The First Feast

Emma walked into the kitchen. Fresh and pure like the new life she built from the stones cast at her. The stones meant to harm, instead lessons learned to create her new home.

She opened the clean, organized and nearly empty fridge, and grabbed the package of bacon ends, bruised tomatoes, the head of lettuce and mayo jar. She knew what she wanted for her first meal in her little cottage when the produce manager at the Budget Grocery, where she worked, let her pick from the discarded fruits and vegetables.

Her only skillet was pulled from the oven, and a burner lit to heat the pan. She tore the bacon open and plopped a handful into the skillet. The hiss, harsh like opening bus doors, protested at the inclusion. Popping grease scattered it’s slick deposit onto the stove and the front of Emma’s shirt. The smoky salt cured smell rose and filled the kitchen with the comforting fragrance. She moved the bacon, crisp and hot, to the 10 cent plate she bought at Goodwill. The skillet was wiped and a  slick of flavorful grease left behind, two slices of white bread were toasted in the skillet because she had no toaster.

The dollar store knife pulled from a drawer was used to slice the tomato and she managed to mangle three slices. Two leaves of lettuces  torn from the head like pages ripped from a book. The lid spun off the mayo, knife dipped in, a glob drawn from the jar and generously spread over the toasted bread. Next she arranged the bacon on one toast slice to cover edge to edge, then she cloaked the bacon with a lettuce blanket. Finally the mangled tomato slices with their sweet yet savory tang were added and the creation crowned with the final slice of bacon toasted bread.

The bacon plate reused held Emma’s newly created, first meal in Garden Cottage. She moved the plate to the kitchen table and sat down. The cheap knife drawn across the sandwich created two delicious triangles. Lips pursed together and her tongue run across her bottom lip, she anticipated the crisp crunch of the toast as teeth bit into the BLT.

Eyes closed as she slowly chewed the bite. The first of many snacks and feasts brought bittersweet happiness to her. Emma felt the tightness in her limbs dissolve as the awareness of her freedom settled in and she chewed and smiled.

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If you like Emma’s story, you can find more of  her story on the page “The Emma Files“. She is a continuing fiction character. Not sure where she is going. She just keeps going.

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Red Writing Hood at Write on edge gave us a great new prompt and it goes like this:

“Plump tomatoes, salty bacon, crisp lettuce, soft bread, this week we want you to be inspired by the BLT. Write a piece of either fiction or creative non-fiction based on this photo.

The word limit is 400.

Use your imagination and appetite and come link up here Friday! “

I decided to add a new chapter in Emma’s life and what better way for a fresh start than with a first meal.

Scars Withheld

A singer’s vocals complained and harmonica notes wailed and argued, both sounded sad and angry and mirrored the emotional battle at table eight. Lauren invited her friend Shay to meet her and Jason for drinks at Larry’s Lounge. Jason curled his lip and made comments laced with acid words and judgments about Lauren’s friend. Shay, amped on crystal she’d smoked outside, pistoned her finger into his face, spit dappled him as she shrieked,

“The scars I hide are not your business! Get! Out! of my face!”

Drinks tottered on the table as she stood up and staggered out the door.

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I wrote this piece after Lance at “My Blog Can Beat Up Your Blog” prompted with the song “Hotel Illness” by the Black Crows. His challenge is to write a 100 word piece using this song as inspiration.

Finding Forever

Mazi’s Sports Bar was the hip cool place to hang out. The college kids swamped the place after football games.  Eric and Lauren worked the late shift and barely had time to swap glances and winks across the floor. Finding a lull in the crowd, they snuck into the alley. Shy, alone and hidden, he slid closer, near enough she sensed the heat as his arm brushed past her. The night air was sharp with needles of frost piercing the senses as Lauren puffed hot breath onto her hands and scrubbed them warm.

She leaned in to nestle against him,  their layers squeezing together as his arms encircled her. Lauren’s face came near Eric’s. She felt his warm breath, and anticipated the next step. The next moment. Gazing eye to eye, soul into soul, they realized they had built a beginning with glances and winks in the bar. Up close they could see proof of something more.

