Prompt: just after midnight

Just after midnight I awoke: to pee or not to pee? I peed. As I sat there contemplating tiptoeing back across the cold tiles, I suddenly remembered something my friend Lisa had once written about peeing. She'd gone to an exclusive movie party. The movie starred Winona Ryder. It may have been the actress's first role, a vampiress, before those became all the rage. Lisa, during an intermission, went to the bathroom, to pee of course. When she got to a stall, who should traipse out but that little vixen, Winona herself. Lisa had marveled at her diminutiveness, her glowing skin, her annoying proximity to Johnny Depp, the film's love interest, and later, for a time, in real life. Winona, that bitch, Lisa recalled, had completely ignored her as she made a grand exit from the restroom. My friend shrugged it off to fleeting star power, then locked the stall door and sat down to do her business. She was at first alarmed and then thrilled to find the seat was still warm. Winona had warmed it just for her. Lisa's parting comment, I remember clearly, was, "tee hee!" I got up from my own warm seat and sprinted back to bed with visions of fangs and toilets and Johnny Depp to lull me back to sleep.

Prompt: It started as just a speck in the distance.

We'd been walking for maybe a quarter of an hour, the early morning fog softening the edges of everything including the sound of our own footsteps on the saturated gravel. It caught my eye because we'd stopped talking and I kept checking to make sure it was still there. Sure enough, as we walked, my breath mingling with the soft cool air, I could see a form taking shape, shifting a little, becoming denser, yet weightless somehow. And in that moment I felt weightless, as though I could float through the skyless air. I must have stumbled because you took my arm and then warmed my hand with your breath. As we neared the thing I had witnessed grow from a mere smudge, you awoke me from my trance. "I wonder who tied their balloon here?"

Prompt: Coasters

I have a little round wooden box. Inside there are six little dark wooden discs, carved with tropical scenes. I used to like to open and close the box and take out the coasters just to hear the click of the wood and to feel the lid fit snugly into its canister. I'd lay the circles out in lines and patterns on the coffee table, shuffling them like a magician practicing a trick.

I've since lost my little trinket. I'm guessing it's in a box, in a closet, in the house, packed away, waiting patiently to protect a surface somewhere in the future. In the meantime, I drink my tea in the mornings and before bed, placing my cup, or glass, on the naked table between sips. The faint shadow of a ring has appeared now and again, but these days I have a dish rag at the ready to wipe away any residue of a past.

Prompt: New Year's Poem

I remember my grandmother's poem about how her life was like a bubble rising in the stem of a glass of champagne.

I remember William Carlos Williams's poem about the plums in the ice box but I've forgotten if they'd been eaten.

I remember Frank O'Hara's waking up to the sun maybe writing about Billie Holiday.

I remember the sunflower who countest the steps of the sun as only William Blake could word so perfectly.

I remember The Raven, who, with one word, "nevermore" could send chills down my spine, over and over and over again. Thank you Edgar Allen Poe.

I remember Elizabeth Bishop's paintings more than her poetry, I'm afraid.

And Emily Dickinson, her eyes, the color of sherry that's left at the bottom of the glass are impossible to forget although I've never seen them myself.

I remember 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, possibly Wallace Stevens' most visual work, at least for me.

I remember so little of Billy Collins, except laughing out loud at something about a barking dog or two.

I remember Marianne Moore and H.D. and Edna St. Vincent Millay whose voice can be heard quavering on an old recording, reciting, "we were very tired, we were very merry. We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry."

I must remember, though, to confess that I stole this idea of remembering (re-embering) from Joe Brainard, whose book, "I Remember" is the most wonderful recounting of things he remembered, along with other works of his, including hilarious depictions of Nancy (of Nancy and Sluggo fame), lovely and amazing paintings and other images, all of which attest to his bravery, his genius and the absolute necessity to be remembered.

Prompt: "You Used to Make So Much of Me"

You used to make so much of me. Do you not now? What am I measuring the past against anyway? Is it not enough that you still touch my face with the tips of your fingers? You still draw my bath after a walk in the rain. Did we not fall asleep tangled last night as we have for more than half our lives? What unit of comparison has wedged its way between us, between now and then?

Prompt: Character on a Bus

Sitting beside the window, looking out at the passing landscape, he was unshaven, yet dressed in a suit of a good cut. His hair was slicked back in the style of old gangsters, dark, with a pomade that infused the air around him with the scent of oranges and cardamom. He could have been on the set of a movie except for the crate next to him, which held a live rooster. The creature, oddly calm under the circumstances, occasionally made an abbreviated cock-a-doodle-doo. At these intrusions, the young man would turn from his vigil and make soft cooing sounds that seemed to transfix the captive once more.

Prompt: "gosh it's been a while"

Dear S, Gosh, it's been a while. I've been thinking about you and meaning to get in touch, but you know what they say, road to hell and all that. Really, though, I wonder how you've been. I thought about calling but seem to have lost your number. Believe it or not, I've sent you at least two emails both of which bounced back. How does that even happen? Gosh, it really has been a while, hasn't it? My daughter, the one you gave that hand-carved doll, graduated from Columbia and moved to L.A. She's an aspiring actress. Maybe you've seen her -- she was in the crowd scene in that latest Tom Cruse thing. And J - I even tried googling him but the most recent hit I got was two years old. It can't have been that long, can it? I still remember our last conversation, the one where you confessed all that stuff just before our husbands walked in the door from wherever they'd gone. I didn't have a chance to tell you how brave I thought you were. It's only recently dawned on me that my reticence after all these years must have seemed to you like some sort of disapproval. Really, though, it's just that Life, with a capital L, has gotten in the way. I so do hope you will understand and forgive me enough to pick up our friendship where we left off. I have so much to tell you. --R