Category Archives: Daily Prompt

I made a threat

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I was six and didn’t want to be left out of anything that looked like “fun.” One day, my sister, Pat, five and a half years older than me, had friends over. I kept trying to get into her room to be part of the group. I was being a Pest.

My sister finally yelled out, “Daddy, come and get Carolyn or I’m gonna spank her.”

I looked at Dad and said, “Close the door, Daddy. Let’s see how this comes out.”

I wore bold and stubborn like badges on my sleeve.

AND, I had a purple and pink cow.

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My sister and I in the 1960’s

Pest – daily word prompt

The color of blood

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Sofie pulled up the two loose floorboards and reached below into the Shallow crevice. The journal in her hands, the clock’s pendulum lay on the red-velvet front cover. Now it made sense to her, how Meta had scurried around the dark bedroom the night before she left. The traitor had been looking for her journal after all.

Sofie didn’t bother replacing the floorboards but went directly to sit down at the vanity. She stroked the red velvet. Red, the color of blood, seemed everywhere.

Excerpt from Naked, She Lies, by C. D-Willigham

 

Shallow

Tellin’ it like it was

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I’ve never been to jail nor do I plan to ever go. Growing up sometimes, I felt like I was in jail just from living under the same roof as Dad. I can’t imagine being all boxed in like that. I’d think the roof was coming down to cover me up.

When I found out about what Sheriff P.V. Hail had done, it made me outright mad. Not because of my Dad, but because of Ike. It wasn’t until Dad’s jail time that I found out about something else that happened to Ike long before.

P.V. had caught Ike staggering around Rotan like a drunk man, which he was. Ike wasn’t hurting anybody. He was just bleeding his lizard on Main Street. Instead of arresting Ike and putting him in the jailhouse to sleep it off, he beat the shit out of him first. I hated hearing that. I hated hearing that anyone could treat my grandfather with such little respect. I think it’s because P.V. suffered from small man’s disease. He was so short, he could have made a good butt doctor.

Dad had been drinking coffee in Rotan’s cafe, trying to sober up a bit before he came home. After the waitress brought him his sugar she said, “I’ll be right back with a spoon.”

“Don’t need no spoon,” Dad said. Then he reached into the back of his britches, brought out his pistol and started stirring his coffee with it.

Needless to say, that waitress called the sheriff. When Dad walked outta that café, P.V. was pointing his own gun straight up at Dad’s forehead.

Dad was smart enough not to put up a fight. Instead he put up his hands and told him where the gun was. P.V. took the gun then took his time, patting him down. Then P.V. got real low like he was checking Dad’s ankles, but he was really getting down out of the line of fire. That’s when Dad noticed one of P.V.’s deputy’s standing behind a truck about a hundred feet away and cross hairing a rifle straight at him. If Dad wanted to, he could have plucked up his gun and killed them both before they’d had time to blink. Instead, Dad just nodded at the deputy and smiled as if to say, “If ya planned on ambushin’ me, ya should’a Hidden yourself a little better.”

Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper, my father’s story

 

Daily Word Prompt: Hidden

Can’t beat it with an ugly stick

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Cono and his sister, Delma 

At least we are together, Delma and me. It’s just another place that I plan to watch over her. I want to keep her close by, so nobody can snatch her away again. As long as I can do that, it doesn’t make no difference where we are.

The car keeps humming slowly down the highway. I try to sleep but I can’t. Instead, I think about Mr. Ed Rotan and decide right then and there that “Cono, Texas” has a real good ring to it. Cono, Texas won’t just have snow gypsum under the ground and a railroad on top of it. It’ll have oil underground and derricks on the top, pumping night and day. I call them jacks “grasshoppers” because that’s just what they look like when they’re pumping up and down. They’re grasshoppers trying to hop away, but they’re stuck and have to settle for hopping up and down in the same place.