They came closer and melted together. Eric’s nose rubbed the tip of Lauren’s as mouths pursed into bows, touched. Their infatuation swiftly became much more. The affection was intense. Cold air insignificant to the warmth of new found enchantment. Lauren wove her fingers into Eric’s and whispered “We have to go back.” She tugged him inside and gave him a quick final peck.

Eric had a wide grin lighting his face. He winked at Lauren and whispered, ”Later?”

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I wrote this from a prompt at Trifecta, but I was too late to add it to their weekly collection. It’s relevant to Valentines Day, so I went ahead with it. The prompt went like this:

“In honor of upcoming Valentine’s Day, we thought we’d ask something a bit more, shall we say, sensual of our Trifectans.  Your task this week, should you choose to accept it, is to write a love scene in no fewer than 33 and no more than 333 words.  Interpret that prompt as you will, but please be sensitive to our diverse audience and limit the use of explicit language.  (This is not TrifeXXXtra.)  The only other restriction is that your response cannot use any of the 33 words listed below or any derivation of those words.”

Going Home

He finally found her sitting in a corner of the dining room turned away from the party goers, perched at an angle toward the wall. Anna’s face was crumpled up, streaked with tears even though she was trying her best to restrain them.

“Baby, what’s wrong?”

“Oh James, I thought this is what I wanted! I miss her and I want to go home!”

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The evening began weeks before as they savored the idea of their first date after Tilly’s birth. The anticipation was so strong it was like the luscious seductive reaction to chocolate as you walked by a Godiva store.

She was home for weeks healing from the C-section and learning what it took to be a mommy. She spent days on auto-pilot, rarely getting into anything other than sweat pants and one of James’ t-shirts. Latching Tilly onto a boob was easier with a loose shirt you didn’t have to fight. She softly crooned a song her granny had sang,to calm the baby when she was fussy. Sung slow it passed as a lullaby and faster to induce new smiles.

“Sugar in the morning, sugar in the evening, sugar at suppertime.
Be my little sugar and love me all the time.”

Glenda, her soul sister, helped during her darkest hour of need; finding the right post-pregnant outfit for the party. At “Second Time Around” they found a black a-line skirt scattered with red, black and gold sequins on the feathery flowing chiffon outer skirt that floated and danced when she walked. The beautiful butter colored silk tank top that draped loose at her neck finished it. She felt like a princess when she walked into the party.

The conversation tinkled like wind chimes, but when a gust of laughter came, they would clang and clamor as the volume rose with the number of adult beverages consumed. Anna drank in the collection of adults and conversations about anything other than breast feeding and changing diapers. In mid conversation, she would feel a flutter of worry but quickly push it down.

A trip to the powder room, with ears ringing from the void of noise, something twisted in her chest wringing her heart dry. Tilly! It was the first night she didn’t tuck her in and sing “Sugartime”. Leaning on the counter she composed herself, and headed back to the party where she found a stool the host had set aside in a corner of the dining room.

James saw the forlorn expression on his wife’s face when he found her and quickly retrieved their belongings. They wound through  pockets and clusters of happy people and slyly slipped out the door as the mantle clock rang midnight. Anna felt the knots relax as each roll of the wheels carried them closer to home. As the garage door closed, she breathed, relaxing.

Anxiety ebbed out as Anna leaned over the crib watching as sleeping baby smiles twitched on Tilly’s tiny mouth.

She. Was. Home.

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I wrote this for the red writing hood prompt which had a 500 word limit. It asked:

“Pick four numbers, each between 1 and 10.

Write them down so you remember.

The first number will be for your character, the second your setting, the third the time, and the fourth will be the situation.

Then take the four elements and combine them into a short story.

All four you picked MUST be your main elements, but you can add in other characters, settings, times and situations.”

My numbers drew these elements: Character – A New Mother, Setting – A Party, Time – Midnight or around midnight, Situation -Reminiscing on how things change

What Am I Doing?

I read blogs.

I love reading blogs.

