Big congrats to me for finishing Week 40! We’ve got a huge snowstorm going here in Maine and I’m craving comfort food, so my virtual celebration treat is savory. That’s the kind of plate I could swim in for a long time…. As for the day’s work, do you know about Brevity magazine’s flash nonfiction contest? There is no entry fee and the deadline is 2/14 so get on it! Rather than basing the day’s shorty on a poem as I have been doing all week, I answered Brevity’s siren call and generated a short piece recounting a strange memory from childhood. As it happens, I have written about this memory before at Daily Shorty, I think in August, and the word count was 1000+. I remember it as mediocre at best. This time the contest guidelines, which limit the submission to 500 words, forced me to be more targeted and I wrote a much better piece. Is it good? I don’t know. CNF is not my thing. But it’s pretty good and after several revisions (I’m writing this post on February 8), it is as good as I can make it. Many thanks to Brevity for the prompt and to my cherished, yellow walls friend Patty Weidler, who gave me excellent feedback on the first two drafts.
Working Title: Blood
1st Sentence: I lurked behind the couch, nursing a slapped face or kicked shin or twisted wrist.
Favorite Sentence: Missed me, I wanted to sing, but I was too high to form words, high on his twisted mouth, my lightness, high on sure-footed, dancing me.
Word Length: 500
Photo by Marshall Astor 6/2007.
Daily Shorty 
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