Category: Word Prompt

By: Zach Murphy

Aria caught the city bus as the sky donned a pinkish glow before the day’s final gasp. Her daughter Millie sat on her lap, gripping her wrinkled hospital scrubs — the ones with the cat patterns on them. Millie had entered that age where she often asked all the difficult questions of the universe. Are the sun and the moon friends or enemies? Do aliens go to the bathroom? Why do other kids have a dad, but I don’t?

Ding!

“Here’s our stop,” Aria said.

After dropping Millie off at grandma’s house, Aria hopped back on the bus and waited for it to bring her to work. She gazed out the window and sighed. The city was winding down while she was just beginning her 12-hour shift. The bags under her eyes carried enough stories to tell to the stars. Sleep was just an elusive dream at…

By: Haley Schirber

The way the sun shifts slowly. 

Alters the light.

These moments big and small

will make you feel the might.

Though just as shade grows gently,

swallowing the light

these hatreds that you harbor

must now be brought to sight.

The sea of fear keeps rising

and with it comes our plight

there is something that you need to hear

but with it comes a fight.

By: Tremaine L. Loadholt

She sat, rubbing her leg. The ache in her thigh had gotten worse. She took out the prescribed pain medicine and looked at it.

“Oxycontin.”

She popped two pills onto her salty tongue and gulped down a glass of water.

All the pills in the world would never heal her pain. She held years of lies, secrets, and confessions in the depths of her gut.

The pain was making its rounds: head, heart, legs, etc.

Soon, she’d be gone and no one will care. 

Tremaine L. Loadholt has published three poetry books: Pinwheels and Hula Hoops, Dusting for Fingerprints, and A New Kind of Down. She’s editor and creative director for Quintessence: A Literary Magazine of Featured Medium Writers. Her artistic expressions are at A Cornered Gurl, Medium, and Twitter.