I envy other bloggers and their body of work from the day to day to the fiction.

I wish I had a blog like that!

Well, why don’t I? The answer is pretty darn simple. I need to just write. Sit down and bang it out even if it’s something mundane because sometimes the profound is found in the mundane. I guess I live in fear like many do who write. It’s the “what if it’s not good enough?” fly in the ointment. I love to write meaningful, awe inspiring posts but they don’t always come to me and that’s when I find myself wondering why the prompt at Write On Edge, or Studio 31 Plus, or The Lightning and The Lightning Bug isn’t speaking to me? I need to step outside of the prompt and write for the sake of writing. I have enough stuff falling out of my brain on a daily basis I should be able to put something in a blog post even if its just “Meh!”

My nemesis is enthusiasm. I get crazy excited about making a commitment to something and within 48 hours that commitment has blown away like trash in the Wyoming wind. I want to type right here right now that I’m going to sit down every day and give this blog something to breath out into the internet, but the reality is the 48 hour syndrome, so I’ll say I’d sure like to write something every day and then not beat myself up for not putting something out there.

So be patient with me faithful readers (I’m afraid to look at my numbers ) I am trying to dig down to bedrock. If I’m honest with myself, I haven’t been doing this for very long (started in May 2011 Oct 2010 I had to go back and look!) and I can’t hold myself up to other bloggers even if they do approach massive numbers of posts by their first anniversary(which I missed :/ ). My style is different as it should be. I want to be happy with what I write when I hit that publish button.

I’m here. I’m thinking and I’ll be writing.

Can I Just Sleep? Please?

Pain

Sybil (what?)

Pain

Sybil (WHAT???)

Take your pick. My night was destroyed by a game of tag played by my still healing broken foot and that bitch “The Change”, aka Sybil. She put on the “I’m wide awake” persona at about 11:00 last night. Warm and Sleepy character was kicked out into the cold dark night and I desperately wanted to sleep, but it was not meant to be.

I took my vitamins and a dose of melatonin and went to bed to read some Harry Potter. Reading, a fan in a cool room, warming up in bed will sometimes allow Warm and Sleepy to come back for an encore. At 1:00 a.m. (THIS morning) I was a little teeny tiny bit sleepy. Light off, cell phone on vibrate, warm covers. I was ready.

Hey! I’m reaaaady!!! Nothin’.

Turn over, arm out of the covers, cross my feet, heavy sigh. Yeah. Let’s do this. Drifting….

BAM! Pain kicks in. Wrapping around the top of my foot to the back of my heal like  a hot cable searing through the muscle into the bone. My eyes shot open, sucking in air as I wince in pain, I shift again. Move the foot to the cool sheets, but that doesn’t do it. Toss, turn switch, cross, uncross, adjust. Nothin’. Like the tick of a grandfather clock the pain ticks and tocks away at my foot and my sleep.

Hot bath. Reading in the hot bath. That’s it! That always works. Grabbing Harry Potter and my “Old Lady Reading Glasses” (Thanks Sybil) I head to the bathroom and draw a scalding, steamy, wonderful tub of water nirvana. I climb in and hope to find my Life Melted, and the pain chased away.

Sweating, reading, relaxing and ready. I climb out, dry off get back in my jammies and bed. Determination is the only reason I finally found sleep sometime after 3:00 a.m. Of course, there were the intermittent appearances by Sybil’s hot and sweaty friend “Blaze”.

Sound sleep had me deep in it’s grip at 10:20 a.m. when My Captain woke me up and asked if I was going to Mass (which is at 11:00 a.m.) Of course, I was. I’m a good Catholic girl, and my good Catholic girl Blossom would be there for retrieval (she spent the night with her cousins). Coffee and Aleve gave me the necessary kick start.

So today, Super Bowl Sunday, a day where we invited family over for fabulous ribs slathered with my Super Mad BBQ sauces and chicken cooked on our Weber smoker, had the potential of being derailed by Sybil and Pain. I found my “go to hell I’m going to pretend like you’re not here” self, and managed to get the baked beans in the oven, the Bacon and Bleu Coleslaw assembled and some much needed cleaning done.

