The first piece I wrote on theProse was published on December 18, 2018. It was a short poem for a challenge that goes to a 404 page now so, it's a mystery. My submission was quite short:

On a precipice

Cradled in gnarly roots, 

steep, rocky mountain behind

and below,

I gaze upon brilliant blue.

(https://www.theprose.com/post/247380/on-a-precipice)

I submitted two other pieces on that day as well, but they were written before I discovered theProse.

In December 2018, my husband was just starting to accept the Parkinson's diagnosis he'd received in February, 2017. My son had joined the family business while also delving deeply into a passion he'd developed starting in August 2017: Ironman competitions. I was a year into "retirement" from a 26 year career in foreign language education and building a career in acting. I had also started painting and I was trying to write more. I had been writing for decades (so many notebooks), but I wanted to do so more consistently.

And I really wanted to be read, perhaps even published.

Enter, theProse.

Finding theProse was a godsend for me: for the writing it has encouraged thus enabling me to improve (I think); the reading that has touched and inspired me; the genius I have had the privilege of witnessing myriad times over the years; the joy of being read, understood and appreciated; the prizes and challenges I have won; and, most importantly, the friends I have made (some gone now), who I feel like I know though we have never met (in person).

Nearly five years to the day have passed since that first post. My husband has made it through all the steps of grief for the loss of life as he knew it and works hard to avoid the slippery slope of despair. My son continues to work with his dad and now has a coach and a team with which to train for his Ironman competitons. He also has a fiancée now, having proposed earlier this year (wedding in August 2024).

As for me, I am still writing, a lot more longer prose than poetry. When I get hold of a good topic, I find it hard to stop writing. Still no novel in me yet, though. I have a room full of canvases and one of my paintings is on the wall of my son's home. And I had the lead in my first short film and a national commercial this year.

So, life is good.

And one reason why is because of the community here at theProse.

I am so grateful to have found you.

Love to you all,

Danielle

(Dctezcan)

https://www.theprose.com/post/709806/fate-complex-church

There’s a beautiful garden behind a church by my home.

There’s a few small gravestones marking the lives of souls long past.

There’s a sculpture of a man spinning with the stars.

There’s a woman confronting her fate.

She’s carving her name into a tree that passed away, crashed down, and died.

Now the tree is a bridge covered in soft moss.

It crosses a river with everchanging waters.

The waters might drown the woman.

The fallen tree might save her.

Crossing the river will undoubtedly change her.

She can use the fallen tree to cross the waters or she can try to cross without a bridge.

There’s only one thing the woman can’t do.

She can’t avoid crossing the river.

She can’t stand in one place forever.

She must keep spinning with the stars.

She must confront her fate.

She can watch the moon wax and wane for months or years,

But eventually she must cross.

She must let the everchanging waters change her,

She can let the bridge save her.

Her purpose lies on the other side of a fallen tree.

She’s carving her name here to mark the soul of a woman passing by.

Check this https://theprose.com/post/775585/the-raise-of-pumpkin

I'm going to admit, this is not an easy path. I recently joined Prose, maybe around 3 months ago. I was looking for a community and search how to monetize my content. You know the rest.

Everything happened quickly. I was already into another platform and told myself to upload every day, not knowing that it will take a toll on my mind and body while I just started to write in here.

So I decided to take a break for a week or two. But something else coming up. I need to return home to visit my family. Then I have to return back to the country where I live to taking care of my document. It was like, almost never ending "exams". Very challenging.

But, we all know that life is like a wheel. It always spins. It might sound cliche, but I would like to say, everything that happened has a meaning. The thing we thought was horrible might turn into something joyful. And the reason why our days were so rough might be to prepare us the best rewards we can imagine. Although, I'm one of you that also prefers to have happy life ever after. That is not just possible, my friend. We need some challenge sometimes.

Now that I feel like I'm ready to return and continuing my life the same as I leave it 3 months ago, except the everyday posting, I think I begin to open the rewards one by one.

I checked my email today, and I found an invitation to join the Emerald Lounge. Also, yesterday, I received and invitation to read my poem in public next week. So excited!!!!

This gonna be my first time reading my poem in public. Honestly, I don't know what I should do or which poem I should read. I need to prepare many things and a lot of practice.

