this wasn’t about revenge. Not because revenge was wrong, maybe it wasn’t, always. But because this was better. This was a room full of people making sounds he’d never drawn from them before. This was belonging arrived at sidewise, through a dead geranium and a misfiled tome and twenty years of standing behind a counter feeling transparent.

He did not feel transparent now.

After everyone left, Liz helped him stack chairs. Neither of them talked for a while.

“Gerald and Frank,” she finally said. “You know they’re the reason you found it. If you’d ever dusted back there…”

“Never occurred to me.”

“Obviously.” She pulled on her coat. “Same time next week?”

Harold looked around the shop. The violet candle had gone out but left a smell like warm stone in the air. The geranium stood in the window, still red.

“Yeah,” he said. “Same time next week.”

Author’s Note

When I started writing this fantasy a year ago, I envisioned weaving a tale steeped in horror or speculative fiction.

Fast-forward to today, and I have a confession: I’m struggling to dive into the darker corners of my imagination. While my poetry flows freely, often feeling like it originates from a realm beyond my reach, conjuring scenes of horror and darkness feels like an arduous task.

Perhaps it’s the weight of my emotions that has me yearning for lighter themes. I’ve been wrestling with something I can’t quite name—could it be anticipatory grief? Some days, the harsh realities of the world are suffocating.

In part, I mean the current turmoil by the U.S. regime. Still, on a more personal level, I’m navigating the heartbreaking decline of my mother-in-law, a vibrant woman whose spirit is dimming under the shadow of illness.

As we watch her transform from a lively presence into a fragile figure ravaged by cancer’s cruel grasp—whittled down to painful grimaces, succumbing to the indignities that come with being bedridden—it feels like a slow-motion loss.

My husband and I mourn her transformation and the remarkable person she once was. We opted for in-home hospice care. With that, we hope to relieve her pain and ensure she is as comfortable as possible in familiar surroundings.

Yet amidst this heaviness, nature offers me a sanctuary. As I wander along the edges of the woods, I find solace in the rhythmic dance of fern fronds, the intriguing shapes of various mushrooms, and the delicate blooms of tiny plants, like the five-spot and ghost plant, that are just revealing themselves. I also tread carefully to avoid disturbing the little frogs and toads. In this setting, I feel a connection that momentarily eases my burden.

Why did I tell you this? I wanted to take a moment to share something personal with you. I’ve been a bit quiet lately when it comes to engaging with Substack subscriptions and comments, and I sincerely apologize for that. I truly appreciate your patience as I navigate through this challenging time. Your understanding means the world to me, and I’m looking forward to catching up with all of you soon!

Upcoming…

• May’s writing prompt:

  One Hundred-Word Wonders, 21 May 2025

  For those who want a head start, this month’s prompt is SEIZE THE MOMENT. Write in exactly 100 words, a story, poem, or creative non-fiction in any genre, using the prompt. Pieces should be exactly 100 words, no more or less. The 100-word count does not include the title. Hold your piece until the 21st!

Thanks very much for reading, subscribing, and sharing the stories, poetry, and essays in this space. If you like a story, poem, or essay, please click on the heart. Also if you are so moved, please leave a comment.

Subscribe now

Refer a friend

Bear and Bella is more than just a story; it’s a poignant reminder that our bonds are never truly broken, regardless of the distance that may separate us.

BEAR AND BELLA were the kind of dogs who made a room feel fuller just by walking in—Bear with his faded-brown coat and slow, deliberate way of moving, Bella with fur so dark it went blue in direct sun. They belonged to the Nelson family of San Francisco, where Emma painted in a studio off the kitchen and Liam left most mornings before the kids were up and came home after dinner, his engineering work pulling him somewhere the rest of the family couldn’t follow. Their kids, Zoey and Roman, treated the dogs as full partners in everything: tide pool trips, backyard forts, long loops around the park on Saturday mornings.

In March, boxes started appearing. Liam’s new job was in Maryland—more money, a house with an actual yard, days that would end at a reasonable hour. Emma spent a lot of time at the kitchen window that month, looking at the skyline. She’d built something real in this city: a circle of artists, a neighborhood that knew her face, murals she’d helped paint and could point to from the car. Leaving felt like prying off something that had grown into the wall.

Zoey and Roman swung between loud excitement and sudden quiet grief, sometimes in the same hour. Roman cried once when they passed the ice cream place on Fillmore, then was fine, then cried again at school drop-off. Zoey handled it by drawing pictures of the new house and taping them to her bedroom wall before she’d even seen it.

Bear and Bella didn’t understand the boxes, but they felt the current running through the house—the tension in Liam’s voice, the way Emma sometimes went still when she thought no one was watching—and they responded the only way they knew: pressing closer, following everyone from room to room, bumping against legs.

The Nelsons made the drive to Maryland an adventure. They packed the car with boxes and dog bowls and Zoey’s sketchbook and Roman’s rocks, and headed east, stopping at diners and state parks along the way. Bear and Bella rode with their heads out the windows, ears streaming back, while the land changed around them.

Somewhere in Pennsylvania, in the late afternoon, Liam pulled off at a rest stop beside a stretch of woods. Everyone needed air. The dogs tumbled out and began nosing through the tall grass at the treeline.

Then the deer stepped out of the shadows.

It held still for exactly one second—white-tailed, ears forward, watching. That was enough. Bear was gone, Bella right behind him, both of them crashing into the undergrowth before anyone could move. Liam shouted. Emma ran toward the trees. By the time they reached the treeline, the barking had faded to nothing.

The forest took them.

THE FIRST NIGHT in the woods was the worst.

Bear and Bella moved until their paws ached, then found a dry spot under the low boughs of a pine and pressed together, each one feeling the other breathe. The deer was long gone. Around them, the forest worked its ordinary sounds: branches settling, something small moving through leaves, an owl somewhere overhead in the dark.

Bear had been the one who’d lunged first. He knew that. He’d felt Bella fall in behind him and he hadn’t slowed, hadn’t thought. Now there was just this: cold earth, pine resin, no car smell, no coffee, no sunscreen rubbed into the fur of his ears by small hands.

Come morning, they moved again.

“We need their smell,” Bear said.

Bella lifted her nose into the early air. Morning carries differently than evening—drier, less loaded. Something moved across her senses, faint. “East,” she said. “I think east.”

Neither of them knew what east was, exactly. But they started walking.

SUNSET CAME AND the Nelsons stood at the treeline.

“Bear! Bella!”

The trees gave nothing back but their own voices, hollowed by distance. Roman’s hand found Zoey’s. Emma pressed her knuckles to her mouth and kept calling. Liam pushed deeper into the trees than he should have, flashlight crossing roots and fallen branches, until Emma pulled him back.

