#73. Opposites Attract. Write a scene in which two characters play opposites to each other. (from writersdigest.com)

He was like fire. She was like ice. He was open like a flame that wraps everything up in its liquid arms and snaps and picks up. She was like wood that tightens and creaks in the cold. Instead of open arms, she felt herself creeping closed and she couldn’t help it.

It started the night she heard him on that phone call. One minute she was making spaghetti and meat sauce at the stove, the next she was peering around the corner to the other room, trying not be concerned at the hushed voice and the way he bent his head into the phone. Like he was trying to hide who he was talking to.

She told herself it didn’t matter and then the conversation the next day. Before work. Her coffee hadn’t even finished brewing yet.

“I have a project after work, babe. I’ll be late. Don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry” he had said…like he didn’t know how to talk to a woman. Like he hadn’t been living with one for the last three years. Like he didn’t know that all she would do was worry. Worry about who he was talking to as she opened her locker at work. Like she wouldn’t be thinking about the pink lipstick she saw on his neck that one weekend when she changed out of her scrubs later that day.

Yeah, don’t worry. Well, that would be pretty fucking unlikely.

That night she tells him. As they’re standing next to the microwave. She’s waiting for her dinner to finish cooking. “I’m moving back in with my mother. I’ll take the TV. No, don’t worry. I’ll be fine by myself.”

Hi Friends,

For those of you who have been loyal readers and followers these past years, I appreciate you. As I gather content for my next few poetry book projects, I am going to try something new on here. I won’t be posting as much poetry, but in an effort to keep writing…I’m going to try to write some more prose. Right now, that looks like trying writing prompts…wherever I may find them. Who knows, maybe in the future it will move into something else. Maybe it’ll be something that will stick. Maybe I’ll give up after a few posts of writing prompts and start something else. This feels like an ending of an era for me. But also of something new.

Happy Writing!

~AJM