Weekly Prompts – Tina Stewart Brakebill

the boy next door

November 5, 2025 Tina Stewart Brakebill

Staring out the window, I search for the final line of my verse.

Through the looking glass

Beyond the land of wonder

Alice …?

Alice cries for home? Alice mourns for me?

I need to move away from the glass. I can’t focus. Every sound, any little movement, and I’m sure it’s her. Finally. Home for the holidays. She said she’s not interested, but she’s just confused. I can change her mind. Explain things. Show her my words. Convince her she’s meant to be with me. Mine. Forever.

Then it comes to me. The perfect ending:

Alice dies for love.

(100 words)

PHOTO PROMPT ©Yvette Prior

Esther’s Writing Prompt (GLASS) immediately brought Alice in Wonderland to mind and then the Friday Fictioneers photo skewed Wonderland into an even creepier space.

Writing Prompts

7 November 2025

Haiku & Other Poetry, tutto e niente

we are the ones

October 29, 2025 Tina Stewart Brakebill

we are the ones that dwell within

watching and waiting for the end

in the dark we witness your sin

we are the ones that dwell within

that burn you feel under your skin

the edge of madness at the bend

we are the ones that dwell within

watching and waiting for the end

I enjoyed creating a triolet earlier this week for the w3 prompt, so I did it again. But this time I went with the 8-syllable version and leaned into the SPOOKY. Thanks for the added inspiration to Esther (EDGE) and dVerse poets (we are the ones that dwell within). See below for info on Triolets.

Word Prompts

Poetics: It’s Not That Scary

According to Sarah Whiley …

A Triolet is an 8-line poem where lines repeat in a beautiful rhythm:

Lines 1, 4, and 7 are the same, and lines 2 and 8 are also repeated.

The rhyme scheme looks like this: ABaAabAB (uppercase = repeated lines).

If you’d like to make it a little trickier, try writing each line with 8 syllables (iambic tetrameter, the classic French style) — or challenge yourself with 10 syllables per line (the English version).

Haiku & Other Poetry, tutto e niente

put ’em up!

September 27, 2025 Tina Stewart Brakebill

one day I’ll say my piece

and rise above the horror

one day I’ll speak my mind

and live to see tomorrow

Image Credit to Wonderful Wizard Of Oz: Dorothy And The Cowardly Lion Drawing From 1St Edition 1900 Of LF Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz

Thanks to the dumpster fire we’re currently living through as well as the following for the word prompts (SPEAK, ONE DAY, and HORROR) that inspired this 22-word … I don’t know what it is: a poem, a promise, a threat??

Anyway, visit their sites for better examples.

Weekend Writing Prompt #435 – Speak

Weekly Prompts The One Day Prompt (17 )

FOWC With Fandango — Horror

Flash Fiction, Random Rants, tutto e niente

Rejection

November 15, 2018January 29, 2020 Tina Stewart Brakebill

Where the hell was that girl with his whiskey? It was cold in the courtyard. And drafty. But they wouldn’t let him smoke inside. And he really needed one. It was his first in six months so he probably didn’t need it so much as he wanted it. But right now he wasn’t in the mood to dissect the difference. He was too busy trying to pretend he didn’t really care. But his attempts at pretending collapsed almost immediately. He couldn’t lie to himself. He had wanted it. Bad.

As he thought about their rejection, he second-guessed every decision he had made. Where had he gone wrong? All he ever really wanted was to belong. Maybe that was it. Maybe they could smell the overwhelming need seeping out of his pores like a rancid perfume. The kind that claims to be glamorous but really is just cheap. Well screw them. He didn’t need to belong to their stupid group. Probably just a bunch of blowhards and know-it-alls. He took a long drag off his Camel and let his mind drift. He could see the headline now: “Unknown Author Defies Odds with Million Dollar Book Advance.”

But even as that thought formed, a single tear dropped. Stupid writing workshop.