They stayed through the first night in the car, taking turns calling out from the rest stop. At dawn they found a ranger station and reported the dogs. A shelter volunteer drove out and helped them put up flyers at gas stations and along the two-lane roads near the rest stop. A farmer said he’d spotted two dogs moving along his fence line the previous evening—east, he said. Headed east.

By the second afternoon, Liam’s leave from work had run out.

He loaded the last bags while Emma and the kids made one more round of calls. Nothing. Zoey climbed into the backseat and didn’t look at either of her parents. Roman sat beside her, picking at the hem of his shirt.

“What if they come back and we’re not here?” he asked.

Neither Emma nor Liam answered right away. “We left our number at the shelter,” Emma finally said. “And the ranger station. If anyone finds them—”

“But what if no one finds them?”

Emma reached back and took his hand. Liam started the car.

They drove the rest of the way to Maryland barely speaking, stopping only for gas. Emma left the windows cracked, even as the temperature dropped. The wind came in cold and empty.

DAYS TOOK ON a shape. Walk until noon. Find water. Rest in shade. Walk again until the light went flat.

The woods thinned into farmland, then a highway shoulder, then more woods. A woman outside a farmhouse spotted them and left a bowl of water and some leftover rice on the porch steps. Bear ate too fast and got sick. Bella waited until he steadied, then they kept moving.

They crossed a creek stepping stone to stone, Bear going first, Bella picking her way behind. Rain came one afternoon, hard and sideways, and they sheltered under the overhang of a highway underpass until it passed. A truck driver who’d pulled over to check his load saw them huddled there and crouched down, offered his hand, patient. He meant well—Bear could read that much—but neither of them moved. They had somewhere to be.

The landscape changed. The air here was different: heavier, softer, as if it had been somewhere and was on its way back. The colors shifted too—more green, more moss, and underneath it all a smell Bear couldn’t name but that pulled at something in his chest.

What kept them moving was hard to explain. Not smell exactly, or not just smell. At night, Bear dreamed of the particular pitch of Roman’s voice when something excited him; the way it jumped up and tilted sideways. He woke with that sound still sitting in his ribs, and he got up.

Bella had her own reasons. She didn’t talk about them. She just got up too.

ON THE SIXTH day, they came up a hill.

At the top, they stopped.

Below them, set back from a road lined with new-leaf trees, stood a house they had never seen. A moving truck sat in the driveway, still half-full. Through the kitchen window, a light was on—the kind that means someone inside is doing something ordinary, something that will happen again tomorrow night.

The smell reached them: paint and coffee and Liam’s shampoo and something that might have been the inside of the car they’d ridden across the country. Under all of it, warm and exact, the particular scent of Zoey and Roman—small-person and pencil shavings and something sweet Bear couldn’t name but knew by heart.

They went down the hill.

They were halfway across the yard when the back door opened and Roman stepped out. He looked up. For a second he just stood there, door handle still in his fist, not making a sound. Then: “MOM.”

Not quite a shout. More like the word got away from him entirely.

“MOM. IT’S BEAR AND BELLA.”

Zoey came through the door and cleared the porch step in one jump. Emma appeared with something in her hand, dropped it somewhere behind her without looking. Liam was there too, and then all of them were on the grass together—dogs and people in a pile with no clear edges, everyone grabbing and holding on.

Bella pushed her head into Emma’s chest and stayed. Emma’s hands moved over her ears, her sides, checking.

“You’re okay,” Emma said. “You’re okay.”

Bear went still under the weight of Roman half on top of him and Zoey’s arms around his neck. Normally he couldn’t hold still. But right now he let it happen.

Later, the real bowls came out—the ones from the car—filled with water and food. Bear and Bella ate. Then they made their rounds: Zoey, Roman, Emma, Liam, pressing against each person long enough to be sure.

When the house quieted that night and the kids were in bed, Bear and Bella settled on the floor of the new living room. The smell of the place was still adjusting, still becoming itself. But inside it: Liam’s shoes by the door. Emma’s paints on the kitchen table. The sound of Zoey turning over in her sleep.

Bear tucked his chin on his paws.

That was enough.

Author’s Note

• My award-winning book of poetry and prose, The Edges, is available in digital and paperback formats at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Google Play, and Kobo.

Upcoming…

• A poem about insomnia:

  Countdown, 8 February 2025

Immigrant Dreams is Here—Be Part of the Experience!

Immigrant Dreams, a collection of 33 poems celebrating the resilience and hope of those who dare to dream beyond borders, is now available in digital, paperback, and hardcover formats.

Order Now!

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Apple | Tolino | Vivlio | Smashwords | Fable | Palace Marketplace | Everand | Tertulia | IngramSpark | Google Play

• Details and information on signed and free copies are available here.

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Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. — Rudyard Kipling

Magical Syllables

TWO WIZARDS FACED off in the heart of the enchanted forest.

“Your wordplay is weak, Kael!” boomed Cedric, his charmed staff crackling with energy.

Kael smiled. “Weak? Or perhaps imbued with magic you've never encountered?”

“It’s said that words are the most powerful drug humans use,” Cedric sneered, invoking fire.

Kael whispered to himself, “Then I’ll be the dealer.”

In that instant, the air shimmered with swirling letters. They wrapped around Cedric, binding him with enchanted syllables.

“Release me!” he shouted, panic rising in his voice.

Kael smiled. “Only if you admit it—words can hold more power than mere magic.”

Right Words

MAX LEANED AGAINST the doorframe.

“Why don’t you just tell her how you feel?”

“Words can be heavy, you know?” Jess said, biting her lip. “What if I ruin everything?”

“Or what if you don’t say anything and lose your chance?” he countered.

“Yeah, but what if…?” she hesitated, glancing down.

“Listen, words have power. They can build bridges or walls; you owe it to yourself, to be honest.”

Jess took a deep breath.

“You’re right. I just need to find the right words.”

“Then go,” Max smiled. “You’ve got this.”

With newfound courage, she set out to find her.

Love Story

“WHY DO YOU write so much?” Liz asked, watching Rob scribble.

“Because every word is a step toward understanding,” he said, glancing up with a smile. “Words can change hearts.”

“But can they change the world?” she said, her brow raised.

“Perhaps not the world,” he said, “but they can change our little corner of it.”

“Then tell me,” she said, leaning closer. “What do your words say about us?”

“They say… you are my muse,” he confessed, a blush creeping across his cheeks. “With every line, I fall deeper into your story.”

