My little sister is in the churchyard, but my grandmother’s table still bears the marks from her fork. The tears of my mother have gummed the varnish, and in the #grain I see the breath of the god who was my father. I lay down my head and listen to the walnut tree. #vss365

Be my dilly queen, he sings, madcap little jay with a clover crown. She toddles after him, all baby burbles and fat little fast legs, before Nonny even misses her. They find a doll in her dress, covered in scarlet leaves, three days later. The Dilly Queen reigns still. #vss365

She tastes like lemonade, sweet and sour, and like lemonade, the more I drink, the more I crave. Salt and sugar, summer sweat and sweet kisses. A gust of wind, the leaves sigh, and she is gone, but her flavor lingers. #BraveWrite

Summer clouds rush down to wrap the woods in a wild gray embrace. I don't want to go, they whisper roughly, I don't mean to go. Winter tugs, and they hold more fiercely still. Remember me, their tears pour in rivulets beneath the bark. Remember summer. #ForHelena

Round belly, bloodstained thighs, and bared breasts: I am no daughter of Athena, but hand in hand with Hecate I go on her silver path, pulling sisters from the darkness. Wailing eunuchs clutch themselves in our wake. #horrorprompt

Literary Archaeology Probably just a broken bit of shell, but it looks like a ‘quake-crumbled pillar from a tiny sea temple. I shall keep it and write its histories.

A click, a whirr, and the dream repeats. He knows he's supposed to believe, but the phantom electrodes on his skull itch like poison ivy. Still, he follows the rote plot: knots his tie, kisses his wife, goes to work. One day he'll wake up & rip the wires away. #horrorprompt

All loose bones & slippy fur, an ash-covered kitten squeezes from beneath the crumbled concrete & out onto the street. A would-be rescuer snatches it to his breast, desperate for small joys in a world of great horrors. Later, he will pick bone shards from debris. #horrorprompt