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From a Creative Neighbors prompt
I love writing fiction, but I don’t share it very often. And to be honest, I haven’t written anything at all like this in a long time. A writer friend from Creative Neighbors asked me to share, so I am sharing. Go check out the community over there if you want to read amazing work!
Prompt:
Write about the day you finally knew what you had to do, and began.
On the last new moon of the year, Nadia scribbled her one passion on a shred of thin paper and promptly dipped its edge into the small flame of the candle. Smoke rose quickly, heat licked at the tips of her fingers. She dropped the last ember edged bit into the sink and spoke to the ether. “Take this away and let me begin again.”
Her life could not go on as her own if she did not set the heavy load of self-pity and longing down alongside the path and leave it there to wither. And yes, that pity was her passion, a passion that she gave life to every moment by feeding it with regret and false hope, blame and empty prayers. She fed it until it turned on her and nearly consumed her. But only nearly.
Nadia ran the last gray ashes down the drain, raised her eyes one more time, and leaned over the sink to get a view of the black sky beyond her window. This was the last of the darkness, tomorrow would be her dawn.
Libby! Love this and the collage is beautiful!
I can’t think of words of my own to say that will do justice to what your words stirred in me as they filtered through my defenses to two times in my life when my life stopped and started again, once when my wife died, and a less dramatic but equally life-changing time when I shed the structure of an idyllic life in the heart of Kansas City, along with all the paraphernalia that sustained it, and set off outside the US with my backpack to parts unknown, including some I knew only from prior short visits. What a beautiful piece of fiction that wound gently into the nonfiction of my story. Thank you.