Liz smiled. “Then let’s write it together.”

Word Power

Words are our bridges, our anchors in time,  
Connecting souls that wander through this world.  
In the melody of laughter and tears,  
We find our solace, we find our rebirth.  

Language, a river that flows through our veins,  
Binding us closer, a shared symphony.  
In life’s cadence, we discover our truth,  
That our power is words, our legacy.  

Possession

THE OLD HOUSE loomed in the moonlight, its tower resembling a gnarled finger pointing accusingly at the stars.

Inside, the air was thick with decay, and the walls whispered secrets of the past.

“Don’t listen to them,” Clarice shivered, clutching her friend’s arm. “They want to ensnare you.”

“Just words, Clarice,” Jude scoffed, though his voice trembled.

The floorboards creaked beneath their weight, simulating bleats of baby sheep.

A cold breeze brushed against them, carrying faint, desperate cries.

“Stay… hear our story,” they beckoned, a siren call that tugged at their souls.

Clarice turned to run, but Jude hesitated, entranced.

Serpent’s Tongue

Lurking deep in the garden of thought,  
Temptation charms with honeyed embrace.  
Words coil like serpents, twisting through minds,  
Filling hearts with their venomous grace.  

Innocence falters, stories unfold,  
Echoes of laughter mingle with pain.  
Sparks of rebellion ignite in air,  
Tongues tangle in dangerous games played.  

Each phrase, a poison—sweet, bitter pill,  
Carried softly on breath, drifting wide.  
Mankind, entranced by speech’s power,  
Dances closer to shadows that bide.  

Author’s Note

• In our current political climate, the manipulation of language has reached alarming levels. Misinformation spreads rapidly, distorting truths and creating divisions within communities. The tools we use to express our thoughts and beliefs can be wielded as weapons, turning dialogue into discord. As we navigate a landscape filled with deception, let us remember Kipling's words and strive to use language as a means of connection and healing rather than a source of conflict.

• My award-winning book of poetry and prose, The Edges, is available in digital and paperback formats at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Google Play, and Kobo.

Upcoming…

• A poem about suppressing negative thoughts:

  Stifling Negativity, 25 January 2025

Immigrant Dreams is Here—Be Part of the Experience!

Immigrant Dreams, a collection of 33 poems celebrating the resilience and hope of those who dare to dream beyond borders, is now available in digital, paperback, and hardcover formats.

Order Now!

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Apple | Tolino | Vivlio | Smashwords | Fable | Palace Marketplace | Everand | Tertulia | IngramSpark | Google Play

• Details and information on signed and free copies are available here.

Thanks very much for reading, subscribing, and sharing the stories, poetry, and essays in this space. If you like a story, poem, or essay please click on the heart. Also if you are so moved, please leave a comment.

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Solstice Dreams

Dreams move softly through night, like threads of light woven from stars,  
Solstice brings gentle warmth, stretching days wide in soft, calm embrace,  
Under skies that turn slow, stars guide hearts toward quiet and peace.

Nature holds its breath, stillness settles deep within the air,  
Magic weaves light and shade, blending moments in gentle dance,  
In this quiet place, we find ourselves beneath glowing skies.

The Fox’s Watch

As evening settles over the forest, a fox lowers itself close to the ground, its breath forming little clouds in the cold air. Snowflakes drift down gently, catching what little light there is.

Each careful step presses against the crunchy snow, a quiet reminder of the chill beyond its shelter. Winter’s calm surrounds the fox like a soft blanket, but hunger tugs at its stomach.

Far off, the faint rustle of leaves signals a rabbit nearby. The fox’s pulse quickens.

Tonight is a night to hunt. The longest night holds a promise of returning light, but before that, the fox must answer the call of darkness.

Snowflakes and Dreams

A child stands by the window, eyes wide with wonder as snowflakes drift gently down from the sky. Each one is a tiny wonder, delicate and different, moving softly in its own way.

With a happy squeal, she runs outside, arms stretched wide, mouth open, catching flakes on her tongue. The world around her becomes a chilly playground filled with her laughter in the crisp air.

She rolls snow into a snowman, giving it a carrot nose and dark eyes made of coal—bright spots against the white snow.

Her mother watches nearby, smiling quietly, remembering that today marks the solstice, a day when dreams seem to float gently in the winter sky.

Solstice Skies

In the heart of night,  
Winter's solstice whispers soft,  
Stars in crisp, dark skies.

Snowflakes weave their spells,  
Each one a tiny secret,  
Holding dreams of light.

Children gather round,  
In the glow of crackling fire,  
Stories wrapped in warmth.

Evergreen adorned,  
Glistening with hopeful cheer,  
Nature's bright embrace.

Moonlight paints the world,  
A silvery tapestry,  
Magic fills the air.

Solstice's sweet breath,  
Promising the sun's return,  
Life cycles anew.

With joy in their hearts,  
They dance in the falling snow,  
Under starry skies.

A Heart’s Memory

In her quiet room at the nursing home, the 93-year-old woman looks toward the empty chair next to her bed. It’s been a while since anyone stopped by. Outside, the wind moves through the trees, a sharp reminder that she’s alone.

She pulls a worn quilt around her shoulders, its fabric carrying the warmth of past days filled with laughter and comfort.

The cold of the winter solstice settles deep in her bones, but the soft glow from her bedside lamp brings a small comfort. It calls to mind family gatherings, the fresh scent of pine, and the feeling of being loved.

She takes a slow breath and quietly offers a prayer, hoping someone might hear her wish for connection.

Beneath the Overpass

Underneath the overpass, a homeless teenager curls into himself, the cold cutting deep into his bones.

Winter feels harsh and unrelenting, turning everything around him into a frozen, empty place.

Above, the city buzzes with warmth and laughter, but down here, shadows stretch long and heavy. He pulls a worn blanket tighter, pretending it can protect him from the world’s hard edges.

The winter solstice feels distant; something joyful he can only watch from the outside.

In a quiet moment, he looks up at the clear night sky and spots a shooting star. His lips, pale from the cold, move softly with a wish—an urgent hope for a better way forward.

Author’s Note

• My book of poetry and prose, The Edges, is available in digital and paperback formats at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Google Play, and Kobo.

• Preorder my new book of poetry, Immigrant Dreams.

Upcoming…

• Prose and poetry about the cosmos:

  Star Gazing, 28 December 2024

Thanks very much for reading, subscribing, and sharing the stories, poetry, and essays in this space. If you like a story, poem, or essay please click on the heart. Also if you are so moved, please leave a comment.

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Today, amid expectations of historic female voter participation, here is a short CNF about a woman whose vote had an impact.

