I shouldn't be grouchy about responding to any of these prompts, because I wrote many of them, and I think I wrote this one (Andrea [my Writerly partner-in-crime] -- please correct me if I'm wrong. And if so, you're in trouble. jk, jk). I don't like making mistakes. I spent last night thinking about (worrying, …
Recipe For A Moment
One part ordinariness--a car ride, a meal, a walk--swirled together with a second piece of ordinariness--the setting sun, a thread of conversation, your unprompted smile--and left to steep, ordinariness removing ordinariness, two like entities cancelling out likenesses until they are no longer only together but one, the one unforgettable. Today's prompt: Write a recipe for …
Evening Negotiation
It was nearly impossible not to pregame this piece--it was nearly impossible not to try to catch a line in my head so that when I hit the timer to start the five minute countdown that I would have something to dig into. The cat has just moved to the top of my feet. She …
We’re at the Top of the World
Today I've hit shuffle on a specific playlist in my Spotify account, a playlist a friend challenged me and several other friends to make. A playlist to sum up who we are. This was 2019, and I was granted 15 songs with which to do this. I divided these 15 songs into five phases--Childhood, Adolescence, …
Then Again, Though Lacking
I was sick yesterday, was sick in the sort of way that makes one droopy and useless, overly sensitive and unreliable for anything but draping oneself across surfaces and waiting for some lost thing to return. This is not how I like to be--not the me who has built a life and a self on …
Trading a Toothpick for a Pick Axe
To talk about what I would do if I knew I could not fail is to try to sort out the crossover point between tenable and untenable challenge, between manageable and unmanageable risk, and identify that thing which is just on the other side of the line which I desperately want. Relatedly, I like to …
Redistribution
I thought I could cheat it a little, today's prompt, because Matt and I started watching the movie Sound of Metal about heavy metal drummer, Ruben, who suddenly loses his hearing. And in many early scenes of this movie, we watch action overlaid with silence as the reality of hearing loss settles over Ruben, and …
One Use of Clutter
Perhaps clutter is not just mess but the compilation of good intentions piled up on tables or filling drawers? Things that will make sense later, or used to make sense and we think will again, and so they stay, they stay and molder inside our optimism. I have those--those drawers of aspiration and memory, my …
What Bailey Helps Me Remember
She's on the couch to my left, draped on the cushion in baby deer fashion, all her long legs splayed outward and converging in a point, making her look a bit like a triangle. When I look over to mark these details, she lifts her head and looks at me, flop ears, a fuzz of …
Small Medicines
In 2020, I read palliatively. Dozens and dozens of inspirational fiction novels by an author first introduced to me when I was a child by my now-many-years-gone grandmother. The scrawlings left for me by my kids on their bedroom chalkboard, or folded-to-miniscule post-its hidden on my pillowcase, or stuck to my bedside lamp. The stickers …
Jackie Lutzke 