Sunbathing: August Prompt Responses

This month’s writing prompt was Sunbathing. Here we showcase all the responses that were submitted.

Sunbathing prompt: Heat laps over your skin as you spread out like a starfish ready to burn. Exposed flesh waiting to sizzle. Don’t stay in the sun too long. The summer haze makes you drowsy and you slip into sleep, feeling lazy and lethargic. Bathe yourself in the sun’s rays, let it wash over you. Sand sticks to your toes as you lie there waiting for something to happen.

The white-gray cat

The white-gray cat runs away from sunbathing.
It waits under the tree.
The sun will set.
The stars will rise.

Crepuscule and its shiny eyes.
Broken whiskers and its adorable paws.
Every dusk it waits for the stars,
complaining about the sun to the stars.

Stars and the white-gray cat become friends.
It chases the bright stars.
Bright stars gift it a glow.
It shows them a dead mouse.

Glow cat doesn't like summer.
It runs away from sunbathing.
The stars will rise.
Autumn will come after summer.

by Inner Monologue (@inner__monologue__ Instagram)

PAPER PLANES

We're flying paper planes across the sky,
The papers carrying love letters for strangers,
Wondering how far they'll fly for the ones,
Who need them the most in their lives.
The surreal joy of the thought of someone, 
Coming across our words offering a warm embrace,
Sparkling bliss in their shattered hearts.
We're now sunbathing across the beach,
Mr Bright caressing our body in it's strong warmth,
The sounds of children playing tickling our ears,
Water splashes mingled with the genuine laughs,
Surrounding us with immense gratitude for,
All the little, countless blessings in our lives.
Amidst living our simple yet loving life,
A stranger walks up to us waving with a smile,
All our bewilderment rushes away at once,
We caught the sight of a crumpled paper in his hand, 
He pauses to reassure himself by gazing at our eyes,
Narrating the same tale as his, knowing why.
"I may never fully understand how a mere paper plane changed my decision to die, but I know it just did. For you, those were some comforting words, but for me they became my desire to live." He said.
We only stare at him speechless, a little teary eyed,
"Not only to live, but to live for myself and moreover spreading love by simply flying paper planes. My heart is filled with gratitude for you and for this beautiful life of mine."
I don't remember much afterwards, some cries of
happiness and preparing to fly some more paper planes with our stranger.

by Bushra Ali (@calm_pace Instagram)

sun therapy

sunbathing in my guilt
to get rid of white lies
taking in rays like knives
ready to polarize

pulling them out in spades
still keeps me in a haze
of tanned conceit in phase
from one sun to the next

sunscreening myself thin
to keep what’s left within
I cannot burn this skin
The colour heals so slow

by Madeleine Chan (@madeleinelyc Instagram, @madeleinechan Twitter)

Ring of Desire

The grass was hot, sun-seared, but still green because of the sprinklers. Their black heads poked through the ground like snakes. I’d stumbled over them so many times in the dark, on my small journeys between Syd and Liam’s house and the pool house.

A sprinkler ripped one of my toenails clean off once. I’d been drunk and sweaty. It was August. I still wasn’t used to the heat remaining after the sun disappeared. Just like the dark, it clung everywhere, to the back of my knees, the nape of my neck. I wanted to be in the pool constantly. I never wanted to change out of my small black bikini.

I’d been going to the pool house to get ice, but not for my drink. The lawn was thick from my blurring vision. There were no other houses visible through the property’s thick cove of trees. The rest of the world didn’t exist. I dodged bees that weren’t that close to me. Liam and I had been drinking margaritas he’d made, stony-faced in front of the blender. Salt flecked my cheeks and upper lip—that crunchy salted rim of glass.

He was waiting for me on the patio. The thought pressed me like a hand on the back of my head, pushing down. Syd had been out all day. In the morning she said she was getting a blowout but Liam hadn’t heard anything since. I imagined her in the Audi convertible, driving along the ocean with her hair streaming behind her. He didn’t seem bothered by her absence, so I followed his lead. He knew his wife.

As I crossed the grass, I glanced at my left hand’s bare ring finger. I remembered his thumb rubbing his thin gold ring. I was happy Sydney was gone. That was when I tripped over the sprinkler. It was karmic. Liam laughed behind me.

I laughed too, my toe stinging, and waved a hand in the air without glancing at him. When I entered the pool house, I streaked blood on the kitchenette’s floor.

Momentarily, I forgot why I was there. But then remembered: the ice. All summer, I dedicated myself to the pool house’s ice cube trays in the freezer. It was the only real task I gave myself for the long stretch of months. No job hunting. No college applications. Only ice. It was the one thing to relieve my melting.

I needed ice cubes to pop in my mouth so I could stand in the yard, arc my back and stick my face at the sun. On the first of July, I began dicing fruits and sticking them in the trays after Liam suggested it. Kiwi, strawberries, mango. My mouth tingled with sweet and my skin prickled with sunlight. At night, the high points of my face either glowed with the white cast of old sunscreen or red.