On a brisk November morning in 1872, the air buzzed with anticipation and trepidation.

It was Election Day, and for Susan B. Anthony, a relentless advocate for women’s rights, it was the moment to make a statement that echoed far beyond the ballot box.

She stood in the dimly lit polling place, her heart pounding with a fierce resolve. Today, she would cast her vote, a bold act of defiance against a system that deemed her unworthy of participation.

The weight of history bore down on her as she made her choice. This election involved more than just selecting a president. Her vote would show that women, whom society had kept silent for so long, also held a valuable voice.

The exhilaration of empowerment was short-lived. Within hours, the authorities descended upon her.

“You are under arrest for voting illegally,” they announced, their tones dripping with disdain.

Anthony met their gaze with unyielding determination.

In the ensuing trial, she stood before the court and proclaimed, “This is the greatest outrage history ever witnessed.”

Her words, laced with indignation, were a call to arms for countless women who yearned for equality.

Convicted and fined $100, Anthony’s spirit remained unbroken.

“I will not pay,” she said, the defiance in her voice igniting the hearts of many.

That election passed, but its consequences reverberated through time. Anthony’s rebellion became a cornerstone in the ongoing struggle for women’s suffrage, inspiring generations to rise and fight for their rights.

Thanks very much for reading, subscribing, and sharing the stories, poetry, and essays in this space. If you like a story, poem, or essay please click on the heart. Also if you are so moved, please leave a comment.

Ethan set out on the Appalachian Trail, searching for solace amid nature’s embrace.

Early morning sunlight pierced through the leaves, creating shadows, as every step brought a minor triumph over life’s disorder.

He had slammed out of the house, angry over his mother’s questioning.

With his backpack slung over one shoulder, he could almost hear her voice echoing in his mind, urging him to enroll in college, to pursue a path that had never felt like his own.

She had pleaded with him again, her hands gesturing wildly as if trying to grasp the future she envisioned for him.

“Why can’t you just try, Ethan? You’re doing so well at the store; imagine what you could achieve with a degree!”

Success at the supermarket meant shackles to him, but his mother saw it as potential, a stepping stone to more success in a regular job, whatever “regular” meant.

The local supermarket had become his refuge, a place where he had earned recognition and respect, yet it was never enough to fill the void of dissatisfaction growing inside him.

Employee of the month plaques lined the break room, a testament to his hard work, but they felt like hollow victories.

Frustrated, he snapped back.

“I don’t want to go to college! I don’t want to be like everyone else!”

The words hung heavy in the air, sparking an argument that had spiraled into chaos.

His mother had called after him, her voice tinged with worry.

“Where are you going?”

“Anywhere but here!”

He had shouted at her; the words escaping him before he could catch them.

Now, as he gripped the breakfast bars he had snatched from the kitchen counter, the crinkling wrappers reminded him of the comfort he sought in the chaos. He took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the world outside, fresh and alive.

He had driven his car to the start of the Apple Orchard Falls Trail. He knew it crossed the Appalachian Trail at Sunset Field Overlook.

Once on the Appalachian Trail, he planned on hiking it for a few miles. He needed the solitude of the fresh air and trees.

As the day wore on, the familiar path faded from view, swallowed by dense underbrush and towering trees.

I must have taken a wrong side path, he thought.

He glanced at his phone and realized he hadn’t charged it last night.

His stomach rumbled, reminding him he had eaten the breakfast bars hours ago.

By the time dusk blanketed the forest, a creeping unease coiled in his gut. Hunger gnawed at him, sharper than the cool air that settled around his shoulders.

He had lost track of time and direction, and the gentle sounds of the forest transformed into ominous murmurs.

Ethan pressed on, convinced the Trail was beyond the subsequent rise, but the night quickly swallowed the fading light.

Panic fluttered in his chest, and he realized how utterly alone he was.

That’s when he heard a rustling, low and deliberate, breaking the stillness that had settled like a thick fog around him.

He turned, heart racing, and caught sight of a massive figure moving between the trees. It was dark, hulking, and almost glowed under the moonlight.

Ethan blinked, half-expecting it to vanish like a mirage, but the creature remained, its eyes glowing faintly in the night.

Despite hearing stories and whispers about Sasquatch in these woods, he never believed.

“Is this real?” he said aloud, his voice trembling.

With a gentle grace, the creature stepped forward, its massive frame looming above him.

It looked at Ethan with curiosity and concern, as if comprehending his situation.

Then, to Ethan’s shock, the Sasquatch turned and moved with surprising grace, plucking ripe berries from low bushes and unearthing tubers from the earth.

Ethan watched in disbelief, feeling the hollow ache in his stomach intensify. The creature returned, its palms filled with the forest’s bounty, and offered it to him.

“Thank you,” Ethan said, taking the food. The berries burst with sweetness, starkly contrasting the raw fear that had enveloped him. He chewed the tubers slowly, savoring the earthy flavor.

Though, when the Sasquatch presented a small animal—a rabbit, still warm from the forest—Ethan recoiled, shaking his head.

“No, I can’t eat that. Not raw!” he said, a wave of nausea rolling through him.

The creature contemplated his words, tilting its head as if evaluating his uncertainty. After placing the rabbit down, it calmly returned to the underbrush and resumed foraging with a serene determination.

With each morsel of food, Ethan felt strength returning to his limbs and clarity in his mind. He followed the Sasquatch deeper into the woods; the creature guiding him with unerring instinct.

As they walked further, the shadows thickened, and the air grew colder.

Then a piercing shriek shattered the quiet night. A cry of despair and rage, belonging only to something otherworldly, echoed from the forest’s depths.

Ethan’s heart pounded, and he felt an icy grip of fear coil around his spine.

The Sasquatch turned sharply, its eyes wide with alarm, before it dashed into darkness.

“Wait!” Ethan called out, but the creature vanished, leaving him alone in the oppressive stillness.

Panic surged within him, and he backtracked, desperately trying to find his way to the Trail. The once serene woods now appeared dark and labyrinthine.

He heard a rustling. It was different this time, caused by something more significant than Sasquatch. Soft, guttural growls and the unmistakable sound of footsteps accompanied it, approaching.

Ethan’s breath hitched, and he turned to see glowing eyes emerging from the dark.

No question. It wasn’t the Sasquatch.

The creature that stepped into the moonlight was a grotesque parody of the forest. It had elongated and sinewy limbs covered in matted fur, but its face resembled a twisted mask of malice, with eyes burning with an insatiable hunger.

Ethan stumbled backward, fear clawing at his throat as he realized that the stories of Sasquatch were only the beginning of the horrors that lurked in these woods.

