100 Word Challenge: Before You

I am attempting to regularly participate in The 100 Word Challenge. Each week, Velvet Verbosity posts a prompt, and participants write 100 words, in any form, in response to the word. This week's word: Chasm

Before You

There is a line between the before time and the after time - deep, indelible, uncrossable.
Before you I ate everything without even thinking about it;
After you I eat everything because I might not have the chance.
Before you I wanted to go everywhere so I wouldn’t be here;
After you I want to go everywhere to experience there.
Before you I took pictures through lenses without meaning;
After you I take pictures in a heart without filters.
Before you I feared nothing and faced nothing;
After you I fear everything and face anything.
Death changes everything;
And nothing.

100 Word Challenge: My Mother

I am attempting to regularly participate in The 100 Word Challenge. Each week, Velvet Verbosity posts a prompt, and participants write 100 words, in any form, in response to the word. This week's word: Forgetting

My Mother

Sometimes I have to concentrate to recall how a smile shaped her mouth, pushed up her cheeks, though I can see her eyes glimmer with life’s joys. After a while - minutes, hours, years - her features lose their sharp focus, becoming dreamy soft, as her hugs before disease stripped her bones. Occasionally, I’ll glimpse her hands at the end of my wrists, trace her outline in my sister’s silhouette, hear her pleasure in a Beethoven sonata, feel the pressure of her in my grandmother’s embrace. The tides of memory shift and settle, sharpen and fade, fill and empty me.

100 Word Challenge: Kitchen Dance

In an attempt to write more, I am going to attempt to regularly participate in The 100 Word Challenge. Each week, Velvet Verbosity posts a prompt, and participants write 100 words, in any form, in response to the word. This week's word: Family

Kitchen Dance

The syncopated bursts of laughter compete with the rhythm of her knife. Chop, sauté, simmer, spice. She loves listening to the retold stories the best, the comfort of favorites filling her up as she fills up the pot with stock and stewed tomatoes. Weaving between listeners, her dance builds layers of flavors, future memories.

The spoon scrapes the bottom of the pot in the silence, the last of the gumbo greedily filling one last bowl. All around the room glazed looks and satisfied smiles meet her searching eyes. No hunger here. No hurt now.

The scent of spices lingers. Loved.

ETA: Here are some of the other Challenge posts...