I love you, baby.

Tears of joy and happiness.

Soft and warm and safe.

School days, friends and trials

Heartbreak and independence.

Pain. and growth. And joy.

Eighteen. And dabblin’

More than friends, less than lovers.

Having our own child.

Formative years now

Living for children daily

Immeasurable love.

Saying our goodbyes

To friends. To fam’ly. To us.

I love you, baby.

you are born in blood

and cry for something unnamed

yearning for soft love

your emotions are

too big for your body, and

you want to catch up

but young adulthood

brings loneliness in u-hauls

and loved ones fading

is this life? just change

and love and loss and feeling

so much you might die?

and then death arrives

so gently, and carries you

back to your old room

Hello, Writers and Dear Readers.

What does dating a mortician, roadkill shoutouts, Shakespeare, tons of talent new to the site and our resident legends, a bad haircut, and over the counter flu meds have in common? The answer needs to be, "Nothing," but in today's video, each of those elements, and a few more, collide into each haiku in our last Challenge of the Week being read, after introducing the new Challenge of the Month, with a bit of pizzazz on this one.

Here's that link.

https://www.theprose.com/challenge/14207

And here's the link to the video on The Prose. Channel. I know for sure I dropped or misread a few words or usernames, but show mercy, if you would. I'll tag some of the writers in the comments, and a few writers new to Prose.

And, to them, from us: Big family home here. Pick a room, and walk downstairs for the feast, whenever you feel like it. Welcome home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FIElCwRN3Y

And.

As always.

Thank you for being here.

-The Prose. team

"Mom! Tim got mold in the cup holder!" My second-eldest brother groans, as I cling to his side in the stuffy 3-seater sat at the back of the van.

The fluffy, greenish thing growing within the beige compartment was horrifying. I swallow as it seems to pulse with every bump and jolt of the wheels, snuggling closer into my begrudging sibling.

I can hear Tim's adamant disagreement-- Aidan left rock pops in there last week!

I listen to the crackle of a pre-teen boys voice through his chest that my ear is incessantly pressing against. "No! Tim was last back in here with cotton candy!" He says with a wave of his DS.

Realistically, I know it was me with the black liquorice. My grandma had handed me it from the front knowing my sweet tooth. I was never one to deny candy, and it was the first time I had ever tried it despite Aidan's assurance I'd hate it. I loved her too much to verbalize my detest and sneakily spat it into the cup holder when no one was noticing perhaps over a month ago, wiping the drool on a hand-sewn pillow that left a black smear mark I swore I didn't know how it got there,

I smile softly to myself, leaning into the familiarity of a family vacation.

I am three and I am seven and I am nine and I am thirteen and seventeen and twenty and more, numbers climbing every year as they do for everyone, but don't let Mom hear that, she'll pout and then breathe heavily in the other direction as she digests your words like she is chewing rocks.

She looks at you like she is a planet in orbit that knows that one day, it will crash into you and ruin itself at the chance of taking you down with it. Your beauty is her biggest accomplishment, and your flaws are her personal failures, or maybe your dad's.

I'll beat the dough by hand like she does, because the blender is too expensive and noisy, and I'll cut my own hair with craft scissors at the same age as she did, and I'll give my pets human names like her own, and join sports teams like she did, except maybe I won't always like succeed in them like she did, and I am just a wanderer who only trekking across the field for a brief moment in time. And so I want to hide away where no one can find me like she does, maybe in a forest clearing like when I was a child, or maybe through sheer willpower I can fit myself into a cabinet that I haven't been able to fit in for hide-and-seek since I was eleven years old, because even now I am still trying to find traces of when I was small enough to be free.

I hope I never have a daughter because if she is born looking like me, I worry I will never be able to tell her she is beautiful.

The torso laid bare,

bright in the morning sunlight,

but the school bell rang.

Sorry! Haiku counts syllables not words:

5 - syllables

7 - "

5 - "