Hi everyone,

It's been a minute or two. Hard to believe that 2021 is about to be over!

We have a brand-new, in-house newsletter system that Z has been working on, in addition to a handful of new features. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, we are revamping our Challenge of the Week. Looking forward to reading what ensues:

You're a female mercenary paid to go back in time as a decoy to be Ted Bundy's first victim. Your job is to remove him, and return with his brain for study.

https://theprose.com/challenge/12776

Love,

Prose.

eternally examining

my own internal workings

picking apart rusty gears

and wondering how they were corroded.

entangled in enigmas

where questions only breed more questions,

not an answer

to be found.

ending in exertion,

defeat becomes inticing

and victory feels vexing,

maybe it's better

if we stop trying

to know the answer.

Pick up this phone.

It feels so cold.

Ignore the fact,

It doesn't have a dialtone.

Smile at me,

Through that thick window,

I'm glad to see you,

Even for these few minutes.

Now stop your crying,

You know we can't be long,

And forget what they are telling you,

No, you don't belong.

How was your day?

Yes, that is great news.

No new bruises,

I'm happy for you.

How am I?

Child, we don't have the time.

It's not a song and dance,

We don't have to rhyme.

I love you, dearly.

It has never stopped.

And one day when is seen clearly,

We will forget this loss.

Moments and seconds,

Please don't look away,

Even through unseen torture...

You...you have such a beautiful face.

december starts

in melancholy

six-pointed story telling

loses interest

only to harden over

again like snow

That summer you told me that you loved me. You said this would your eyes shut, afraid to see my response. Afraid that our friendship would be over and that would be it.

Then you opened your eyes and looked into my eyes. And you saw love there. And our friendship didn’t end. It shifted. Two 18 year old children pretending to be adults. I became pregnant a month later. We had plans for college, to get out of the little South Dakota town in the middle of nowhere. To go see the ocean even though I’m terrified of water. I still wanted to sit in awe of something so big, so full of life, so unknown to us humans even now.

But my stomach began to balloon, and my little 18 year old self knew what was to come. We decided that you would go to college finish your time there, get a good job and come back for me while I stayed with my family taking care of our baby.

You went off to your dream, and I put mine on hold. You called every night your first 3 months. You’d come home every other weekend, starved to see my face to se our baby. But then, it changed. You began to call less and less. You didn’t look so starved to see me and the baby. I’d cry to my mama

every night and then one day I stopped hearing from you altogether. Your family wouldn’t say what you were doing why you stopped calling. I didn’t even know when or if you ever came home.

The baby’s due date came and I prepared to be a mama myself. Alone. The doctor came in and gave me the news that was more devastating than you leaving me. She could not hear the baby’s heartbeat. I hadn’t even named my baby yet. I pushed all the lifeless life out of me.

She was a little blue ball of mine. Perfectly in a ball waiting for me

to hold onto what would’ve been a whole life together. I can’t explain what happened after. The sky opened while I held my little girl. I named her Alina. A musical name for a beautiful possibility if what “could’ve been”. The sky poured, while I rained down my heartache. Life isn’t kind at times I think.

18 year old me decided it was time for college. I packed my old room and my worried parents watched my little pickup become swallowed by the horizon. You called me some years later asking to meet me and ask about our child. I didn’t answer at first bEva use you do not deserve to know anything.

But I was graduated living as a young professional working real estate on the banks of North Carolina. We met on the beach, and I told you that you weren’t allowed to speak until I was finished. You were thinner Than I remember, tired looking and sad. I felt no sympathy. You closed your eyes afraid of what you would see.

This time I told you to open them during what I had to say. You did and you cried the whole time I spoke of what was and what could’ve been.

You began to apologize over and over again. You tried to explain yourself. But I wouldn’t let you. I don’t regret that. I don’t want to know. All I heard from you was that you were young and stupid, and made huge mistake.

i left you weeping on the beach next to an ocean I had always feared yet was in awe of.

I’m 40 now, and I think most of my life I’ve lived in fear of what I don’t know. You never reached back out. But I sent you a letter last year because I felt you should to know our baby’s name.

And I summed up our time together in 2 sentences:

"I've been tryna swim with both my hands behind my back. My dear, I always feared the ocean.”

I still fear the ocean. I wonder about my Alina and the life she could’ve had. but now I dive into the current of life regardless of fear, knowing the whole time that having fear doesn’t make me a coward, living and never trying does.

There was a time, when the colors were vibrant, crimson, blue, green and purple, beautiful symmetrical patterns, of incredible complexity. Much concern was taken, with the weaving, precision and pride, but no fear of failure, not with those masters. The price I fetched, fed a family for a year.

A symbol I was of opulence, cultured taste and subtlety.

People even the grandees and magistrates took their shoes off before daring to step.

I moved a lot since that.

Excuse my accent. It's been some time, since anyone asked.

I got cigarette ash, blood. I've seen disaster.

Boots , fresh from conquest, harried upon, with saluting and barking, as explosions close by caused stucco to rain over me.

Rolled up, hurriedly, a trophy changing hand. Snow, soot, and mud. More urine and blood.

I was folded, breaking apart many threads. That later could not be hidden .

Heathens and sodomites, philistines and novo rich, all possessed and mistreated, leaving their marks of disregard and outright malice.

I was turned to a fixture of a cheap apartment, changing impoverished hands month by month.

I was not repaired retouched, nor even vacuumed.

Until the last fire, that I escaped not at all. Left with three corners and a big hole, I was rolled up for the last time, folded, then thrown.

The street cats enjoy the shelter I offer from the rain.

But such is the way of all things...and being stoic is what being a Persian carpet is all about.