He didn't just take off my clothes

He stripped away the skin from my flesh

Like the petals of a rose

All the way down to my bones

He loves me

He loves me not?

Until he uncovered a part of me

I never knew existed

He found a spark inside

What I thought was nothing but rot

But it was something that only he could see

Beneath the good, the bad, the ugly

The issues and imperfections

Yet he still kissed me all over

And he said that he loved me

Showed me that he knew the same pain

He was built the same

That night I asked

and you answered

I knew then

you had read me

my Miranda Rights

I have the right to remain silent

To move in silence

from that day forward

Anything I say

can and will

be held against me

Except it wasn’t in a court of law

It was your mind

I had the right to happiness

But was too weak to afford it

So you provided it

on your terms

You win

I have mastered the art

of not seeing my reflection

in storefront windows,

of deleting emails

before the subject line

can pick my locks.

I have earned my PhD

in changing channels

when the news threatens

to make me responsible

for knowing better.

I am fluent in small talk,

that ancient language of

looking the other way.

Each "fine" and "busy"

a masterclass in building walls

from cotton candy.

My browser history reads:

"how to pretend

everything is okay"

"ways to stay positive

while the house burns"

"best noise-canceling headphones

for drowning out conscience"

I have practiced daily

the Olympic sport

of mental gymnastics,

gold medalist in

the hundred-meter dodge.

But these unread letters

keep piling up under my door,

and my mirrors refuse

to honor my right

to diplomatic immunity

from my own eyes.

Thanks to all who entered my challenge. It was so difficult to choose from so many fantastic pieces and I enjoyed reading every one of them.

Ferryman made me wish I were on cusp of immortality and ChrisSadhill filled the sky with an eruption of pain and brutal truth. These two battled it out and ended up tied for likes. I think that is so cool! How often does that happen? They are the two runners-up.

Honorable mentions are 7v7, rraven, and InvisibleWriter, 2TEFRUIT, and aflalo22.

And our winner is beatricegomes! As a fellow creative, the sentiment conveyed in her piece resounded deeply. Art holds tremendous value and meaning, even in a world hyperfocused on monetization.

If you have not had the chance to do so, please check out her winning entry here:

https://www.theprose.com/post/827193/creative-hooker

More challenges and prizes are coming soon! Thanks again everyone.

how many ways can I keep you?

I can bottle you up like my emotions.

let you caress my cheeks when

you feel the need to show yourself.

Let me sit inside of you while you touch my most intimate parts.

Should I swallow you whole or sip you slow?

Let you taste me while you shower me with effection.

Or is it okay if we do this next time maybe in public

I can share you with everyone.

I leave you alone with your cold and hard as rock so I let you chill.

But I find you again when you melt in my mouth tasting your shapeless shape.

You can be unique and change when I need you to but would I do the same for you? I don't know. Maybe when you turn to snow?

I know you can be fresh so I let you take me there a little salt sometimes yes you can touch my hair.

You remain the same substance and can take any form.

I only wish I could be more flexible like you.

She’d been perfect. I loved the southern accent and the mismatched socks that she never seemed to be aware of. She was like a breath of fresh air in the Electric City long since dying, maybe even dead already, after coal became nearly obsolete. I tried to tell her often that I appreciated her, that she was pretty, and that she was talented. They weren't lies. I never lied to her.

She didn't lie to me. Usually. I let it slide when she did. She’d say she couldn't go out, but I'd see her with her friends. I only confronted her once. She was so determined not to talk, so damn stubborn, that I asked her if she even wanted to date me. If she had ever trusted me. It made her cry. Her dad didn’t want her to see me, she relented. She usually blamed her father, a big, stoic guy with years of military service and an obsessive Christian faith. He never liked me. But she didn’t talk much even when we did see each other.

When she asked me to read a short story of hers, I jumped at the opportunity. I must have read the piece thirteen times. I could see her personality flowing into the words. Every word I read, I learned more about who she was. From her poetry to full novels, the picture of her became clearer and clearer. I tolerated the lies, because she spoke plainly on the page. Our own system of communication.

Nobody really saw it coming when she ended up in the hospital after tossing half a bottle of acetaminophen down her throat. I was terrified. All I got was a 2-sentence text from her mom the morning after.

She came back to school a week and a half later. I was one of few people who knew why. She lied to everyone else. She returned more closed off. There were no more stories and fewer dates. I was so scared she'd do it again, that I pushed her often to tell me what was going on in her head. Why had she done it? Was it so bad to be alive? Sometimes, she would tell me she was fine. Sometimes she wouldn't respond at all.

I saw her writing diligently in a notebook a month after her hospitalization. I felt a wave of relief, like a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders, seeing her pencil drift back and forth across the page. Maybe she was ready to talk again.

