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THEMES by PROMPT
We publish writing using a series of prompts as an entry point for exploring emotions, personal histories, shared truths, joy, grief, shame, and those themes that matter most to us in our hearts.
Explore the themes by prompt below:
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Aug 27, 2024
Last year’s planner pages
By Sharon Pajka — Insurance will not cover rehab. They will not cover the ER. They will not cover transportation to memory care. I call a

Aug 25, 2024
Her Name Was Sarah
By Beth Davies — I tried to write about these events thirty-three years ago, but the words were elusive back then. The hurt too deep, the


Aug 22, 2024
Wednesday morning on the island with friends
By Craig R. Kirchner — Coffee brewing at 6:45 and the ants beat me to the sugar. The size of two pinheads, but there are hundreds, in an


Aug 19, 2024
Conditional Love
By Carolyn Martin — I’m conditioned to follow Rumi’s advice to sell my tongue and buy a thousand ears when you arrive with the latest


Aug 17, 2024
WHITE HAIR
By Grzegorz Wróblewski — The old mare no longer fit in the expensive stables. She was gray and lame, so her owners sent her to a

Aug 14, 2024
What Smokey Robinson Hears
By Vicki lorio — The summer when I play Motown records at my friend's house, Smokey hears my friend's father say the only good black man is


Aug 12, 2024
LOVE IN THE TIME OF 40 ROSEBUSHES
By Elizabeth Lewis — There are things you cannot know about life, with its relentless cycles and imperatives until you have been burned to


Aug 9, 2024
A Lesson from an Inner City Teacher
By Michael H. Brownstein — Tempers are not something easily held. Students know this. They understand how to get a reaction from a teacher

Aug 7, 2024
Wisconsin Passages
By Darrell Petska — Like reclining bodies these Baraboo hills lie, where Sauk and Ho-Chunk, Fox and Kickapoo tribes weaved earth and

Aug 5, 2024
So certain of the uncertain
By Jonash Lepcha — Did I say something, every time, unknowing that silence at times says everything and more? I do not have to say many

Aug 2, 2024
Be
By Claire H Coenen — I want to give my life to wind, receive the sway of weeds, receive the song of bees, bees, bees, being. Not busy.


Jul 31, 2024
Women too often can see beauty in everyone else but themselves.
By Amanda Werner — When I notice I am resenting my body for not looking a certain way, I try to remind myself of two women I cared for while


Jul 28, 2024
Today, at 70
By Lee Ann Stevens — I am grateful for my parents. Sane, steady, able to let go. I am grateful for the body I was born in. Healthy.


Jul 25, 2024
INTERTWINED
By Faith Canright — Your flavor of easy lies, lover of my deepest heart. Our fragrance of stolen time. Passion grows in lush green eyes

Jul 21, 2024
Races
By Anita Nahal — I call my hair wild when it’s not set. The way I like it. Right down to each curl’s twisting bit. I fret and fume that I’m

Jul 17, 2024
Broken
By Ruth Bacharach — I have to call. Who will open the window when my roommate soils herself? I have to ask for a pillow, for chairs, one

Jul 14, 2024
An Embarrassment of Wild Prairie Roses
By Shelly Norris — Gangly, disheveled thickets sprout beneath her east windows, harden and bloom cold springs, thrive arid summers, shed


Jul 11, 2024
It’s in Our Nature
By R James Sennett Jr — Nature found the humor today. Tripped over it. Trickster! Tickling the soft belly of the babies. Baby animals.


Jul 9, 2024
enigma
By Joan McNerney — Shapes of time, our time, pulsing in this labyrinth of today's bizarre maze, leading to confusion as we witness never


Jul 7, 2024
Weather Poem
By Jeremiah K Durick — This is not the climate we were born into. It’s the climate we brought on ourselves. They even warned us, but we
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