The creature lunged, and in that fleeting moment, Ethan understood the truth: super-predators continued to exist. The Sasquatch had not been his savior; it had been a diversion against the forest’s real horrors.

In the encroaching darkness, Ethan screamed, a primal sound devoured by the night, echoing the fate of those who dared venture too deep into the wild—lost, alone, and hunted.

Author’s Note

• Check out other Halloween/horror-themed posts at the Halloween link

• My new book, The Edges, is now available in digital and paperback formats

AMAZON

BARNES & NOBLE

APPLE BOOKS

GOOGLE PLAY

KOBO

Upcoming…

• A poem about winged symphony:

  Monarchy, 2 November 2024

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Seduced

I met him, a creature of the night, in the moonlit garden where roses bloomed with thorns like jagged dreams. His eyes, like pools of midnight ink, reflected the torment of a thousand lost souls.

His curse, a tempest within him, denied him the sun's warmth. His skin, pale as moonlight, concealed an unquenchable thirst. He was a creature of perpetual hunger, forever yearning for the warmth of life's elixir.

His touch, like velvet against my skin, whispered secrets of a forbidden desire. As he drew me into his nocturnal embrace, I succumbed willingly, entwining my fate with his, my heart both fearful and intoxicated by the promise of eternal nights.

Cursed

The moon hung low in the sky, casting an eerie glow over the ancient trees, whispering secrets of forgotten sins.

In a meadow edged by this dense forest, the vampire, Lucien, found himself ensnared in a web of his desires. Maddened by his insatiable hunger, he had grabbed and tried to bite a maiden the night before.

How was he to know she was one of those angels that walked among the ordinary people?

Before he could sink his fangs into her neck, she had glowed. Her eyes stared at him, burning white. He had dropped her and ran into the forest.

“You should have known better, Lucien,” a voice said, echoing through the shadows, resonating with authority.

Lucien’s crimson eyes widened as he beheld the figure emerging from the darkness. It was none other than Ezrael; the archangel known as The Punisher, his piercing gaze cutting through the vampire’s very soul.

“I was foolish,” Lucien said, his voice heavy with regret. “He promised me eternity and pleasure, but it was all a trap.”

Ezrael’s expression remained stoic, his wings unfurling majestically behind him.

“Your punishment is to remain here in this meadow, bound by the forest you sought to hide in. You will learn the consequences of giving in to temptation.”

As the archangel’s words hung in the air, the forest tightened its grip around the meadow; the branches twisting into dark, thorned shackles. The vampire’s heart filled with dread as he realized the depth of his folly.

“Please, show mercy,” Lucien said, pleading as desperation laced his voice.

Ezrael’s gaze softened, a glimmer of compassion flickering in his eyes.

“Mercy is not mine to give. Redemption lies in your own choices, Lucien. Choose wisely.”

With a final, solemn nod, Ezrael faded into the shadows, leaving Lucien alone in his forest prison.

The vampire’s cries of anguish mingled with the whispered symphony of night noises in the forest.

Tempted

One summer, on the meadow’s edges, vibrant with the scent and color of wildflowers, Lucien prowled under the pale light of a new moon. His eyes, the color of blood, glowed with otherworldly intensity. Lucien could soar through the night with the grace of a predator, his whispers chilling the bones of those unfortunate enough to hear them.

Tonight, Lucien sensed a presence, a human one. He was so tired of consuming the blood of creatures that ventured into the meadow, and this human’s blood vibrated in his being, young and fresh, an innocent no less.

He followed the whispering breeze to where a young woman stood, her heart pounding in fear. Her name was Lilith, and she had stumbled upon Lucien’s hunting ground. The lantern she carried flickered in her trembling hands as she realized her grave mistake.

Lucien’s eyes narrowed, hunger consuming him. He could smell her fear, taste it on the tip of his tongue.

“Ah, my lovely. I’ve been alone for such a long time.” Lucien felt an overpowering thirst.

He advanced slowly, relishing in the terror that emanated from Lilith’s every pore. But as he drew closer, something unexpected happened.

Lilith summoned all her courage, determined not to meet her demise without a fight. With a sudden burst of strength, she swung the lantern toward Lucien. The lantern’s glass shattered, flames licking at his face, and the vampire recoiled, hissing in pain. The glow of the fire startled him, momentarily weakening his supernatural abilities.

Lilith took that opportunity to sprint through the meadow, desperate to escape. Lucien enraged, chased after her, but at the meadow’s edge, he stopped and roared in despair. He could not leave. The thrill of consuming a young innocent’s blood had driven all thought of the curse from his mind.

Resigned

Lucien roamed the meadow, trapped by the unbreakable curse.

The memory of almost sinking his fangs into Lilith’s tender neck haunted him. It was a maddening hunger that gnawed at his very being.

“I should have had her,” Lucien said, muttering to himself, his voice a mix of sorrow and longing.

As he paced the perimeter of his verdant prison, he beseeched The Punisher.

“Ezrael, have pity on me. Release me from this torment!”

A pale, shimmering light descended, revealing the majestic figure of the archangel Ezrael.

“Lucien, you have two choices,” Ezrael said, his voice echoing through the forest. “Face eternal damnation in the fiery pits or endure another century in this earthly prison.”

A heavy feeling settled in Lucien’s chest as he considered what to do.

To dwell in the fiery pits meant ending this existence. Spending another century in the meadow felt like an unbearable punishment, a never-ending torment of unfulfilled longings.

With his head lowered, Lucien pondered before raising his gaze to meet Ezrael’s solemn look.

“I choose to remain on earth,” he said, his voice filled with resolve.

“Why?” Ezrael inquired, his eyes searching Lucien’s soul.

“I choose to endure,” Lucien said, his tone laced with determination. “For in this prison, there is still a sliver of hope, a chance for redemption. I’ll persevere, hoping to find redemption in my suffering.”

“Understood,” Ezrael said, blending into a moonbeam.

So Lucien, the vampire, resigned himself to another century in the meadow, his heart filled with the distant dream of freedom.

Author’s Note

• I knew I wanted to rewrite two pieces (some of you might recognize them). I wrote the Lilith section last year constrained by the word count of a writing prompt. I expanded that piece. I wrote the opening section in April. I also knew that I wanted to give Lucien a backstory. Anyway, the two new sections flowed from that intention.

• Check out other Halloween/horror-themed posts at the Halloween link.

• My new book, The Edges, is now available in digital and paperback formats.

AMAZON

BARNES & NOBLE

APPLE BOOKS

GOOGLE PLAY

KOBO

Upcoming…

• A narrative poem about a witch’s revenge:

  Aldergrove, 23 October 2024

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He lurked in the shadows of the evening, his heart pounding in his chest.

