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.
photo credit
Gate- daily word prompt
(I left out some pictures to tickle your imagination)
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!’
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.
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,
and the bicycling frog
is the first to be there.
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!
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?
© Carolyn Dennis-Willingham, CDW Creations
Lollipop- daily word prompt
Thank God for women like them. Unlike her own mother, the Disastrous woman she had lived with for seventeen years, Miss Fannie and Miss Reba were the mothers she always longed for, And then there was her father, the man who walked out and never returned when she was only a few years old.
The feather comforter provided her warmth. Sofie was safe. But then, why was she so cold? Too cold?
Her heart pounded, gaining in intensity. Moist palms. A forehead collecting beads of sweat. How can I be cold and hot at the same time? Sofie wanted to yell for Miss Fannie or Miss Reba but her lips wouldn’t move. The only movement came from the image that darted through her mind almost too fast to catch. But she grabbed part of it.
A knock on her front door in Seguin. A girl of fourteen standing behind her mother at the front door. Another scruffy stranger from her past. “Go back to your school work, Sofie. Keep practicing, Sofie.” It was her mother’s voice.
Sofie pulled the covers over her head. Erase the thoughts, Sofie. Erase them! But they entered without permission, without regard. Just like the stranger had.
Excerpt from Naked, She Lies by CD-W
Disastrous – daily word prompt
It was Mother who told me about Gene dying. Dad had found out when he was in town but gave Mother the job of breaking the news to me.
“Cono,” she said, “I got some bad news fer ye.”
I thought that maybe we’d have to move away again, away from Ike. Or that Delma was sick again.
“Yer little friend Gene has died, gone to heaven.”
I remember staring at her for the longest time. I remember going to Uncle Joe’s funeral and hearing about Wort Reynolds going to heaven without a head. But this was different. This was MY friend. This was Gene Davis who was only a year older than me.
“He went to Roby to the hospital ‘cause he had a pain in his side.”
I saw Gene and me playing checkers, riding on his mare, making up stories.
“It was a bad appendix, burst before the doctors could git to it.”
I thought Dad was right about one thing. Doctors were good for nothing’s. Couldn’t fix Dad, couldn’t fix Gene.
“Mother?”
“Yeah?”
“When Uncle Joe died, why’d they say ‘ashes to ashes’?”
“I ain’t real sure, Cono. I think it has te do with the fact that we were born nothin’ and go right on back te bein’ nothin’.”
“So now Gene’s jes’t nothin?” I asked, getting upset that the world was going to pretend he never existed.
“Nah, he’s somethin’ alright. He’s jes’t back to being part of the Texas Soil ’sall.”
“That ain’t so bad, is it?”
“Nothin’ wrong with that.”
“But I don’t get te see him again?”
“Afraid not, Cono. I’m sorry,” she said.
And I still am.
I go into my room and pull out my box of specials. There’s the old lace from a boxing glove, the time when Gene put together that fight for me; my first fight with real gloves.
At school and in front of everybody Mr. Green says, “Cono found out that he’s lost a good friend. His name was Gene Davis and he lived in Rotan. Cono, I just want to tell you how sorry we are.”
I nod my head and look down at my desk.
I don’t quite understand it, doesn’t make no sense whatsoever that Gene is dead. I want to see him again. I want to laugh with him. I want him to pull me behind his mare in the red wagon. I want to beat him at checkers.
Mr. Green has told me I can do anything I want. He says I can. He says he knows I can. So I decide to write Gene a letter, send it up to God Jesus to give to him.
daily prompt: Soil
They grow in the dirt
They’re pretty incredible
And they are also
entirely Edible!
Violas
Rose pedals
Tulips
Daylily
Empress of India (variety of nasturtium)
(Just to name a few)
Sofie was naked, of course, having stripped off her clothing as soon as she returned from the fabric store. She didn’t bother transferring the eggs to a plate. She stood over them, eating from the skillet. Besides there was no one to talk to but herself and, right now, the way she was feeling, it was good enough.
Perhaps it was the opium coursing through her that made them so beautiful. Little fried eggs showing up like new suns, waiting to be devoured. Her fork pierced the middle, the yellow sunrays spreading throughout the pan like a new day. The sight was so fascinating; she hesitated before taking a bite. But yes, eat the new day, Savor and enjoy. The egg slid down her eager throat. Taking the remaining butter from beside the stove, she smeared it on her arms, then her breasts. She was a new egg on a new day.
CD-W
Daily post word of the day: Savor
“So’s what she found a scarf? Who wouldn’t pick it up if it weren’t attached to a person?” Reba’s hands might have been in the kitchen when Meta came home, but her ears were everywhere in the house. She knew what had happened.
“It belongs to that missing Temperance girl, Rebie.”
“And ‘member that red hat I’s left at Market Square? Belongs to somebody else now. That Sadie might have a stubborn streak miles long, but she wouldn’t hurt a Bumble bee ‘less it crawled up her drawers.”
Had it? Had the Temperance women hovered over her, gotten too close? Invaded her safety? Sadie had become a barbed-wire fence that kept others out or, perhaps herself in.
What was Sadie keeping from me?
Excerpt from The Last Bordello
daily word prompt: Bumble
Maybe Frank doesn’t like the quiet since I’ve stopped talking because he says, “Emma June, I’m sorry about your mom being gone.”
My eyes water. I grab a stick, snap it in two.
“I’m sorry you don’t get on with your real mom,” I mutter.
“Maybe I’d like her if she’d raised me. She didn’t. She gave that job to her sister. I only live with her now because Aunt Sissy died. I don’t have any other kinfolk.”
Like me. I only have Daddy now. “What does your mom do in Holly Gap?”
“Nothing really. Takes in ironing. Doesn’t leave the house unless she makes enough to buy groceries. Sulks mostly.”
Like Daddy. But when I’m around, he tries to Bury his sadness.
“She never drives anywhere, takes you places?” I ask.
Frank shakes his head and gives me a devilish eye. “Sometimes I get to drive her old jalopy, though. When Aunt Sissy died, Ma got the junk heap and me.”
Now I feel bad about giving him that dog food sandwich.
Excerpt from The Moonshine Thicket, 1928
daily post prompt: Bury
Cono Dennis, my father
Here I go again, on the way back to Sweetwater. Not to get a donkey but to shoot Sunshine, My Only Sunshine.
Driving down the highway, Aunt Nolie doesn’t talk much, at least not with her mouth. She clutches that steering wheel like she’s about to squeeze all the Texas sand and Grit out of it and that’s a whole conversation in itself.
We finally get to Sweetwater and park in front of the Lucky Star Bar.
“Cono, ye wait right here.”
“OK,” I say, since I’ve already met the woman, who’s about to be shot anyway.
I sit in the car, again. I watch the people come and go, again, except this time, the ones that had been going were coming and the ones that had been coming were now going. I wait for the sound of a gunshot, the sound I’ve become familiar with when I hunt with my dad. I wait alright ‘cause there’s nothing else for me to do.
Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper
daily word prompt: Grit
“This is good. What the hell is it? Huh? An aphrodisiac, you say?”
That’s what I said the first time I ate one off a cheese plate.
The Caper berry is a Mediterranean fruit that grows on a thorny plant. They are actually the buds that are picked before they flower into white blossoms. In Biblical times, the caper berry was supposed to have aphrodisiac properties. Hmm… Perhaps, when ingested, they help us frolic about and have a mischievous caper of our own.
Suggestion: eat sparingly 🙂 🙂
daily word prompt: Caper
Carolyn Dennis-Willingham 