As soon as I asked, she snapped the book shut. I could have sworn guilt washed over her face. She refused to let me read it. Something deep in me guttered. She was always lying, always secretive, and always blaming it on her damned father. I realized I couldn't do it. "Are you hiding something from me?" I couldn't stop the words. If she wasn't going to trust me, I had to break up with her. It was driving me insane. I told her so.

She slowly handed me the journal. I read it in one night. It must have been 80 pages of her. Of her fears and desires. Of her secret thoughts and fragile hopes. Her words coiled around my heart. She was okay.

I was relieved. I returned her journal and asked if we could talk. She came over that afternoon. I did most of the talking. I tried to kiss her, but she wouldn't kiss me back. I just wanted her to feel something. I pulled her close and slid my hands under her T-shirt. She cried. And I guess that was the end.

After weeks of nothingness from her, I told her I was breaking up with her. She said, okay. She wouldn't even let me drive her home. She walked down my driveway and around the corner. She barely acknowledged me again after that. She looked like a shell. I heard she attempted again after high school. A part of me hates her for being so depressed. The other part hates myself for not being able to help.

Other perspective: https://www.theprose.com/post/813274/why-i-write

When you said

I think about death all the time

my heart shattered

as someone who has lived with death

invited him over even

once or twice

the sentiment was nothing new

we’re old friends, he and I,

buddies;

but you,

You

who have always loved life

who never entertained thoughts

of mortality

never wanted the trip to end

who found joy in each phase

life threw your way

for you, for me, this was devastating

a normal stage of progression,

perhaps,

but one I’d hoped you’d never meet.

Fertilization, in vitro

Was our last chance

To reproduce sans libido

Or passion, or romance

Technology overshot

When we sono-confirmed

Five heartbeats, five argonauts

On their voyage to term

T'was ordered an injunction

Via abortive injections

For selective reduction

And elective selections

Three were obliging enough

To give access to their worlds

And terminate in a puff

Leaving two, now free to unfurl

"Why are we twins here;

Why were we the two who were born?

Why did we not disappear:

Because ours were the hardest to perform?"

"We are here, are we not?

Because we weren't easy to discard

But we no longer hear

The pulse of triplets onboard."

How do parents explain

Children who were put,

Then sent away again

And didn't make the cut?

____________

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Whether one is pro-life or pro-choice, the whole concept of "selective reduction" of a multiple-gestation is a philosophical mindbender.

The "Octomom" pretty much ended the practice of inserting many embryos to increase the odds of some surviving; especially since IVF technology had improved with better odds of all surviving.

Thus, allowing more than one or two embryos of a multiple gestation to proceed, after an overachievement in assisted reproduction (i.e., in vitro fertilization), was fraught with too many "taking"--and then surviving--until preterm labor or complications tragically doomed them all.

Yet, pro-choice mothers, with selective reduction, abort babies that they wanted at the outset. And pro-life mothers have to choose to renounce their philosophy (or religion!) in order to save the babies who would remain after the selective reduction.

Imagine the dilemma for all who think too hard on this issue: a couple with infertility, desperate to have a baby--to have a family--only to have to "deal" with babies they wanted.

Confused? Understandable.

But the thing that may be the most disturbing is that the choice of which babies to "reduce" (ironic semantics: how do you "reduce" a baby?) is made on which amniotic sac is the most accessible. That is, the most convenient fetal sac to get into with an injection of an abortive. The others, the hardest to get to, thus become the lucky ones. And terms like collateral damage come to mind.

I tried my best not to make this poem sound tongue-in-cheek, which rhyme (which I can't resist) often risks. But I did want some angst to fall out of it, especially when you have to explain to a child that they were just as likely to have been the unlucky ones as their theoretical brothers/sisters turned out to be. They will realize that it was just how they implanted in their mother's uterus--that made so crucial an existential call. And a capricious one, at that.

I've tried to reconcile the thinking on this, but I've come to the conclusion that it can't be done.

Because it's a paradox.

From epigraph to epitaph

My epic is a pictograph

Graphically depicting an epithet

Of the e'pithiness I beget

Festooned within an epigram

Sums up who I really am

From my swaddled cradle to my toppled grave

Gravely gave my all — but then forgave

From my trumble in the womb

To the crumble of my tomb

Extrapolated my epithet

Of vignettes sinned without regret

My life proceeded Gaussian

All my motion speeded Brownian

Followed linear: beginning to middle — to end'd

Nosedove, sloped down, from the slope I began, ascended

Presumed regally alive or declared legally dead

My life, all planned and lived, was all in my head

Colliding with the others who happenstanced their ways

Into mine and breached my entranceways

I assumed a nom de plume

In life lived in the bedded room

Making creatures of epithelium

To seed the interstellar medium

I started in a bang, on-rushed

Doomed to fall into the epic crush

Episodes repeating in redundant splendors

And connect, ends to starts, to epicenters

Those from the ilk of my same cloth

Will follow on silk, my coattails, forth

But when all episodes are said and done

My epilogue will be — from one to none