A cool breeze whispered through the narrow alley, as if urging him to reconsider his choices.

The call of his addiction drowned out any rational thoughts that tried to penetrate his mind.

He was a thief, a desperate soul whose existence revolved around opioids.

Tonight, he had targeted a house, one he had been observing for days. The owners, an ordinary couple, were about to leave for an evening out. It was the perfect opportunity to strike.

With trembling hands, he pulled his ski mask over his face and adjusted the gloves on his hands, ready to break into their world and gather the merchandise he needed to sell for his next high.

As the minutes ticked by, his anxiety grew. Every passing second felt like an eternity. He stood outside their house, hidden in the shadows, waiting for them to leave. Finally, the front door swung open, and the couple stepped out, laughing and oblivious to the danger lurking nearby.

His heart raced with anticipation, an addiction by itself.

Once they were out of sight, he swiftly moved toward the house, his footsteps silent against the pavement. Adrenaline coursed through his veins as he bypassed the security system and slipped through a slightly ajar window.

He found himself in their living room, a space filled with comfort and warmth, a stark contrast to the cold emptiness that consumed his life.

His eyes darted around the room, searching for valuable items to steal. He could feel the weight of his addiction pushing him forward, urging him to find something valuable enough to fund his next fix. He moved with practiced precision, his fingers delicately touching the objects in the room, searching for something worthy of his efforts.

Just as he was about to make his way upstairs, a sound pierced the silence. His heart leaped into his throat as he froze, his senses on high alert. Panic gripped him as he thought he heard the couple returning home earlier than expected. Frantically, he looked for a place to hide, his eyes landing on a sunroom next to the living room.

He dashed into the sunroom and crouched behind a large, exotic plant. Its vibrant green leaves cascaded down, providing the perfect camouflage.

As he caught his breath and observed his surroundings, he noticed something unsettling.

The plant was unlike any he had ever seen before. It resembled a Venus Flytrap, with its deceptive beauty and dangerous allure.

The plant seemed to sense his presence, its leaves slowly creeping toward him.

Fear welled up inside him as he realized the dire situation he had unwittingly placed himself in.

He tried to move away, but his body felt sluggish. A sickening realization washed over him—the plant was not just an ordinary decorative piece; it was a carnivorous creature, capable of trapping and devouring its prey.

Desperation consumed him as he struggled to break free from the plant’s paralyzing grip.

It was futile.

The more he fought, the tighter its hold became.

The plant’s jaws closed around him, its sharp teeth piercing through his flesh. Pain shot through every nerve in his body as he became trapped in its deadly embrace.

As he gasped for breath, his mind raced with regret. He had become a victim of his own addiction, lured by the false promise of euphoria. In his pursuit of temporary relief, he had lost everything—his freedom, his life, and any chance of redemption.

As the darkness closed in, he couldn’t help but wonder if this was the fate he deserved. A thief, a slave to his cravings, forever consumed by the very darkness he had embraced.

In the end, the Venus Flytrap-like plant ingested him whole—clothes and all, erasing any trace of his existence.

Author’s Note

• Check out other Halloween/horror-themed posts at the Halloween link

• My new book, The Edges, is now available in digital and paperback formats

AMAZON

BARNES & NOBLE

APPLE BOOKS

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Upcoming…

• A narrative poem about confronting the past:

  Ghost Riders, 12 October 2024

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Refer a friend

The storm raged outside, fierce and unyielding, but within the confines of the old mansion, a different tempest brewed—one of sorrow and longing.

I glided through the majestic halls, my transparent fingers grazing the dusty furniture, each touch igniting a memory. I was the ghost of Eliza Monroe, bound by a curse that had shackled my family for generations. Forbidden love had given birth to the infernal curse.

With my heart racing and the rain drumming on the roof, I whispered to James on the night we eloped.

“Do you think they’ll ever find us?”

“We’ll make it, Eliza. Just you and me, far away from here,” he had said, his dark eyes glistening with hope.

The car was a rickety thing, but it was our vessel to freedom. We’d driven for mere minutes, the lightning illuminating our path, but fate had other plans.

The sudden thud of a flat tire shattered our dreams.

“Damn it!” I said, the words echoing in the storm's stillness. “What are we going to do now?”

“Stay calm,” he said, his voice steady even as the wind howled outside. “I’ll change it. We’ll be back on the road in no time.”

I couldn’t sit still in the car, my anxiety would not allow it. I told James I could help and exited the car holding my rain poncho against me to prevent the wind from ripping it away.

That night, the universe conspired against us. I stood by James holding wheel nuts while he changed the tire. Two men, my uncle and cousin, emerged from the shadows, their faces twisted with rage.

“What are you doing with that girl?” my uncle spat, the weight of our family’s hatred heavy in the air as he grabbed my arm. Wheel nuts flew in the air.

“Let her go!” James said, stepping before me, his love a shield against their hate.

That moment transformed love into tragedy. I remember the glint of metal, the flash of anger, and then darkness enveloped us, snuffing out our dreams.

The world believed we eloped, escaping under cover of darkness. My family knew the truth. They knew why my spirit remained tethered to this mansion, condemned to wander its halls, waiting for James, forever waiting.

The curse was insidious; it claimed that anyone in my family who dared to love would meet a tragic end before their thirtieth year. I had become the harbinger of that fate, my sorrow seeping into the very foundation of our lineage.

As the years passed, whispers of my ghostly presence filled the mansion, tales of a forlorn spirit yearning for a lost love. I watched as my family grew distant, love becoming prohibited, each member fearful of the curse that shadowed our bloodline. I cursed my family for their hatred, for their inability to embrace love in all its forms.

“Why can’t they see?”

I lamented to the empty rooms, my voice echoing through the vastness.

“Love is not a sin. It’s the only thing worth fighting for.”

One day, workers came to dredge the lake, looking for a drowned teenager’s body. They pulled the car and our remains from our watery grave, and my heart surged with anticipation. Could it be? Would they finally discover the truth of our tragic end?

The spreading news brought a refreshing shift in the air.

The townspeople’s eyes widened in shock as they uncovered the truth about our love story.

My spirit soared. Was I finally free? Would the world learn of our love that had defied our community’s and my family’s beliefs?

Then, miraculously, I sensed his presence—James—lightly touching me like a soft breeze, as if the universe had heard my prayers.

“Eliza,” he said with a whisper, his voice resonating in my heart. “I’ve waited for you.”

