This month’s writing prompt was Fossils. Here we showcase all the responses that were submitted.
Fossils prompt: All things dusty and all things unearthed, fossils hold many histories untold. Clues in the grooves and the areas they’re found in, what can you infer? Some are bones, others are jewels, but they all tell stories. Tell us about old things, dead things, alive things; things you’ve found and things you’ve lost.
Scribbles in an Abandoned Church
My father's old envelopes are searching for a home,
they settle in the attic, full of dust,
like furniture losing its purpose,
the for-sale sign has returned,
real estate agent turning corners,
mailman has stopped delivering
notes from the cemetery,
and life drags away the old, the dying,
moving on as the mother bird rids her child
who could not fly
and having climbed these mountains,
kicking down vile tombstones,
the stories are beginning to lose
their shadow, knots
unfurling to thinning strings,
lights are turning off in the surgical ward,
while patients are still groaning,
now in dark corridors
and I held my father's secrets
with shame, cardinal sin, rage,
his infidelity, illegal pills,
they asked me some years later
about the papers
and I remembered how easily it sparked
like Frankenstein burying his monster
and never dabbling in the sciences again,
fossils that will remain buried,
a village that will continue to glow
in the dark
of a most terrifying eclipse.
by Brandon Shane (@Ruishanewrites Twitter)
Fossil of your unforgettable memories
You saved me from a storm
I write you a letter last day of every month
I kept your thank you note laminated
You saved me from a storm
Fossil of your unforgettable memories
Write me back whenever you wish
You saved me from a storm
I write you a letter last day of every month
by Inner Monologue (@inner__monologue__ Insta)
The Memory Box
Open the box to travel in time
Transformed again to live another life
For just a moment let history rhyme
Memories revived to delight
Or struggle through strife
Some best forgotten and lost
Past endeavours, conflicts,
Campaigns survived, arousing
a pounding in my chest
Each ephemeron sends sparks that light
Trails through tunnels best abandoned
But the bonfire burns into the night
Without destroying the fuel imagined
Sparking also embers of happiness
Easily smothered, neglected
Poorly labelled, an act of carelessness
Blow gently, they should
Never be rejected.
by Daithí Kearney (@dceol Twitter)
Fossilised
I dig you from this earth and find you, truly.
Kindly brush away your soil,
wipe you clean of the dust of your past.
Allow me to hold you in my hands -
admire your history for all that it is.
Let me trace memory in your ridges,
feel your bumps, grooves, imperfections.
I want to know all that made you as I found you.
Tell me your stories. Let me understand.
Acquaint me with your past,
prior loves and missing pieces - buried in time.
You may be fossilised, my love,
but I intend to display you.
by Amy Rose (@ameparis.poetry Insta)
Fossil fates
I am a fossil
Of everyone who came before me
Those that looked like me
Who wrapped themselves tight with desire they could not find words for
And a society could find no tolerance to try
I am a geode
Crack me open and witness the sparkle of beauty within
The unique pattern of my soul that bore every breath
When my lungs struggled for purchase in a land that didn't want me
That doesn't still
It tries to choke me with its acrid hate
Noxious clouds of misunderstandings whirling to a resounding beat
Resembling the race of my heart as my soul plunges into my chest and reminds me
I am worthy
I am a rock
Simple
Insignificant
Turn me over, nudge me with a boot toe
Skim me across smooth swathes of blue
Ignore me and walk on
I will be here
Soul intact
Lungs heavy with sediment
by Heather Moss (@heather_moss_ Insta)
FOSSILS
When we were wee our mum
would take us up the Bannau Brycheiniog
(I feel as though I grow to cement as when
we went the ridiculous name of some great
lord was was allowed to cloak the coniferous forest)
and she’d push us into “Dinosaur Land”
- in Cymru “Dan Yr Ogof” enwir -
precisely so that we could touch the coiling
soldiers of time that fought against all odds to
be thumbed by grubby snot-soaked digits.
If ammonites knew, I used to think,
that first they too were named by some strange
unrelenting God, and then by us (The Phoencians),
would they have preened their hair as we do?
Taken time out of their days,
of being amniotic and heteromorphic and cretaceous,
to use the blue in shaking depths to sharpen the whiteness
of one cool eye, globuled and unblinking?
