Tag: prompt writing

Lotus

Denise’s Six Sentence Story word prompt – Detour

“The Lotus Award goes to Sage Holmes, CEO of the Detour House Women’s foundation.” Her eyes well up in a room full of standing ovation. She is wearing a white dress to receive this life time contribution award among a group of passionate servants who are just like her, spend their lives tirelessly fighting for women’s safety and providing a roof over their heads.

Thirty three years ago, she was one of those women, without a voice, drug addicted and worked in a brothel where she hardly saw any sunlight. There was this Salvation Army woman, chubby and always brought freshly baked cookies to have a cup of tea and a chat with the girls. Her smile was bright and her hugs were warm; she was hope and their only connection to the normality of the outside world.

“I am grateful for this acknowledgement, and I owe it to that Salvation Army woman who baked us cookies and always reminded us by saying ‘ God made you girls like Lotus, living in mud but as pure as snow.’ Thank you!”

Goodbye

This is written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story word prompt – Confetti

We were so young.

It’s not our fault that
we didn’t have time
to rehearse life.

We didn’t understand that
stubborn promises were just a preface.

We loved so hard.

We were so inexplicable,
so endearing,
so annoying,
consumed by seven emotions
and six desires.


It was cold that day,
tears turned into ice,
snowflakes falling down
like confetti,
red-eyed, red-faced.

Tree and Paper

Living Poetry prompt – Tree

If only
you can see the future
You won’t get hung up
on wrapping your arms
around the memory
of your thriving youth

The old self you shed
pushing outward
to form calluses
telling the world
that you are wiser
by counting the rings
of your wrinkles

You never see the future
of your exhausted face
made into sheets of canvas
for beauty to take forms
pleasing to our eyes
and souls

An Old Friend

A six sentence story prompt – Term Hosted by Girlie on the Edge


An old friend came to haunt me last night in my restlessness.
He laughed that sarcastic laugh and his words pierced my facade “You are not happy, aren’t you? Even you have the world, you are still unhappy. You are incapable of being happy.”

It’s true my friend. I have come to terms with it. I am just a miserable woman who can’t seem to be content and satisfied with what she has.

There was once a door I kept open to let the liar and accuser in, he became an old friend who is unwilling to leave without destruction, and I have been accustomed to that friendship.

Valentine’s Evening

The Living Poetry Valentine’s Day prompt – Love

When love is lost, hate is an equal strong emotion to replace love, at least for a period of time in stages of the grieving process.


The willow is wilted by the west wind
A mouse is playing the piano off keys
Spider web covers the couch you once claimed
My vocal cord is rusted by regret

Two mockingbirds are serenading on the sycamore tree
If only I took your advice and bought the bb gun

When The East Meets The West

The Living Poetry prompt – Epigraph

“Softly I am leaving,
Just as softly as I came;
I softly wave goodbye
To the clouds in the western sky.”

You didn’t see my quiet tears
blurred by my bright smile
Perfect love I left you with
broken dreams I took with me

I fold your smile into my silken sheets
kept under lock and key
I sleep naked on a bare bed
to fend off the ghost of our past

You come into my dreams
drenching me in your torrential rain of passion
I am defendness in the darkness of my subconscious

Precipitously you are leaving
Just as precipitously as you came
You precipitouly retrieve
from the flood of the eastern sea

Background of “On Leaving Cambridge – a poem by XU Zhimo