I soldiered through the day, and ended up having a pretty darn good day in spite of  the lousy night of sleep. We enjoyed a fantastic meal and drank some beer, cheered for whoever looked like the right team to cheer for, and laughed and scratched our heads at  the Super Bowl commercials.

With the day behind me and the week ahead,  Sybil and Pain you need to stay the hell out of my bed tonight. I want and need a good night of sleep and you are not welcome.

A Gang Remembered

They called us a Gang. Jokingly, endearingly, simply because we were always together. Five girls. How we came together, stayed together is something from the Twilight Zone. Rod Serling surely couldn’t cracked the code.

We journeyed through High School on winds and waves of girl driven emotions. A thread held commonness between two but not the others, and a paper clip attached another two. Threads and paper clips cast aside, we wound the remnants together and linked ourselves together. We thought our chain was believed steadfast and secure.

If you happened upon one you soon found four more, around a corner, in the next seat, or in the others car. The din of our laughter from the ribbing, razzing and roaring was the spice we sprinkled liberally over one another and anyone else who joined us.

Our haven was the “Main Drag” – Big Don’s Drive-In to the “7/11″ loop it around and start all over again. We were in our element. There was heedless driving, braying car horns, fervent shouts at friends, enemies and occasionally an unsuspecting passerby who strayed across our path.

The auto parts store was the favored hang out, where heaping gobs of teenagers from 13 to wanna be teens conglomerated; We created memories from our diversions and amusements.

Radio dials precisely twisted, tuning in KOMA because the local station only played Rock on Sunday. We knew the words to songs like they were our own and sang them with fierce emotions loud enough for the rest of the drag to hear.

CB radios linked us with the rest of the world. Hollerin’ out to one or the other for her “20″ and 10-4′ing another confirming something profound or mundane. We Coordinated rendezvous’ and pick ups and reconnected the gang for a run on the town with the click and static of the 70′s version of a celllphone.

Weekends were mined for minutes and seconds to chip away the curfew hole as big as possible. Often there was danger because we punch the hole too big and the crevasse of the parents brow would deepen as they waited and worried.

We believed our Gang immortal, unaware our chain was flawed, for time was kryptonite eroding it after the mortar boards flew. Now time has become the cure as links are replaced by hands and a new gang rises from the ashes of the old.

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An ode to my old gang and the memories, love and fun we shared. A blog prompt given to we who write by Write On Edge with the memoir side of the site RemembeRED. I’m not sure I followed the prompt as well as I should have, but this is how our story came out. Here’s how the prompt went:

This week, we’d like you to explore friendship. You can talk about a current friendship or one from your past, a friend you met over kindergarten snacks or happy hour at your first job. Examine your emotional interest in the friendship and the role it plays, or played, in your life.

The word limit for this prompt is 400 words. While that may not seem like many words to devote to a friend you’ve known for thirty years, try to provide us with a snapshot that encompasses your feelings about the friendship.

Love Begins

Yes! The invitation was unexpected. Lilly felt plain, boring , shy. Joseph found mysterious beauty thriving within her. Floating through the night, hands finally touching, then gently embracing. Enchantment sparkles and undying passion began.

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This prompt really stretched me. It’s hard to convey a complete “story” in so few words.  This comes from Trifecta and the prompt went like this:

The first weekend prompt is as follows: write a love story in 33 words.  You are free to interpret that prompt however you wish, but your response must be 33 words exactly.

Good luck, fellow Trifectans.

A Friend – A Journey – A Faith

I was fourteen when you came into my life, blessed and brought from Rome. A gift but neglected and ignored like a shirt given but not really wanted. Hidden away and unimportant. Many years you were ignored and insignificant. I really had no use for you because you were like gossamer, thin, wispy and insubstantial.

But I was young.