I took out some ice cubes and held them in my hands, too drunk to consider a mug or a bowl. Plus, I liked the idea of my sweaty palms holding them and then plopping them in to Liam’s drink. He’d taste the brine of me. I counted the ice cubes, counted some of the things Liam said to me that day.

We need tomatoes.
I don’t know where Sydney is.
One of these nights you’ll have to cook something for me.
I bet the boys loved you.
I hate mushrooms.
Do you like it?

I left the pool house, high strung with the hope that something would happen. I thought the muggy day and drinks would turn us delirious and make our yearning burst through us like popping balloons. But I didn’t sit on his lap. He didn’t take the back of my neck. We didn’t go for a swim. We just kept drinking and our conversation slurred. He kept glancing at his phone as the night impossibly darkened.

“She should be back by now,” he muttered. It was the last thing he said before he disappeared inside, his phone held to his ear.

I was stung. My eyes were teary, too. I got up without clearing our glasses. The blender was still out and open too, smelling of the slush of lime. I was still hot despite the night. Nothing cooled down. I got up, wavered, turned my back to their massive home.

I passed out on the pool house’s couch, my hair shrouding my face. I woke up nauseous and fell back to sleep when I saw my bloody foot and the browned streaks in the kitchen. Both times I fell asleep, I didn’t run through the day’s moments with Liam. I didn’t feel the weight of his hand on my leg or the middle of my back. Didn’t recite whatever it was he said to me. There was no ghost of his presence to keep me up. It felt good and bad at the same time—not bad, but boring. Life drained of thrill.

In the morning, I cleaned the kitchen first despite my thudding hangover. My body pulsed with it but I never threw up. The floor’s blood came away easily but I was unnerved by the brown rust of it. I didn’t like the idea of anything that came from me turning to something dull. Next, I soaked my foot in the tub and finally checked my phone. I inhaled the epsom salt’s lavender aroma. I’d gotten a text from Liam.

Syd’s back, we’re going out for muffins. What do you want?

I wrote back without thought. I have no idea. As soon as I hit send, I realized he was just asking about the muffins.

I followed up my last text. I’ll have whatever you like.

He didn’t reply. I stayed in the bathtub until the sun slanted into the bathroom’s small window. It was going to be another scorcher. I could stay inside all day. But I knew I wouldn’t. I would be on the lawn again, or the patio, in the pool, on the tennis court. Wherever I’d be outside, I would try not to stare so obviously at the main house’s sprawl of windows, the daylight obscuring the goings-on inside.

Despite sunscreen, my shoulders would burn anyway. I’d turn dehydrated and flimsy but the summer heat wouldn’t compare to his burn, the dark slant to his gaze, the excuses he took to touch me—fingers on my shoulder, full hand on my leg, shoulder bumping mine—the terrible desire that drained me of everything, that wouldn’t let me turn away, that encircled me in a ring that never stopped spinning.

by Valerie Hughes (@_valeriehughes Instagram & Twitter)

Sunbathing

He tugs my pigtail. Half moons of dirt nestle in his fingernails. Drips a smile and calls me shortcake. The door slams shut. Through the etched petals, I watch his broad outline loom down the pathway until it’s gone.

She drifts down the stairs, doll-pink lips pouting and a breeze flapping the kaftan curtaining her body. In the kitchen, she dumps her lip-sticked cup and the mug he’d wrapped his grubby hand around in the sink. Leaves them lolling as she squeezes out the last drop of Hawaiian Tropic and lets the bottle sit dented on the draining board. She roots around for baby oil in the cupboard she keeps the dishcloths and the dustpan in. Knocks over the money tin.

We patter through the beaded curtain that keeps the flies out to the little patio. It is August. The dead slow of summer and the moon is hanging in the morning sky. I hardly remember rain. Heat stings my feet as she totters on studded mules, clicks her way to the shed and drags out a lounger. Flat-faced sunflowers and oxeye daisies stare back at us in garish orange and yellow-brown as she beats away the cobwebs like a drum. And in the scrawny borders, the thrum of summer, as wallflowers climb the fence where the sun hits and the dull white paint is blistered. Later, in the blue cool of evening, I’ll pick those sullen shards, listening to the alley side of the fence where worms, tacked there by the estate boys who hoon around on Choppers, shrivel, and Tanzy Cotes shows her knickers for ten pence. Kisses are fifty.

The Jackie Collins she’s been reading is face-down on the paving, open at her page, a puddle of kaftan beside it. She smells sticky. I loop the little ties of her red bikini bottoms in my fingers, lay my head on her arm, count jewels of sweat on the flat of her stomach, her eyelids closed like petals behind the glowing amber lenses. I love you more than I know.

“It’s too hot for snuggles, baby girl,” she murmurs, “spread out a towel next to me. Sunbathe.”

I stare at the sky, looking for the moon.

by Leanne Simmons (@leannesimmonswriting Instagram)