Thank you so much for Prose for becoming a new home for me. Also, thank you to all people that begin to or already following me. I appreciate all your support. I hope I can satisfy your crave of many words in any forms. And I'll try to stick with my schedule this time.

Oh, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year for everyone!

see at https://www.theprose.com/challenge/3593

We all have our walls.

Some of us let one wall drop, revealing our audiences.

Some of us let two walls drop, allowing opposites in, demanding we choose.

Some of us let three walls drop and think we can hide behind the one remaining.

When some of us let all four drop, what our walls have heard is no longer secretive and we're exposed, for better or for worse.

Those who let no walls drop are doomed to pace relentlessly, getting nowhere, within windowless, door-less constraints.

**********

Follow-Up: New Walls

Some walls drop and some remain

Some in ruins and some in pain

Labyrinthine passages direct me onward

Byzantine battering reroutes me forward

My box grows walls in whatever direction

Fibonacci calls, by whatever'y reflection

Grant myself light from windows in my walls

Plant my self-sight of hallowed births en caul

Comparison

My first piece here on theprose.com (July 2016) was the above, "We All Have Walls."

See at https://www.theprose.com/challenge/3593.

The follow-up, written seven years later (December 7, 2023), reflects on how the world is not so simple and not so much all about me. We are not performing for an audience, but are growing by the applause or, alternatively, the tomatoes thrown at us. At some point, we see the light through the previously obstructing walls and will be fulfilled (have sight of the hallowed births) — births of your self-actualization through the prophecy ("born with the caul") of what you see when seeking the righteous way.

https://www.theprose.com/post/621507/analytics

This post represents a lot for me. Though it isn’t my favorite piece, not by a long shot, I can’t help but feel a small sense of pride whenever I read it. Before finding my way to The Prose, I wrote, but I wrote without direction and without any idea of what the end goal was to be, or what it ought to be. I simply wrote for the mental and phalanges exercises.

This amassed thousands, if not, hundreds of thousands of words of prose that went entirely nowhere, except the basement in old folders, collecting dust. This took place over the better part of a decade, if not longer. I simply couldn’t figure out what I was trying to do or what I was trying to say. Or if I had anything to say at all.

I’m also a musician (well a four chord superstar), and back when I was 20 or so, a buddy and I decided to form a band. I’d write the songs, and music, and he’d sing them. He had a great voice, I did not. He wasn’t much of a writer, maybe I wasn’t either, but nevertheless I took the reins.

I’ll never forget the first evening we got together at my apartment. My coffee table was filled with beer and liquor and we had a turntable, with a massive collection of records to help motivate and inspire us.

As I placed the guitar on my lap, and then the notepad next to the beer, both of us had a strange moment, where we looked at each, kind of laughed, and I said “What in the hell are we going to write?”

We had all of these ideas. All of these influences in different genres, and when it came time to compose something of our own, we just blanked.

This reminded me a lot of my writing years later, when I decided I wanted to be an author.

As someone who reads every single day of their lives with no real rhyme or reason to the stories that they digest, I couldn’t help thinking the same thing I thought all of those years ago as a university student with a belly full of beer. “What the hell am I going to write?”

And this website, like a literary epiphany, appeared and allowed me to focus my multitudes of straggler ideas into some form of coherence. It allowed me to look at the challenges, and tell myself that I had to write a story that fell within the guidelines of the prompts.

So again, I digress. This isn’t my favorite piece, but it’s instrumental and symbolic to where I am today. That story led to dozens more, and since then I've received an offer to publish a short story collection, with several of them coming from the great challenges I’ve entered on this site.

This community is so important for writers who are looking for a place to untangle the mess in their heads, and allow others to experience these stories without malice, or judgment sans constructivism.

I often think of art and the hidden and often lost talents of those who create but never hit submit. I hope for them that they find this place, and let us see their undiscovered talent. Because boy, is there ever a lot of talent here.

The Original:

https://theprose.com/post/749675/blood-and-silver

The New:

I shrug to relieve the discomfort of the nicotine patch on my arm, its freshness burning with a familiar tingle of chemical to skin. I ignore it otherwise for a long while instead focusing my eyes on the lamp post ahead. Argentille did have beautiful Winters, though I so often forgot in favour of its seedier seasons. I sigh heavily, watching my breath billow out in front of me and dance away like a coupling of aerials.