Your value went unrecognized far along the diverse trail I traveled. The journey bore unrealized, abundant blessings but I was blinded by the perils. There was love and marriage. A sweet, polite, tender boy, an energetic, determined boy then a beautiful, willing, determined girl. Inexperienced and wide eyed, I fell into many craters and tripped over abundant pebbles, stones and boulders, and failed to see hidden behind the dirty faces, late dinners and sleepless nights, the captivating tenderness and certainty of my family.

But I was learning.

Restlessness, despair, sorrow and fear found me and I found you where you are; by my side. I reached for the coolness to sooth my pain as I clutched and wept with you. Release as warm comfort swept over me and washed out valleys of misery and solace rose to the surface.

But I was naive.

Forgetting the comfort and peace you brought when I was desperate, we rarely shared, but you waited. Waited because the path is never clear and a time would come when I would stumble, lose my balance and reach for you.

And then I understood.

I found deep despair, driven by my sick baby. I found answers, and you helped me to surrender my will for His will. You taught me I must pray from my soul and not from my head. Soothed and peaceful, I clutched you in my hand. Awareness pierced my understanding – no prayer is answered unless it has been asked.

And I grew.

Discovering I can count on you not for you but what you bring me. Held in my hand, prayers drift from mind, to lips to God. We’ve traveled, slept, lived together. Rejoiced, mourned and maintained. You are fifty nine beads; blessed and holy. Simple connected beads in my hand, a gift that gave me a gift. Appearing as a chain and actually a lifeline to my devout love of God. Clouds and blindness clear and focus. My perception is bright and I see God.

Now I believe.

 

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Written from a prompt provided by RemembeRED: Personification

Do objects have a memory? Does a rocking chair hold the essence of the snuggles it has witnessed? Does a pottery mug remember the comforting warmth it offered a struggling soul?

The dictionary defines personification as “the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form.”

This week, tell a piece of your story from the point of view of an object who bore witness.

Racing Aggravation

Exasperated and wide awake, Emma hurled the book. Now past midnight, she was amped, couldn’t quiet her thinking.  She swung her feet down, sat on edge of her chair, and briskly rubbed her hands together.  Her brain had a pins and needles sensation and was making her body edgy like she could run a marathon. Jumping up she bounced around in a strange dance; half shadow boxing and half mosh pit.

“Go outside. Night air.” she thought. Struggling into her shoes she slipped out the front door and continued her erratic dance under the moonlight. She found herself on the sidewalk that disappeared into the velvety blackness of the night  and her feet began to move, taking over the shadow boxing.

Her feet broke the silent sleeping neighborhood as they pat patted in an easy stride. She could hear the air whispering, and felt her hair fluttering away as her legs and feet carried her away faster and faster. Her breathing came sharper and a dampness grew and bloomed from her brow. A stream of sweat, stringy coolness, slid down her chest into her bra. Slick dampened hands clenched as she concentrated on her impulsive decision, bent on making it back without surrendering to the sprouting pain. Emma ran. And ran. And finally the frenzy coursing through her, unchained and released her.

Stumbling into the yard,  bent over as her lungs gasped and burned. She coughed, then sneezed and laughed. She fled the electric tension and discovered  liberation. Limping through the door, collapsing into her chair she pulled her shoes off  discovering puffy blisters on toes and heels. Shuffling to her bedroom, she fell into bed unconcerned with salt crusted skin and sweat damp hair. Emma floated on the edge of sleep and thought, “Shoes. I need a new pair of shoes.”

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If you like Emma’s story, you can find more of  her story on the page “The Emma Files“. She is a continuing fiction character. Not sure where she is going. She just keeps going.

Kir gave us a prompt for Red Writing Hood at Write on Edge. Here’s what she came up with:

“The cure for anything is salt water….sweat, tears or the sea.”~Isak Dinesen, pseudonym of Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke

For your Creative Non-Fiction tell us about the last time that one of these three things “cured” you. If you are going with Fiction, have your character resolve a problem using one of the three (or all three!!!). There are so many ways you can use this prompt so be creative with it, don’t take us where we think you’ll go.

Word Limit is 300.

Personally, I never thought of bookish, introverted Emma as a runner and neither did she. Until now.