Creative Writing Prompts

Somewhere in Florida,

a strawberry finds itself growing

on a tree, beside an apple

long past ripe.

Plump and red. Swollen like a cheek.

It knows it has no business being there,

but it admits—

it is nice, for once, to be tall.

Nice, for once, to feel the sky

closer than the ground.

And somewhere in California,

Half Moon Bay,

a girl stands on a rooftop

and thinks the same.

Sick of the ocean,

of al...

The problem with justice is how unjust it is. I remember them saying “Earn forgiveness.” And then giving me an eternal task?

I did not know then that the Earth was round. I had been told since I was a child that it was flat. Fine I thought, take the sun from one end to the other. But the Earth has no end. It goes round and round and round.

Eternity is a long time to drag a burning mass of fire o...

Two languages colliding:

your body’s rough syntax, my heart’s messy grammar.

Both saying: stay. Stay for what comes next.

Stay for the way light bends through my blinds at dusk,

for the heat caught between our skin and my sheets,

for the dull ache that lingers a bit longer than it should,

the kind you stop noticing until it starts to hurt again.

We write stories for each other in fingerprints an...

The girl walks, quickly, hugging the small bouquet of roses tightly to her chest. Her hand wraps around the stem of one and a sudden pain flows through her body. She attempts to brush back her brown messy hair but only smears blood across her worried frantic face.

Her quick steps are the only noise filling the Red Forest, but somehow they only make the space feel more empty. She knows not of the ...

I check the calendar as I always do

Checking that it is a Tuesday,

Not that I didn’t know that already

But the days run together.

I wend my way up the stairs

Avoiding the one with the creak

That I really should get fixed,

But there is a strange comfort

In such a well-known sound.

In the bedroom I pull out jeans

And the underwear you laughed at,

The cotton granny pants, the bra

With the one small ...

Being keeper of the dragons and head of the town’s heating company is not for the weak.

I wake at exactly midnight, when the night is at its coldest, and slip on my slippers.

I walk downstairs and through the stable doors to where the dragons snooze. I used to hate waking them up, but they really don’t mind me.

They love me.

Carefully, I kick each of the dragon’s tails, signaling they must fly...

“The first thing you notice is the smell”. That’s what my grandfather told me. He always described it as stale salt. I never understood it as a kid. How does salt go stale? Isn’t the purpose of salt to prevent that? Now, as I slowly trudge through the loose dirt and sand, it makes sense. The sand… it’s the same stuff that covers The Impassable Desert. But unlike there, this sand is cold and sligh...

It’s the middle of November and I'm trudging through three feet of snow because, much to my dismay, bodies don't just bury themselves.

It's why I'm a seasonal serial killer.

So is my friend--a serial killer, that is to say. Not seasonal. Definitely not seasonal. Because while I'm haunting homesteads and butchering blocks in the idyllic eighty-degree Springfield summer, Jack is an emotional, imp...

The wind blows my hair. I’m standing on the edge again, my torn, off-white dress billowing out around me. A tunnel of blinding, bright light shines before me, beckoning me like a lullaby, and I swear I would cry if I still could. Legs straining, teeth clenched, I try to fight the heavy gusts, to reach out and touch that sweet sunlight, behind which I know paradise waits.

I am so close. I can ...

The prince searched far and wide for his princess, but there were no clues, no trace of her.

“It’s like she disappeared with some sort of magic,” the King said as the detectives came back to the castle. They all gathered in a large, grand chamber, sharing theories and evidence. The prince never thought anything much about that room, but suddenly it just seemed empty and cold now that the warm pre...

White angels playing in your hair.

I crushed your big heart made of snow.

Hopes blooming like an early spring.

Sweet taste of raindrops on your lips.

We lay beneath a sky of cherry trees.

A teddy bear, white roses and your playful smile.

You paint the night sky on my sunkissed skin.

Dance me to the edge of heaven, my love.

Of falling leaves you made a promise ring.

You see that little spa...

The universe, as any respectable physicist will tell you, can be a peculiar place. It is, after all, filled with peculiar things, holes (mostly black or wormy), dark matter, string, branes and so on. Come to think of it, there’s also the issue of toast. Specifically, its propensity to alway land. butter-side down. Luckily, there is Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Also known as the ‘8th Wonder of ...