I am alone now. My family gone, their gazes cold and fleeting as I showed up on their stoop, dirty, painted in dark disturbances aside the IV site that showed the few inches of soft, pale skin and a faint red dot where the needle had been. My mother handed me a cheque- just enough for a few months rent- and disappeared to grab her suitcase without a word. I would have said it suits me just fine, but sobriety allows a conscience a conscious thought so I must say it aches deeply. But this is life, isn't it? Aching horribly, intentions strewn, boundaries stretched.

I would be called abusive in a thousand ways and yet no one wishes to know me deeper than that. As to why I am- it is such a private event not a soul I have 'loved' has wormed from me. That is strength, as weak as it may hold up to such a heavy guilt beating me down with such force.

I blink, the snowflakes heavy on my lashes as I twist my fingers- nine and a half (because the butcher of my ring had been sloppy) in the pockets of my jacket. Warmth is something unfamiliar. Pain is unfamiliar in this extent. Knowing I had meant so much to someone they could barely glance at me for fear of breaking, knowing my life was worth more than a bounty. I trace the nub at my second knuckle with the opposite index twisted between blue pills from my hoodie. I smile, and it is a sick thing. To smile despite tragedy at your own hands. To feel joy after committing such pain. I lick at my windchapped lips and gaze upon the road ahead.

My pockets stuffed with nothing but cigarette embers, the grime of filthy bills and blood. Deeper, though, I feel my family thought they may hurt at my thought beneath within my veins. I feel the heat of my flesh. I feel the truth of my own heartbeat bred from generations of love.

I smile up at the lamppost softly, welcoming the snow upon my skin. My town. My home. My life. My humanity.

https://theprose.com/post/224403/procrastination

I still procrastinate. It's funny. I knew that was going to be the post but I worried, yet hoped simultaneously that it might end up being something much more depressing. I wasn't doing too well back then...

I do still procrastinate. And life still gets empty. That was... About six years ago; that post. I'd like to say my writing is better and it is but I prefer to leave it as - I can express my emotions more clearly now. Relate it to things. Drowning and sinking and terror. I can describe my terror better now. I used to think it was impossible to have people understand what's going on. I just didn't have the words for it.

Thirteen-years-old me was going through it. I still procrastinate. I guess the difference is that I'm not as ashamed of it. Not as violent with myself over it. Not willing to rupture any of the teensy blood vessels scrambling like ants through my skin because of something like a missed assignment or not-to-my-exhuasting-standard result.

I've been self-harm free for about 8 months now. Well... Two-hundred and seventy days exactly, plus one real soon. Typing it in words feels more grand so... There. I have an app for it or I may never have kept track. It's called "I Am Sober" for any curious beans/beings.

I never thought I'd get there. I never thought I could do anything other than hate myself for every little mistake. I never thought I could see my very existence as not-a-mistake.

Things do change. Slowly. But surely. It took work. And effort. And pain. And giving up. It took a year of stopping the fight. Of letting my body be pushed and pulled by the sea while I stared blankly on, no more thrashing, no more... Anything. It took a year of being one with all the murk of the waves as I was thrown about.

Everything silenced eventually. Everything stopped mattering.

I still procrastinate. But see, I don't hate myself for it. I don't hurt myself for it. I am going to make it to a year without harming myself. I swear it. On the love I have for the little child trapped in a body right now, confused but trying to sail through nonetheless. I built myself a boat while I was being tossed around. The sea is home, now. And I am the captain of this, unstable, pretty, fragile, rickety mess of a thing. I shake and I stumble and I am rowing through every wave as it comes, nonetheless.

I still procrastinate. I miss things because I'm afraid. I have to hold myself back from causing myself harm when I am unhappy or angry with nowhere to direct those feelings. But I am alive. And I am better. The pain's dulled a bit, become less important now that self-compassion and self-acceptance have begun to bloom. My scars are... Practically gone, believe it or not.

I thought they'd be there forever. I thought I'd keep replacing them until the end. I thought the end would be by my hands alone.

I still procrastinate. But I love myself anyway. And I'm all the better for it.