“James!” I cried, my spirit intertwining with his. Finally, we could be together. Our once-forbidden love blossomed anew as our ethereal forms embraced. The curse’s weight lifted, its darkness dissolving.

That embrace broke the curse, rewriting our tragic fate in the annals of time. We were no longer just memories of a curse, but characters in a sad love story.

“Together, always,” he promised. Together, we drifted into the unknown, our souls united at last. The haunting ended, replaced by a love echoing through eternity, breaking chains of hatred and despair.

Author’s Note

I remembered this prompt a day before the deadline, so I could not complete my story in time. This was the prompt from the :

Your prompt:

Your protagonist is a person in love who is also a ghost

Your story must include a family curse

And you get a bonus if you include “flat tire”

Read another Halloween-themed post:

By the way, my new book, The Edges, is now available in digital and paperback formats.

AMAZON

BARNES & NOBLE

APPLE BOOKS

GOOGLE PLAY

KOBO

Upcoming…

• A story about addiction:

  Oh, Venus, 9 October 2024

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Refer a friend

We were young and foolish. We were teenagers: a group of neighborhood girls, inseparable most days.

We had to lose weight for an upcoming event in a few months.

The diet we chose was the Ice Cream Diet. Instead of eating three meals a day, we had ice cream for a month—for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and any snacks in between.

It started great!

We persuaded our parents to get our favorite flavors. Rocky Road, Cherry Garcia, Pralines and Cream, Rum Raisin—we got them all.

We weighed in every week and lost between three and five pounds each in the first week. We were so excited! Perhaps one pound each in the second week. By then, we hated ice cream.

By the end of our fourth week, at least one of us vomited at the sight of ice cream, and she was the only one who had maintained the weight she had lost that first week.

Devastating!

Years passed before I saw ice cream as a treat.

The thought of all that ice cream still triggers my salivary glands, but not in a good way.

It doesn’t help that I’m lactose intolerant.

As the warm hues of fall painted the landscape in golden tones, my college roommate, Nancy, invited me to spend a weekend at her family’s farm, about an hour away.

Despite shorter days and cooler weather, the weekend’s forecast predicted temperatures of 80°F or higher.

I couldn’t wait to visit a real working farm, meet my roommate’s parents, and see all the animals she had talked about.

I eagerly accepted the invitation, looking forward to the adventures that awaited me.

Upon arriving at the picturesque farmhouse, the sights and sounds of rural life greeted me. The sweet melodies of chirping birds filled the air, and the gentle mooing of cows resonated in the distance. Nancy’s family warmly welcomed me, inviting me to immerse myself in their way of life for the weekend.

The next morning, Nancy’s mother, a gracious woman, guided me to the barn to teach me the art of milking a cow. Through her patience and skill, I learned the rhythmic movements of milking, feeling a deep connection to the earth and gentle cows.

However, the highlight of the weekend turned out to be my undoing.

Nancy’s mother, a masterful cook, presented a delectable treat at the end of the meal—slow-churned peach ice cream, made from the freshest peaches harvested and bottled on the farm.

My heart sank as I remembered my past encounters with peaches (that’s another story for some other time), the love-hate relationship I had with ice cream, and my struggle with lactose intolerance.

With a gracious smile, I accepted the bowl of peach ice cream; my mind conflicted with gratitude and apprehension. As I took a hesitant spoonful, the creamy sweetness melted on my tongue, bringing a flood of contradictory emotions. I savored the flavor, trying to ignore the warning signs my body was sending.

Despite my best efforts, my body rebelled against the rich dairy indulgence. I excused myself, retreating to the tranquility of the airy farmhouse porch.

There, shaded from the warm autumn sun, I listened to my stomach rumble and reflected on the bittersweet experience, grateful for the hospitality and love of Nancy’s family, yet rueful because of my own limitations.

As the weekend came to a close, I bid farewell to Nancy’s family, carrying with me memories of laughter and a newfound appreciation for the simple joys of farm life.

So it was with my stomach in turmoil, I returned to college, forever altered by my weekend on the farm.

Author’s Note

• It will NOT surprise you to learn, the Ice Cream Diet is not a good diet.

• This all happened before I could take Lactaid pills before eating dairy. If I have the pills on hand and if I remember to take one, I can enjoy a bowl of ice cream or an ice cream cone.

• I sometimes wonder if I still have the muscle memory to milk a cow.

Upcoming…

• A poem about a school shooting:

  Why?, 11 September 2024

• My new book of poetry and prose, The Edges

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Refer a friend

Once, in a bustling city filled with towering skyscrapers and busy streets, there lived a wizard named Alaric.

People knew Alaric for his wise counsel, magical prowess, and his ability to bring light into the darkest of situations. All who knew him loved and respected Alaric, and he used his powers to assist those in need.

One sunny morning, as Alaric was preparing his potions and casting spells in his cluttered study, he noticed an unusual occurrence.

He struggled to recall a simple incantation that he had known for centuries. His mind, once sharp, now felt foggy and uncertain.

He shook his head, hoping it was just a momentary lapse, but the feeling persisted.

Alaric’s heart sank as he realized that something was wrong. He sought the counsel of his closest friend and fellow wizard, Seraphina.

Everyone knew Seraphina for her vast knowledge of magical ailments, plant medicinals, and her compassionate nature. Seraphina greeted Alaric with a warm smile, but her eyes filled with concern as she noticed the turmoil on his face.

“Seraphina, something’s not right. I can’t seem to remember spells like I used to. But how can that be? I’ve spent centuries mastering spells and incantations.”

Alaric poured out his fears, describing the gaps in his recollections and his growing confusion. Seraphina listened, her heart heavy with empathy.

“It pains me to say this, my dear friend, but you may have dementia. Dementia is a cruel condition that affects the mind and ability to remember.

Alaric’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Dementia? But... but I’m a powerful wizard. How can this be happening to me?”

Seraphina’s voice was soft, yet firm. “Dementia does not discriminate, Alaric. It can affect anyone, even the most skilled magic practitioners. Fear not, there are ways to ease the burden and slow down its progression. It can be a formidable foe, but remember, you are a wizard. You have faced countless challenges before, and you will face this one with strength and courage.”

Alaric nodded, his eyes filled with determination.

Together, Alaric and Seraphina devised a plan to help him manage his illness.

They created a magical journal that would serve as Alaric’s’s memory aid. In this diary, he would record his thoughts, experiences, and important information that he feared might slip away.

Seraphina also compounded herbs and other plants into a tincture for Alaric.

As the days turned into weeks and months, Alaric’s state worsened. The vibrant colors of his memories faded, and the once-familiar faces became blurred.

