summer prompts

on this night

my heart searches

for you

across the rooftops.

soundlessly I drift

through ethereal obsidian

beyond the rooftops.

we are hidden

in this veil of ebony

beneath the stars

ablaze, radiant and nigh

like corundum.

I float to rest

silently

to the rooftops.

and from the rooftops

I see the stars.

the world spirals to abeyance.

and I wonder

if gravity were to liberate me from its hold

as the world overturned,

would I fall

to the stars?

to you?

Yesterday, I was in a little supermarket just up the hill from where we were staying. We were in a town in Galicia called Portomarín that leans over the reservoir that flooded its old buildings, but the people moved the church up out of the old town and put it at the top of a new hill. It seemed that everything in the town was up stairs or up a hill, away from the water. My feet hurt. In the mirrored wall of the supermarket, I paused to stare at myself. My hair was a long fizzy frizzy cloud, brown and curly, not styled but uncontrolled, like sheep wool. I wore a purple-pink dress from the sporting goods store, and under it I wore puffy olive green pants. I wore several necklaces and wooden rings and the same earrings that I'd worn all month. My face was red - my nose was burnt and peeling - and my arms were tan. I held a bar of soap, a bottle of shampoo, and a box of granola bars. On my feet were pink plastic flip flops. I had vicious white blisters on my heels. I thought that I looked like an adventurer, a traveler who could cross the wheat fields where the sun broke across my face like a shattered egg and left me burnt and angry. I thought that I looked like I could walk for thirty kilometers and then go out shopping for food and soap. I felt tough and experienced. And then it rained today, for the first time. If my flip flops could talk, they'd resent that I wore them for the last few kilometers into Astorga on the sharp rocks and dusty soil. I wore them down and stained the bottoms gray. Read more »

They would talk about the 

horrid

detained

and abusement 

They claim

to have hardship 

and bravery

They are structured

They said

But not clean.

They'd talk about all

The places we've been

Had gone

And will know

And will tell us

Where we just might go.

For if they could talk

Those flip-flops

They wouldn't hold the words

Or crack

For our feet do not complain

For we must be 

Truly

A pain in the back

I woke up staring at the tops of coniferous trees waving above me, starkly dark against the unwavering blue California sky the color of robin eggshells. I smiled, knowing that I had just passed my last night in a sleeping bag for a very long time. After eleven days of hiking in the Sierra Nevadas, I was more than ready for a real bed with a mattress and a pillow. But more than that, I longed for a shower. I had ever since the second day, when I woke up in the tent and realized that I would not be able to wash off the thin layer of trail grime with a quick jump in the shower, and that I would not be able to for a very long time.

But the day had arrived, the day our group of smelly hikers would re-enter the society of the well fed and well bathed. I scrambled from the sleeping bag, trying not to awaken the girls to my left and right. Last night another backpacker in the same campground had proclaimed she found a scorpion in her tent, but we had braved it and slept outside under the stars anyway. It was our last night in Yosemite after all.

People were beginning to stir, and even the three teenage boys roused themselves when our teacher returned from his walk to the campground store with three boxes of sugared cereal, a box of donuts, and a bunch of bananas; the first real breakfast food, other than oatmeal, we had tasted in over a week. Read more »

Si yo solo había dicho                                                     If only I had said

Que había ensayado en mi cabeza                             What I had been repeating in my head

Dia tras dia.                                                                       Day after day

La escena era perfecta                                                   The scene was perfect

El cuarto era del imagen en mi mente                         The room, the picture in my mind

Y como una actora                                                           And like an actor

en una obra de teatro de mi vida                                  In my life's play Read more »

It's a Ducati Multistrada (the one we both drooled over sleek pictures of online until people started asking why we were trying to hug a computer monitor) that we load up, wolfing muffins and tea as we work, with dawn just breaking and strings of mist being tugged from the familiarly scruffy mountains. The motorbike is narrow but sturdy, and does not complain as duffel bag after duffel bag is secured to the back. I think her name is Kaylee.

We set off at last, two girls and a motorcycle with the wind tightening our clothes, and take turns driving and sitting in back. Cars zip by us; other bikers hover beside us on the winding Vermont highways as if discreetly trying to race us and we always let them get ahead and "win" because we know enough about structural engineering to play by the rules.

By the late morning, we've crossed the bottom tail of Lake Champlain into New York. We stop for lunch at a fast-food joint in Utica. The open bike does little to contain sound, but we blast pop-rock songs on the radio anyway and ignore the disgruntled looks when we pass through cities. Time blurs between Maroon 5, Adele, Green Day and One Direction, who we argue about (you like them; I don't) in the way that people argue when they don't expect to convince anyone of anything and don't really care. Read more »

Writing Prompts for rest of the summer!  in the YWP Summer Prompts Series:

Prompt 8: Write for 15 minutes. Set a timer and just go. Get as much down as you can in any order -- whatever comes to mind. At the buzzer, get up and walk away.

Prompt 9: If I were a sea turtle...

Prompt 10: Your best slam poetry

Post your writing in any genre as a blog and use "Summer Prompts" as your keyword. Specify which week you're writing to. Watch the site to see your writing posted for all to see!

Curls that bounce like bronze ringlets

Spiraling around my face

Like slinkies falling from an unknown sky

To weigh on my shoulders

Pooling in a sea of brown waves.

My straight-haired friends love

To run their fingers through the wiry mess

And stretch the rings until they’re straight,

Then release, laughing as they spring back

To their original corkscrew shape.

When I was young I used to hate

This matted mass of curls,

That stuck up like a lion’s mane

Immune to brush or comb.

I begged and pleaded to finally buy

An iron, flat and hot.

Hours of careful clamping

Yielded stands soft and sleek

Completely unknown to me.

But step into the humid world,

And moisture will prove your folly,

That heat and gel and designer products,

Cannot tame nature’s wig

And prevent frizz from growing.

So one day I made a decision

To embrace this wild mane,

And not to pine for another’s shine

Glossy on the pages of a magazine.

Now my curls flow freely

With the occasional help of mousse

To shine in their own haphazard way,

Framing my face by a wavy crown,

In twirling layers of golden brown. 

and this is how life should be spent,
talking about magic until late at night and
making wishes on the clocks
and writing stories.

when the world ends,
I want someone to think
just for a second
while the earthquakes crumble
and the skies collapse
that I lived in a dance
and I danced on rooftops
and major chords
and slow slow minor chords in a
broken piano
and I danced late at night
when the clocks broke
and the stars were wild through the ceiling.