Reminder by Solomon Blaze

I hate that it’s just darkness; I thought there’d at least be something, ya’ know, after...

- But there isn’t.

The last thing I remember is being dragged in the alleyway by that creep; I should’ve listened to my father – I know I know, you don’t have to say it!

But I mean come on I’ve walked home from downtown a whole bunch of times and never been violently raped, then accidentally murdered!

Stupid dick head...

I struggled – like anyone would – and he beat me to death!

No matter how loud I screamed,

Cried,

Or whimpered,

The filth just kept pounding on me with those grotesque steak-slab hands, moaning something about his mother!

God knows what he did with my body...

I mean for fuck sake, I wasn’t his fucking mother!

But I digress; it’ a bit late now...

Oh! There’s a light! Okay, forget what I said earlier.

‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!’

Reminder by Ben Hayward

The mirror shows lipstick kisses,
Left by some tramp
Whose name I can't recall.
I remember her socks though.

The carpet is singed
And the hot knives are cool.
Post-it notes in time.
Like fractures from another life.

A bundle of sheets are laying on my bed.
A human sized heap of cloth and flesh.
The point where the two worlds collide.
Sobering scribbles seem so inane.

Reminder by Sara Travis

If I live to be a hundred years old, I want to always remember today. 

We climbed to the top of Strawberry Hill with a picnic basket in tow, and ate cucumber sandwiches in the August sunshine. We lay around and spoke of the things we’d never done, and the things we wished we’d never done, and the things we were certain we’d never do. When he spoke I only half listened; I studied the way his mouth moved when he talked, the way his dark hair sun-streaked with caramel fell into his eyes, the subtle 5 o’clock shadow that lined his jaw. When he sighed the air tickled the hair on my face and I could almost taste the sunshine on his breath. Love arrived today, and like an old friend, I welcomed it with open arms and a fervent heart. 

If I live to be a hundred years old, I want to always remember today.

I peeled us an apple and nicked my finger on the blade. He kissed the wound and said it might scar. I said I wouldn’t mind if it did; I’d always have a reminder of today. He tilted his head and when he smiled I smiled, but my smile stretched further, down to my toes and beyond, like roots of a tree, binding me to this spot. Forever.

We watched the sun go down on top of the hill, and he slipped the blanket around my shoulders, squeezing me closer. I breathed in all of him and he smelled of cigarettes and mint and old books and coffee, and I thought, this – this­ – is what it’s all about. I get it, now. I get it.

If I live to be a hundred years old, I want to always remember today.

Reminder by James D. Irwin

Zoey drinks with a straw and spells her name with a y. It’s spelt different, sounds the same. She’s had to say that a lot, usually with a bit lip or a roll of her wide green eyes.

We were sat outside, laughing more than talking. It was cool for a summer evening. Her pretty floral dress rippled in the breeze. Zoey is perfect, and for those few minutes so am I.

Then Tom arrives and Zoey stands and they kiss and she gives me back my jacket and they wave goodbye. Slumped against the wall I take a drink and watch her walk away. I always watch her walk away and it always hurts, more or less.

Zoey is a reminder of a lesson I will never have the courage to learn— that it is no harder to tell a girl you love her than to pretend that you don’t.

Reminder by Lesley Whyte

"I don't need another reminder! I see one every time I look in the mirror!"

"You can't seriously be thinking about...you know."

"I know it sounds bad, but what other option is there?"

"Well, you could keep it."

"Aren't you listening? I can't. I can't see it every day, I can't bear to even think about it. It's just...I wish it didn't exist. I know that sounds terrible, that there's as much of me in it as there is of him, but I hate it. I hate the idea of it."

"She."

"It."

"I'm just saying that you don't have to kill it-"

"You can't kill something that's not alive yet!"

"Can't you feel it? Doesn't it move? It's alive. It may not have been born, but it's alive. Come on, you've always said the same thing. You've always believed that the moment God touches it, makes it an embryo instead of just a few random cells, it's a baby. It's a person. She's already a person."

"It's different."

"So she was created under unfortunate circumstances-"

"Unfortunate circumstances? If I wasn't so tired, I'd break your-"

"Calm down. I'm just saying. You can't kill her. Give her up for adoption, if you must, give her to a couple that haven't been blessed by God like you have, but you can't kill her. You just can't."

"I already made the appointment. This was really more of an FYI thing."

Day Nine

And today's prompt is...

Reminder