Through it all, he clung to his diary, the lifeline that connected him to the person he once was.

One day, while going through his handwritten diary, Alaric discovered an entry from a moment of clarity.

It read, “Though my mind might falter, my spirit remains strong. I am still the same wizard who brings light to the darkness. Dementia might deprive me of my recollections, but it will never steal my essence.”

Motivated by his own words, Alaric committed to making the most of his remaining time with his magic. He employed his fading memories as a source of inspiration rather than a cause for despair. He embraced each moment, knowing that it could be his last.

As word of Alaric’s struggle spread throughout the city, the people rallied around him. They organized a magical festival in his honor, celebrating his life and legacy. Wizards from all over came to pay tribute to the brave one who battled dementia.

Alaric stood before an appreciative audience at the festival, thanking all well-wishers.

His eyes scanned the crowd, seeing familiar and forgotten faces, all brimming with love and admiration. In that moment, Alaric understood the true power of mankind’s connection and the resilience of the human spirit.

“My dear friends,” Alaric started, his voice filled with both sorrow and joy.

“I may have a clouded mind, but my heart remains clear. I am forever grateful for your support and love. We’ve showed that resilience and grace shine through challenges.”

The crowd erupted into applause, their cheers echoing through the city streets. Alaric smiled, feeling a sense of peace wash over him.

As time went on, Alaric’s condition continued to deteriorate. The once-vibrant city he called home became a labyrinth of confusion and uncertainty. Simple tasks turned into monumental challenges, and the world around him seemed to blur into a haze of indistinguishable shapes and sounds.

Even during his struggle, Alaric found solace in the companionship of Seraphina and a few close friends who refused to let his dementia define him.

They became his guiding lights, helping him navigate the ever-shifting landscape of his mind.

Another day, as Alaric sat in his study, surrounded by the relics of his magical past, he stumbled upon an ancient grimoire. Although worn and yellowed with age, the pages of the spell book still held a spark of power in the words they contained.

With a surge of determination, Alaric decided on one last quest.

He gathered his friends and shared his plan.

“My dear friends,” Alaric said, his voice trembling, “I have a plan that may help restore what I have lost. We shall embark on a journey into the heart of the enchanted forest to find the mystical Fountain of Memories.”

Gasps and murmurs filled the room as Alaric’s friends exchanged uncertain glances.

Seraphina stepped forward, her voice steady and reassuring. “Alaric, venturing into the enchanted forest is no small feat. It is a place of great mystery and danger. Are you sure this is wise?”

Alaric nodded, determination shining through his clouded mind. “I have read about it in an old spell book and seen glimpses of the fountain in my dreams, Seraphina. I believe it holds the key to unlocking the memories that have slipped away from me. Together, we can face whatever challenges lie ahead.”

One wizard spoke up, his voice tinged with concern. “But Alaric, what if we encounter dark forces or traps along the way? The enchanted forest is filled with unknown magic.”

Alaric placed a reassuring hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Fear not, my friend. With our combined skills and wizardry, we can overcome any obstacle. The Fountain of Memories is our goal, and we shall not rest until we find it.”

Seraphina spoke. “We will support you, Alaric, in this quest. Let us prepare ourselves and gather the supplies for the journey ahead. Together, we will face the wonders of the magical woods and seek the fountain that may hold the key to restoring your lost memories.”

And so, with hearts full of determination and magic crackling in the air, Alaric and his friends set forth on their quest into the depths of the enchanted forest, ready to confront whatever challenges awaited them in their pursuit of the Fountain of Memories.

Alaric’s heart swelled with a mixture of hope and trepidation as he followed the winding path deeper into the unknown.

Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, as the group faced countless trials and tribulations. They encountered treacherous beasts, riddles that tested their wits, and illusions that threatened to lure them astray.

Through it all, Alaric’s determination never wavered. He pressed on, fueled by the belief that somewhere within the depths of the forest, his lost memories awaited him.

They reached the forest’s heart, after what seemed like forever. There, in a clearing bathed in ethereal light, stood the fabled Fountain of Memories. Its waters shimmered with a kaleidoscope of colors, promising the restoration Alaric sought.

With trembling hands, Alaric cupped the water in his palms and brought it to his lips. As the liquid touched his tongue, a surge of energy coursed through his body.

He closed his eyes, allowing his memories to flood back into his consciousness.

In that moment, Alaric relived a lifetime of magical adventures, friendships forged, and lessons learned.

He recalled the faces of loved ones, the taste of victory, and the sting of loss. Most importantly, he remembered who he was at his core—a wizard whose spirit remained unyielding in the face of adversity.

When Alaric opened his eyes, his friends surrounded him, their faces filled with a mixture of awe and relief.

As the friends began their return journey, they saw the trees and undergrowth grow into a thick, verdant shield, hiding the fountain. Behind them, once visible pathways became choked with bushes and small trees.

With newfound clarity, Alaric returned to the city, where life continued to move at its own relentless pace.

With his regained memories, he confronted each day with a fresh sense of purpose and appreciation.

Alaric became an advocate for those living with dementia, using his own experiences to promote understanding of the struggles they faced.

He worked to raise awareness, funding research, and providing support for both individuals and their families. His legacy extended far beyond the realm of magic, touching the lives of countless people who found solace in his story.

Author’s Note

I feel compelled to share with you the genesis of this narrative. My dear sister’s poignant struggles with dementia served as the inspiration. Through her eyes, a world emerged—familiar, yet strange, memories slipping, like sand.

Through the veil of her condition, I found myself drawn to a fantasy world where the boundaries of reality blur. I sought a realm where hope shines through darkness.

Apologies for not elaborating on the quest for the Fountain of Memories. I’ll leave that for another story. I condensed and summarized most of that section into a paragraph.

Upcoming…

• A poem about finding and sharing life’s delights:

  Joy, 17 August 2024

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Refer a friend

“One must stay, one must go."

They knew their twin-bond would be shattered forever.

The reflection in the old mirror showed Ella and Mia holding hands.

A bony hand reached through the mirror.

“I choose you.”

Bony fingers grabbed Mia’s hand from Ella’s.

“No!” Ella screamed.

“Fine. Two for one.”

Author’s Note

This little horror was inspired by a prompt from

THE FICTION DEALER

Microdosing - 50mg of Twins

Today on Microdosing our prompt is TWINS! Write a story in 50 words! Don’t forget to tag me if you follow along with the challenge. My face stared back at me from the casket, flooding my mind with an avalanche of memories. Everything since birth has been lived by two souls, and when one got snuffed out, the other went, to…

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2 years ago · 22 likes · 12 comments · Miguel S.