Prompt: Give yourself permission

Give yourself permission to imagine something so lovely and amazing that for a moment you feel truly free. Give yourself permission to feel so truly free you may have to stop yourself from trying to fly. Give yourself permission to fly so high the world below looks like a quilt of paint store chips. Give yourself permission to float over the world long enough to remember how lovely and amazing it is to be right here, right now.

Prompt: From the back of a truck...

...it fell then bounced a few times before it came to rest on the gravel shoulder. What was it, you ask? I will tell you in good time, in good time. The sky that day was a marvelous cerulean, wouldn't you know. Of course a stray cloud now and again would scud its way to the horizon when you weren't paying too much attention. It would be years before anyone would even notice the contrails, let alone speculate on their true meaning, I'll let you know. Yes, it was a simpler time, much simpler. It was so simple, no one would object if you just rocked an afternoon away on your porch And whether or not you had a book in your hand or an iced drink made no difference atall to the casual passerby. And that's exactly what old Abernathy was doing that glorious afternoon, except he had both the book and the iced drink and he was rocking away when it fell. I wish I knew what he was reading that kept him so entranced that at first he didn't notice the bundle that had bounced almost to his very doorstep. Well, alright, it was a few yards, give or take away, but houses back then were further apart. Nowadays you can practically ring your neighbor's bell from your own kitchen window while you're doing your washing. But in those days it just wasn't so. And old Abernathy kept rocking and reading, putting his glass down on the rickety wicker table, careful to place it on the same ring without even looking over to see. It must've been some book because even when the squawking started, he didn't look up. I think he might've raised an eyebrow, maybe his left, then his right and then turned another page. If you ever looked closely at his forehead, you could see how the furrows neatly divided, just over his brows, the left one a little more prominent, more deeply grooved. I believe this showed how he was more amused at life than anything. Anyway, that was his first reaction to the package that would change the rest of his years on this Earth.

Prompt: It's in the blood

blood, wine, earth, metal, red, sanguine, sangre, body, bone. We all are made of the same substances, the same combinations of the elements, the same red blood and the same white bone. And yet, and yet we find ways to diverge, to demonstrate otherness. Do we not all bleed?

Prompt: a person as a food

If someone were to describe me as a food, I am certain I would not be referred to as luscious, which rules out anything containing dairy or anything capable of becoming ripe, such as a tomato or a peach or even a strawberry. These, all somewhat round, probably preclude other similarly shaped foods like Kaiser rolls or select varieties of squash. So where does that leave me? While I long to be thought of as a tender pear, the truth is I am more stalk-like though not completely devoid of soft spots which means celery and rhubarb are out, plus, my hair is a bit wider than the width of the majority of my stem. Therefore, on further consideration, even though this description may bring to mind broccoli, I believe my true food nature is closer to cotton candy, on a stick, minus the cloying sweetness, of course.

Prompt: Odd Couples

Were they ever seen in person together or was the idea of their association some sort of publicity stunt? For some reason she has a more poetic reputation, however cheesy, that has endured the ages. Yes, even when she was festooned for her public in furs and spectacular gems and hid her crows feet behind over-sized Foster Grants, she was always adored, always referred to as a "classy lady". So, it strikes one as a bit odd to be informed, through the tabloids and what not, that she, and he, at least two decades her junior, would ever have rendezvoused. And allegedly, can you imagine, he would bring his pet monkey that she was so fond of, and the three of them would spend an afternoon. Is that not outrageous? Even though recording their gallivanting here summons such wacky imagery, it all seems suspicious and really only as strange as, dare we mention it, fiction.

Prompt: cardamom

The first time I ate or rather drank something with cardamom, I didn't know I was drinking it. And that went on for many, many years. Probably because it was only one of the countless specks infusing the air invisibly, exotically, pungently, delicately. Some scents immediately on being sniffed take you somewhere, somewhere you've been before, to someone you've known. For instance, a certain clean, freshly ironed cotton will transport me to the late afternoon I met my husband. He gave me a piggyback ride and I knew as I put my head on his shoulder that the t-shirt he was wearing had been recently laundered and hung to dry in the sun of an East coast summer afternoon. But cardamom is not exactly like that. It is true that I do remember he and I drank chai for the first time, together. It was at the back of an Indian store, in Berkeley, many years after the piggy back ride.

Prompt: I remember rainy days through a window ...

...and the house was quiet except for the sound of the tv where we watched reruns of The Brady Bunch and then later Happy Days came on and by then I'd gone upstairs, to check on things but no one had come home yet and you were hungry and I was hungry and the refrigerator held maybe a cup of milk settled in the bottom of the carton, a six pack of Rolling Rock, a jar of mayonnaise with an expired date and the remains of last night's take out chicken that I put on a plate and trundled down to you and we both sat there on the couch carefully removing slivers of meat and washing them down with sips of milk and hysterical laughter.

Prompt: My petit orchid or Still Life

Set against a pale yellow wall, the orchids dissolved. I looked again and their centers, bleeding the most delicate pink, drifted slowly into focus. I cleared my throat, despite the fact no one was there to hear me reassert my presence. On the table were the flowers which were in a vase, also pink, but a solid pink, my coffee cup, my tiny white pitcher of cream in the shape of a cow in full moo, and my spoon, resting quietly on a fresh linen cloth. Dust motes hung in the air, almost motionless, glowing like stars, suspended, waiting. Dare I even breathe, lest they rouse themselves from their dreaming? I sighed against my will.