Impromptu: Weekly Writing Prompt #5

Every week I share a randomly-selected writing prompt along with my response. These prompts are meant to be creative seeds that you can build on later into full stories, reflections, scenes, or poems. All previous prompts are listed here and are a part of my sub-newsletter, Seedlings. Feel free to adjust them as needed to fit what you want to write about (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, etc.). None of them are meant to be a box, so let your inspiration guide you and be flexible!

Each prompt is intended for 10-30 minutes of writing (though you can of course write for longer if inspiration strikes you). To participate, set your timer and write for 10+ minutes; then share a line from what you wrote and tell us how it went in the comments below.

Happy Writing!

---

Week #5 Prompt

Write a story of fragments. Many options here: no verbs, sentence fragments, short sections, nothing but objects, etc. The fragments should relate to one another obliquely, hesitantly, subtly, ambiguously, preposterously.

---

These Are The Days We Don’t Get Back—

Your first smiles, first laughs. The way you wrap your hand around the knuckles of my finger and pull me close. Stroking your nose in the middle of the night as you nurse with little sighs. My thumb a perfect fit against the bridge.

You outgrew your dinosaur onesie last month. How did you get so big already? I’ll be asking that question for the rest of my life.

Reading book after book with you asleep on my chest. Your head falls against me and your whole weight sinks in. This is what trust is. Our morning snuggle. Our evening walk. 3am feedings that stretch into 5am.

Dad walks to calm you, in front of the bookshelf for hours. Windows upon windows, your world expanding one frame at a time. You babble at empty corners, talking to the air. I wonder who you’re chatting with.

Cooing up at me while I’m trying to nurse you, melting all my frustrations away. Ah-guhhhh, guhhhhh, you say with a smile. I say it right back.

Tracing the tiny curves of your ear. Your stomach rumbles and you laugh as the canon fires. Bathtime together. Running the shower up over your head. You’re so startled by water, arms and legs jutting straight out.

Peeling back rolls, upon rolls, upon rolls to find that ever-elusive neck. Chonky thighs and double chin. You smile with your whole face. Chubby cheeks stretched wide, blue eyes crinkled at the corners.

He has your eyes, everyone says. I hope they’re right. I want to stake that claim.

I wonder what your joy must feel like, when everything is new. You find wonder in the shadows of the leaves overhead.

Waking up bleary eyed in the middle of the night. Covered in drool, covered in spit-up, in milk, always damp.

Sometimes it grates me, the loss of my autonomy. I tell myself it’s temporary, that it won’t last.

Then you burrow your face into my neck and your mouth tents open with a little sigh.

I hold you tight. Not yet. 

---

---

Author’s Note:

This was a hard piece for me to write. I knew as soon as the idea came into my head that it would make me really emotional. My son is three and a half months old now, and we’re just starting to get back into the routine of normal life. I can feel myself missing the independence I once had, the ability to do things on my own time. Sometimes, when I’m sleep deprived, the feeling overwhelms me: I want to be able to do things again.

But along with that feeling is the constant knowledge that this time is precious and fleeting. I can already feel it slipping by. The melancholy of realizing he’ll only ever be this small once. So I wrap up my longings for a later date, hold him close, and try to pause time.

I struggled findings the words to convey these feelings. Nothing felt big enough. Finally I settled for what I’d first written, with a few small tweaks.

My writing group meets every evening on Thursdays—three women who I’ve come to trust with my most vulnerable self. It was just two of us last night, and I read this during our session. Her reaction told me that I’d found the right words after all.

This is for my little boy.