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In the comments below -or on your blog with a link -or in your very very v. private pink diary, Write (Ride).

Start with the start — a photo, a quote, a word, a story. Produce words, one after another, until you are done. Spelling and punctuation, inconsequential. Grammar preferred but not required.

Editing strictly prohibited.

Start here:

Write (Ride):

I wrote Ronnie’s name with my mother’s stolen mascara. I knew I ought not; rain was coming, and I would read a sign when the next morning, he had disappeared and left the metal railing clean. I was always looking for signs. A framed photo dropped and broke, and I knew its subject was dead. A plant died in the garden, and I knew someone cherished would wilt with disease.

Nevermind perfectly acceptable scientific explanations: the clumsy execution of a cartwheel in the livingroom, setting the whole house to shake; months and months of drought that left corn dead on its stalks. At the age of twelve I alone lived in a cosmic bubble — wired for two-way conversation with the universe. I felt it course and separate my sinew; it eavesdropped on my thoughts.

I tucked my mother’s mascara into my back pocket, wiped the smudge of black/brown from my pinky onto my cut off denims, just under the hip pocket. The bridge shook when a semi rolled past on the neighboring Highway 75. Grit snuck into my flipflops. I thought of all the dead plants, all the cracked photos. Thought of Ronnie and his cow lick bangs. I whispered my disgust at the nosy cosmos and raced back to his smudged name in all caps, licked the heel of my hand and wiped.