My town will have at least two good cafés that serve T-bone steaks and tea iced in clean tin jars, free to me since it’s my town. I don’t know much about T-bone steaks since one’s never been in my mouth, but I do know about cold iced Tea. A while back, Pa and I went from farmhouse to farmhouse following the thrasher and it was the first time I ever got a swaller of iced tea out of a fruit jar. A couple of them farm ladies knew how to make it real good. But the best was when one of them lady’s had cleaned up an oil can good and shiny. She poured the tea in the can with a bunch of ice and sugar and when I tasted it, it was the coldest and best drink I ever had. Ice is few and far between, sometimes as scarce as food. So when Pa took a sip he said, “Aye God, ye can’t beat that with an ugly stick.”

Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper

Daily word prompt: Tea

A not-so-traditional woman

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“It is always painful to set one’s self against tradition, especially against the conventions & prejudices that hedge about womanhood.”

— Helen Keller, Rebel Lives: Helen Keller

What courage and determination it must have taken this woman to realize her potential! We are all better because of her.

Traditional– daily prompt

The Stench of Betrayal

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Goodbye Beatrice and take the smell of betrayal with you.

Why was it the people who left were the ones Sofie truly cared about? First her own father, then Kat and her brother Timothy. Now Beatrice. If her mother were the one who’d left, she would have danced a jig on top of the Clower Building, looking down from ten-story roof top at the peons on Houston Street.

Sofie took her time walking back to the bordello. Spring, the time of renewal, was now another season of betrayal. The beauty of the pink Mexican Buckeyes and the White Hog Plum trees on her route home were gone. Even the usual Fragrance of Mount Laurel smelled like hot tar beneath revengeful feathers.

Excerpt from my novel, Naked, She Lies

Fragrance– Daily word prompt

Are you flatlining?

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Change can be hard. Change takes you out of your comfort zone, out from under your safe and warm blankie. Yes, change can sometimes be scary. But without it, how do we grow? How do we learn anything new? Without change, how can we gather a new awareness of ourselves and the world around us?

Go ahead and try something new, something different. What’s the worse that could happen?

 

How about going from this:

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To this?

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Or, would you rather be dormant?

 

 Dormant – daily word prompt

I am not a category

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I am different, yet we are the same.

Please, do not lump me in a category

because you lack awareness.

Please, see me as an individual

with ideas and thoughts of my own.

Please, do not build a wall

to keep me in or keep me out because of your fear.

Instead, keep the Gate open

and your arms outstretched.

Accept me, and together

we will build a better world.

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Gate- daily word prompt

What Grandma Says

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(I left out some pictures to tickle your imagination)

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Grandma says she visits Mollybird land.

But Grandma is silly.

She plays in the sand.

She hops in a chair,

I see her eyes glisten

She tells me to sit down

and carefully listen.

“There’s a place,” she says, “where

popsicles grow sideways,

where Lollipop trees

sprout only on Sundays.

Where cows milk the garden

The doggy yells, ‘Moo,’

And the carrot pops up

and says, ‘Howdy Do!’

 

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The dragon blows fire

to light up the coals

so miniture rhinos

can climb from their holes.

At lunchtime,

oh, we’re too busy to eat.

We paint with the squirrels

and then take our seats.

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We sit by the ocean

and blow seahorse bubbles

Our thoughts disappear

but our vision, it doubles!

If Tina the Tiger finds you,

don’t worry.

She’ll tickle you fast

then run off in a hurry!

Old Peter Parrot

doesn’t like peace and quiet

He prefers to squawk loudly

and dress like a pirate.

Then, when it’s time,

the Queen steps on her chair,

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and the bicycling frog

is the first to be there.

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Everyone cheers

and why would they not?

She makes them remember

the fun they forgot.

Now, if you don’t believe me,

of course it’s just fine.

But my unicorn’s here

and I must leave on time.

How I get home?

It’s the best thing, no doubt!

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Oh, don’t forget.

If you whistle real loud.

My silly hippo

will float down from the clouds.”

I take hold of the whistle.

I blow super hard.

A hippo? Really?

Will land in her yard?

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© Carolyn Dennis-Willingham, CDW Creations

Lollipop- daily word prompt