Would they deny the fate of their brothers?
If now, today, the ammonite straightened
her tentacles with grid power and limestone?
Would she know that she was spared
perhaps by way of her golden logarithm
(n > 1, n > 1, ad infinitum).
Or would they perhaps -
And then I’d stop.
Because ‘allanfa’ to an English child
reads like
elephants
and
so
there my mind would go
there my mind would go
out of the door and past my mother’s mind
as she thought on the bigness and longness
of both the soft flesh of animal
and the soft flesh of time.
You could not pry my brother away,
and until this day, he swears by that -
the exoskeletal palpation.
I think it helps him feel small.
by Stephanie Ritzema (@_stephritz Insta)
Collection of us
When I was young, I would collect rocks and fossils.
I would put them in a box, latched shut, loving each and every one.
That ought to explain why I hold onto things the way I do.
The words spoken, the looks given, the memories made.
I would study each ridge, print, color, and shape. Wondering where it has been, where it once was.
Perhaps that is why i view everything including myself-
for we are all aging, changing, leaving imprints on others and fading slowly but surely we are all in this box, latched shut, to be loved by each and every one.
A Good Find
Your love language is fossils
The gentle way you turn over fragile ones
The hopeful way you break open rugged ones
I know you are a good find
by Alicia Vane
So the Waves Said
The moonlit mornings were his favourite. Each journey out, each discovery, recovery, all the sweeter. That silver, monolithic shine of the rocks. The chill of it. Wind slicing, kicking icy spray across his face. The whistle through the stones. Howling. Haunted.
He liked to think of himself as a ghost. The way he got under the skin of people’s lives. Picked them up and carried them on. Another house had fallen three days back. He wondered who he would be today. Who he would gather up and slip over himself like a warm
winter coat.
The waves were retreating. Just enough to make a path for an hour. A sliver, between the cliff face and the churning white. He clambered over the stones. Careful. The way all slick and shine.
He came around into the bay at last. The sea had pressed ever further. The rock face was so sheer now. This spot would soon be a cave. In a couple of years it wouldn’t be again. And so on. Swallowing and swallowing. He’d been a caver once, so the waves said. A rope knife and a carabiner washed up in his lost and found.
The sand rose up from the water and he sank down to greet it. Most of the beach was all so new, still smooth and stony, but what grain there was came here. Once something was whittled away from itself, stripped of connection, of context, here it came. He reached his hands into the loam. The grit and the softness both. He liked that it could get like this. Everything. Anything. All of it mixed up. Ground down. Each bit so distinct and separate, until it isn’t. Until one day it finds its way back to everything else.
He found all the usual things. Yoghurt pots and coffee pods, sodden cling film rot. Toothbrushes. Sanitary wads. Blouses and button-down stocking skirt socks. A digital clock with the radio wire cut. He’d been a bookworm in this life. No, a podcast guy. Heavy sleeper. Habitual snoozer. Can’t be fucked to brew a pot. Missed the news ‘til it was right outside-er.
But that wasn’t fair to himself. It was hard to take it all with you. Every version of him knew that. You always think you have more time than you do.
So much can disappear on you if you let it.
He checked the tide. Not long to linger. He moved along the shore. Lots of new wood. Attic beams. Conversion maybe. He’d had it to spend, and why not with the kids growing? A copy of The Little Mermaid on VHS. He crowed. So rich. He’d liked the crackle of
tape, he decided. The grain. Proper stuff, he’d always say to the kids. That version’s got texture. He dusted it off and put it in his pack. Too much life in it to sit here. It needed context. Memories. It needed a home.
He did a final sweep. A smart meter. Sewing needles and a wicker basket. He packed them up. He had others, but they’d be grateful for the company.
The tide rushed over his shoes. A sudden shock of cold. He stood. It was so easy to lose yourself here. A hundred lives slow-motion tumbling over the edge and it could still sink its teeth before you realised it had already warned you. He turned to go. The wind screaming at his back. He let out a howl of his own. The rest would be here tomorrow. It all would be eventually. Everything. Anything. It would all find its way back together.
by Simon Flower
swim press 