white lies

are like regular lies

but they don't hurt

so when i told her i was 25?

white lie

when i told her i was an officer?

white lie

when i asked her to come down to "the station" with me?

white lie

when i told her i needed gas, so i took a left?

white lie

when i told her everything was going to be okay?

white lie

when i told her if she listened, i'd let her go?

white lie

when i told her i wasn't going to hurt her anymore?

white lie

white lies

are like regular lies

but they dont hurt

the person does

Trapping perfection

Is a waste of my time

As I crouch in this damned chair,

And realize

That nothing good can come from this.

That my various insecurities

Created from the depths

Of the feeding frenzy

That has run red

Like a juggernaut

In my bleeding soul

Has become beautiful to me.

All those popular fallacies

That urge everyone

To achieve something beyond themselves

Really pisses me off.

Embrace your damaged self

For this is where

True art thrives

Between time and tears.

Ok, ok, these phrases didn't draw the level of inspiration I thought they might, but hey, that's why it's called a challenge! What I really love about these challenges is that you never know who's going to be inspired by the entries, and it's awesome to see the responses start to come rolling in. For this, I'm going to give the next challenge a bit more time.

Let's get right to it. @Huckleberry_Hoo took this challenge by the horns and came out almost completely unscathed. I mean, who edits out one of the challenge parameters? Still, the genius was there, and that's what really counts. Seriously, if you haven't read it, you definitely should--it's so worth it! HH takes the win for the initial entry part of the challenge. However, there were some really neat stories which deserve mention.

You just never know when you're going to get the old FUJIMO! @DrSemicolon brought it to the table and slammed it down! Nice work! @Fabulam had a brilliantly creative entry with Battle of Mind and Soul. I really hoped @LilMisWordSmith would submit a response, but it was just too late. Fortunately, she did post a response in This Sweet, Handsome Devil's Last Chance, which is truly an inspired piece following Thunderstruck from @Embc -- a throwback for us old farts who still pine for those glory days. @ElisePotato -- I so enjoy this author! Burn Away the Tears. I would have responded to this one, myself, if I hadn't been so buried last week. Check this out: @DanPhantom123 submitted an entry without actually submitting it into the challenge, so you'll have to do a quick search for it. "Loving. Is a Rare Kind of Lifeline" is the title. It's a read, my friends, but the pace is so quick, you'll be through it and reading it again in ten minutes, easy.

Secondly, along with LilMisWordSmith, there were some great responses inspired, which is exactly the kind of chain reaction I hope to see. @Fabulam had a fabulous response to @Ola_8 -- if you haven't seen this pair, I highly recommend that as well. @Lou1913 threw down a nice response to @Akitoyu 's Reaching Wings. Akito, may I add, is a badass.

The big winner of the response part of the challenge, as I'm sure you'll agree, is @Mavia with her response to HH's heart-wrenching, tragic story of young love revisited, where the story delivers an unexpected and empowering twist. Please, if you haven't read this tandem tale, do so now. You will not regret it!

So congrats to the winners, and thank you everyone for another showcase of creativity! I continue to learn lessons as the entries come in, and I hope I've done my part in coming up with a more inspirational set of phrases for the next: Challenge of Inspiration III, which is linked below.

https://www.theprose.com/challenge/14124

Jesus loves his little children.

Oh how His grace runs deep.

The guilt that consumes my busy mind should be overtaken by His love and mercy. But it doesn’t, instead I lie here awake at 3 am hopelessly staring at my ceiling wondering if my decisions and my motivation have left me without a friend, father and supportive figure.

The truth is far from my mind, it says in the Book of Books that His grace is enough, but why does it feel like I am not enough.

My mind allows itself to be overrun by lies that “His grace doesn’t cover this” or “you could be doing more”, 24/7 guilt coursing through my veins.

The Spirit tells me the lies can be broken by His truth, I want to hear His truth, but my mind has locked me in, with 7 feet tall concrete walls on every side of me. My mind has held me captive long enough to create cobwebs in place of reminders of His love.

His love is enough, therefore I am enough. Just let me feel like enough!

Dear beloved sister,

I have noticed that you have been taking a lot of showers recently and have been wasting the hot water, with that being said I also have to admit a bad habit of mine. The writings on the mirror have indeed been written by me, your really going to get a kick out of this... you know when you thought someone was trying to murder you and you filled a police report and spent all night at the police station giving them examples of the writing like, "I'm watching you" or "I know which toothbrush you use" and then had to stay home from school, work and hanging out with your friends/boyfriend because you thought that you were in danger, and then you got fired for being absent and got suspended for not being at school, and then your friends thought you were making up excuses to not hangout with them so they said your not friends anymore, and then your boyfriend ALSO thought you were making excuses so he broke up with you, and then when you went to complain to your friends about it you forgot they weren't your friends anymore so when you texted to complain about him, your friends got mad at you and then TP'd our lawn and you had to spend all day cleaning it up, but then it rained and the toilet paper got all stuck in the grass so you had to spend all day picking it off and cutting the lawn to make it look normal again, but when you were cutting it your ex boyfriend drove by and threw a slushy out the window at you and it stained your hair pink for three days and when you tried to wash it out in the shower the mirror said "I see you"... that was me all along writing on the mirror, yeah so I'm sorry about that, haha just wanted you to stop wasting all the hot water, I know you'll think this is really funny, loving ya.

- Margo

Been some time since I've posted on my own profile and not as Prose., but I wanted to post something from here and tag some writers, because I want to start getting back to my own shit. I need to write more, or just plain out start writing again. Prose. is a labor of love, so that's great, but no matter what, I need to write. Realized today I haven't even posted to my own channel in ages, and it worked out, because I didn't want to post my work on The Prose. Channel, because I like to keep that for the writers aside from me, and my voice and big, fat face on the channel is enough from me, without reading my own work, too. Holy fuck, I couldn't even watch that...

Been on this gnarly but satisfying carnivore diet the last couple of months or just less, and yesterday was an all-Hell-breaks-loose day. Beer, whiskey, bread, name it... paying the fiddler now. I'm sure he's thrilled. He's an asshole.

As myself, I want to thank you for being on Prose., and for being so generous with the work you give to it. Every day I read something great on here. So much talent in one place, and I think back to when it was just an idea stemming from another hangover, in the heat of a Texas afternoon, where I happened to find myself in that particular moment in time. Looking at Prose. now, it's very humbling, and I am grateful to you.

Alright, enough mushy feelings and shit. Here's a link to my own channel and some poems from here, but also appearing in a book of mine, set to release in the near future.

Thanks again.

-Jeff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKw-vodNOMU

As a kid, I got a kick out of Nanny reprimanding Papa whenever he got too mischievous. He'd do or say something out of line and she'd scold him and reel him back in. It wasn't until recently that I discovered that a lot of those times were just an act. Mom pulled back the curtains and revealed that Nanny would find reasons to scold him because she noticed how amused my brother and I would get every time he got in trouble with her. Although it was at his expense, Papa was a good sport about it. I imagine he played along for our sake.

It was like having a free, front row seat to a two-man improv comedy show. Papa would play the funny man, grappling with flimsy excuses to justify his behavior. Nanny would play the straight man or rather, woman, combating him with sound reasoning and ultimately putting him in his place. Together, they worked as a team in order to make my brother and I laugh.

This was just one of the many ways they made us happy.

Anxious waiting

Comprehending

The full weight

of this

imminent collision

Time will be measured

from that point on

Only as

Before

and

After