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THEMES by PROMPT
We publish writing using a series of prompts as an entry point for exploring emotions, personal histories, shared truths, joy, grief, shame, and those themes that matter most to us in our hearts.
Explore the themes by prompt below:
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A Silent Conversation: Ice Cream in the Sun
By Liz Roddin — The pint of ice cream was getting low, and we still hadn’t spoken. As I spooned, I looked at his downcast eyes and decided I
Jan 22
HOW TO KNOW IF SOMEONE LOVES YOU?
By David James — You may find someone staring at you when you glance up from washing dishes, and they smile. They may bring you a hot tea
Jan 8
My Dear Angel of The Internet
By H.L. Dowless — My angel of the internet, she lives among the wires. I endeavor to move as close to her as I can get. I type the keypad
Jan 2
I Am Alone
By Linda Leedy Schneider — I am naked in my own house now. Once I lived on a wide river with a man, my husband of over 50 years. We often
Dec 17, 2024
This poem as a wish
By Ron Riekki — As a couples counselor who is a single, I daily wish I could exist with the bliss of struggle, of fighting for love,
Oct 15, 2024
The Why of Abandonment
By Pamela OHara — This day is dedicated to you, but you are not here. The only thing that I wanted from my father was that he be here.
Oct 8, 2024
Love is being able to hold the pain with the love
By Eileen Nittler — There was no calm place, only the cruel bodyguards of grief—anger, sorrow, confusion, hopelessness. I settled for
Oct 3, 2024
Conditional Love
By Carolyn Martin — I’m conditioned to follow Rumi’s advice to sell my tongue and buy a thousand ears when you arrive with the latest
Aug 20, 2024
LOVE IN THE TIME OF 40 ROSEBUSHES
By Elizabeth Lewis — There are things you cannot know about life, with its relentless cycles and imperatives until you have been burned to
Aug 13, 2024
INTERTWINED
By Faith Canright — Your flavor of easy lies, lover of my deepest heart. Our fragrance of stolen time. Passion grows in lush green eyes
Jul 26, 2024
Mom
By Carl Scharwath — Dim light paints the evening scene. She sits alone, a single mom with burdens akin to shadows, always behind her in
May 12, 2024
A thousand small happinesses a day
By Loretta Iwaniw-Horne — We're talking about nothing in particular. I tell him that I stuffed up my knee. It needs surgery, but I don't
May 2, 2024
Under the moon
By Principe Guity Jr — Kissing under the ascending moon as it climbs from behind is the lover's dream. It streams in my mind, as if I had a
Apr 22, 2024
A Love Prayer By An Unbeliever
By Royal Rhodes — Help me see the stars, remembered fire, seraphic furnaces that showed our fault, when chance or fate, or even our desire,
Mar 14, 2024
A CROW'S WOMAN
By John Grey — The crows won't let me go to sleep. Aamong them—who would have thought it?—was Suzanne. And in Providence? And my once and
Feb 18, 2024
Old apple tree & compass points
By Colin Ian Jeffery — There is an apple tree where I often go and sit beneath and if I listen very heard, I hear my brother's happy cries
Feb 7, 2024
Perhaps
By Holly Payne-Strange — Perhaps I am not in love with you. Perhaps I am enthralled, dangerously besotted and beautifully dedicated. Maybe
Dec 18, 2023
Your nectar
By Sandip Saha — I am amazed in your beauty. It is the touch stone to forget the predicament in the well of life in which I have fallen
Nov 14, 2023
When I Hold Her
By Bethany Jarmul — When I hold her, I’ve felt this feeling before—read a poem so poignant I wanted to burn it so I could eat it, filling my
Oct 3, 2023
THE KNOXVILLE HYATT
By John Richmond — Did this, you might ask make their “togetherness” complicated? Not exactly. Maybe a little foggy, but not so much that th
Sep 10, 2023
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