April 2022 – tnkerr-Writing Prompts and Practice

OLWG# 257- Unspectacular

I met the seventeen-year-old Kwin Ginerisey at my parent’s house on Thanksgiving of 1941. She was a gamine girl – petite, with a sharp, angular body and bone structure. Kwin was lithe and lean. She was spectacularly equipped with small breasts and narrow hips. She was leggy and coltish, with large eyes and wispy, childlike features. I was smitten.

Mom worked downtown as a secretary to Mr Berkowitz at Frost Brothers on Houston Street. Kwin, with her looks and talent, was a star, selling cosmetics and fragrances at the make-up counter on the third floor. Mom thought Kwin and I would be a cute couple, and she wasn’t averse to playing the role of matchmaker. Mom worried about both of us. She was also concerned about the wars in Europe, and North Africa. Mom decided to pair Kwin and me. She recognized that she couldn’t do anything about the foreign wars, but she could introduce Kwin to me and me to Kwin. We hit it off right away and began dating. It was only a few weeks later, in early December, when the foreign wars were suddenly closer to home, and the United States could no longer remain neutral. I signed up with the Navy and shipped out before Christmas, soon finding myself embroiled in an ugly war in the Pacific.

Kwin relocated to Fort Worth and went to work at Consolidated Aircraft, were she became a “Wing Mechanic.” She helped build hundreds of the four-engine B-24 Liberator bombers. I didn’t come home until October of ’45 after the end of hostilities in August of that year. Security regulations did not allow me to communicate with my loved ones about my return home. I knew that Kwin would be in Fort Worth. I took a bus from San Antonio. I was leaning on her front steps when she got home from work on Friday, the 12th of October. She took me upstairs, and we did not re-emerge for four days. She was still the long, lean gamine girl I had left at home when I went overseas. She now wore her blonde hair long, and that afternoon when we were reunited, it was pretty dirty, but she cleaned up just fine. She looked like the girl I had left behind, but her face was different. I think that she looked wiser, somehow.

We never did get married in the conventional sense, but I changed my last name to Ginerisey, and the two of us raised a family. We lived together as man and wife until she passed away in 2009. She was 85. She’s resting now in Holy Oak Gardens. There’s a space next to her reserved for me.

The kids have been gone for a while now. We lost Raymond in Vietnam. I think it was 1968. His sister, Shannon, lives just outside Seattle with her husband, Eugene and their kids. I usually hear from them on my birthday and at Christmas. Charles Ray and his husband, Ruben, live in South Beach. They are childless. Kwin was proud of all of them, and so am I.

This week’s prompts were:

long blonde dirty hair
and I sleep in your hat

Zozo Writers- 19.Apr.2022

Written in 15 minutes, with the Carrizozo Writers

“You don’t want to hear that old story again, do you? I mean, I’ve told you twice already.”

“No, we do want to hear it again. I like the way you tell it.” They shouted in unison.

“Well, now I’ll tell it, but you all need to be quiet and pay attention. I might give a test later.” His gaze took in all the children sitting in front of him. Sitting in the dirt beneath the tree, they were grandchildren.

There were the two redheaded boys, the twins. There was the youngest, who was a girl with curly blonde hair and green eyes; there was the tall boy, brown-haired, with a spray of freckles thrown across his nose; and his sister with her hair as black as coal and an eagle feather held at the side of her face with a knot of rawhide.

They all watched him expectantly, waiting for him to start. The broken toothed twin wiped his nose with a shirtsleeve. The little blond girl clung to her feet as they rested atop her crossed legs.

“OK, then,” he said, “It was a long time ago; I wasn’t much older than him,” He pointed at the tall boy. I had run away from home and wanted to join the circus, but the big top wanted nought to do with me. I had no circus skills. I couldn’t tame a lion or swing on a trapeze. So I made my way to the waterfront and signed on board a freighter bound for adventure, bound for Africa.

time’s up – step away from your keyboards and notebooks

The prompts:

my own special way
I’ve told you twice
an eagle feather

OLWG# 256- It Begins Again

Written for OLWG# 256

It begins with a familiar voice
the one I attribute to my mother
I don’t always want to hear her in my head,
but occasionally what she says makes sense
sometimes it’s appropriate.

Usually, though she brings others
my father, her sisters, my sisters, or voices
I don’t recognize.

That’s when it gets raucous,
confusion ensues, but only I can hear it
chaos, but
only I can hear it,
only I can hear it.

This week’s prompts were:

silent chaos
never reveal your true age
one of these mornings

OLWG# 255- Sin la Rienda

Written for OLWG# 255

Floyd woke up struggling to breathe.

He knew right away what was wrong.

The fire had gone out.

He sprang to work, knowing that he needed to work fast, else he wouldn’t get to watch the fight tonight; he’d already ordered it too, already paid for it. It was a promising one, Abrogado vs Michaels at the ProNaF in Juarez.

Twenty-five bucks! Damn, no time to fret over it though gotta move.

He jumped from the bed and ran towards the front room. Kneeling by the fireplace screen, he reached his hand out. Cold! Nothing left but ashes. Glancing up through the window, he saw that the sky was grey, growing darker, pulling away.

Not much time left, he grabbed some kindling to throw in the fireplace. Followed by some thin sticks of firewood from the bin which he laid on top. Two logs across the andirons, and he was ready. Floyd struck a blue tip match and held it to the kindling.

Come on! Catch, Catch, damnit!

Finally, a small flame appeared. As it grew large enough to catch the twigs, he pushed and manoeuvred it beneath the two larger logs. Floyd grabbed a girlie magazine that he had been looking at earlier; he thought of Miss May as he fanned the flames. They began to grow, and the logs were beginning to catch, so he threw some green wood into the fire. He was still struggling to breathe.

Smoke! Smoke! He thought it was working, but he couldn’t run outside to check until the flames further engaged the larger logs. It seemed to take forever, but it truth, only a few minutes elapsed before he felt confident enough in the fire to venture out the front door and into the yard. He held his head back and gasped for breath as he watched. He watched as the sky slowly lifted, pulling away from the earth. He turned his attention to the chimney; there was smoke, but only a few wisps. Floyd huffed and puffed his way back inside.

Gotta get the fire going. Gotta get smoke.

In the cabin, the fire was out. The logs never caught fire. Not fully anyway. Floyd was fighting to breathe. He was losing his peripheral vision. He fell to his knees in front of the fireplace.

Fuck, I had one job! Only one job – how could I blow it so badly?

Floyd was the first of millions to die. He was nearest to the connection when it broke. The rest of the earth followed him in its own time and was gone by the time the fight would have started. It didn’t take long, not long at all, sin la rienda.

This week’s prompts were: