Writing Prompt

Run

Run faster

Scared

Frightened

Keep running

Hide

Hide inside

Abandoned building

Hide

Hide...

(So I completely missed that this was supposed to be a poem…🤷‍♀️)

The crisp air nipped at my skin. Frost biting my exposed nose and fingertips. The wind whistled and rumbled in my ear, blowing hard against my hoodie. The chill in the air felt like a breath mint in my sinuses. It was unusually cold for May, the remnants of winter holding on. The sun hid behind a sky full of gray, refusing to shin...

The neon signs illuminated my way as my feet pounded against the wet pavement. Water soaked my legs as it splashed up against them. It cooled my burning calves. Sirens blared in the distance, slowly fading as I gained more ground. I stopped abruptly at a chain link fence. My legs gave way as I collapsed, breathing heavily. This was where it ended.

I looked to my right, and there was an open door....

. Rain stabbed sideways against his jacket, soaking through to his skin. His teeth rattled in his skull as he stumbled down Sixth Street, boots slapping in puddles that swallowed his ankles.

The building loomed ahead an old post office, brick-faced and blind-eyed with boarded windows. Locals said it once sorted letters for soldiers who never made it home. Now, it sorted dust and rats.

He shoved th...

Moon dust sparkled against the streetlight near corner

of Deb’s abandoned hopes and shuttered dreams that stir

Before her in the shadows in some hubble now.

A long ago discarded boarded up cash cow.

Once was Phoenix motel nailed shut though planks now loose.

As she in sheer despair found place to be recluse.

From her worn knapsack, she rummaged for a keepsake.

Teary eyed her fingers grasped jewelr...

The air was thick with heat. Sweat lay in a thick sheen across every inch of his body. John pulled his shirt off his stomach, feeling dissatisfyingly hot air take up the empty space. Seeing heat waves rise from the broken asphalt was making him delirious. He started to hear a distant high pitch from inside his own head. He just needed a moment, 5 minutes, to sit and cool down. For John, every day ...

I roamed the isles of empty cubicles, all setup with one of those cream-colored, boxy CRT PCs. Sunlight peaked through the blinds, lighting the dust in the air like a bunch of glitter. It was empty and quiet and liminal. It felt like I found a portal into the backrooms. I don't really know why I thought to come here of all places. I got a bunch of malware trying to download Minecraft mods back in ...

It smells of wet dog, strong enough that I sleep by an open window with my tatty sleeping bag pulled up to my chin, feeling the patched up fibres against my cheek.

The taste of burned beans is still in my mouth; the can I’d swiped no longer making my bag clank.

The shack was once a home, with bedrooms now holding empty frames and shattered glass. For a moment I can hear the wind howl loudly as it...

The dust thick in the air and inside her throat as she covers her mouth with her hand.

The beams of light from the broken windows illuminate the dark as she settles between the shards of glass and intruding weeds and grass.

Cars drive by without acknowledgment as she becomes one with the building.

Forgotten and alone, in plain sight, but ignored by the world outside....

Entering the abandoned building, the runaway seeked shelter from the biting wind.

There was a scent of newspapers and garbage mixed together.

Strung in the corners, dirty and pungent bedding revealed this place to be filled with others like her.

Her skin itched at the sight of the blacked stains on the walls made by either mold or bed bug feces.

Walking up the emergency stairs, she checked eac...