CAROLYN O'DOHERTY
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The pied piper

9/2/2018

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The Frog Prince

8/26/2018

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Beauty and the beast

8/19/2018

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cinderella

8/15/2018

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breakfast

5/11/2018

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The morning broke
Harsh as bitter coffee
Light falling too brightly
Across the sticky counters
 
The morning broke
Like used up eggs
Hard shells reduced
To fragile shards
 
The roaches retreated
Waving their antennas
To signal their defeat
 
The people rushed to their cars
Carting backpacks
And overdue papers
 
The mice stayed behind
Feasting on coffee grounds
And leftover smears of jelly

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chalk

4/27/2018

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The white chalk line meandered down the pavement. It slithered over the curb, avoiding the gutter with a delicate swerve. Pebbles it could overrun. Cracks added interest. Feet only scuffed the surface. Puddles, however, were to be avoided. 

The line curled itself into letters: Max was here, Johnny loves April, SMILE.  A short detour left behind a drawing of a cat.  A few quick lines and a blank sidewalk transformed into a game of hopscotch. Children laughed. The chalk moved on.

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wishes

4/20/2018

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The crab crawls across the beach, sand flicking away from his twisted legs in little furrows. The crab’s eye stalks wave towards the sky, searching for the shadow that brings silent wing-borne death. All that whispers from the air today is wind. Maybe, he thinks, the wind will bring a genie. Wishes will be granted, children will fly, and men will turn invisible. The crab skitters sideways to avoid the remains of a large shell. The crab wishes that his shell was hard as diamonds and that it emitted a seagull thwarting scent. The shell wishes that it still rested under the sea, where the surroundings were cool and no one picked it up and set it to molder on a shelf. What about the genie? Does it get a wish? The genie just wants to dissolve into the wind and float around the world in a vague, disparate, cloud, untroubled by the desires of man or crab or shell.
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The mirror broke

4/14/2018

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When the mirror broke, the pieces scattered across the living room floor like lethal confetti. Slivers glittered in the light. Images flickered, disconnected and startling. The frame slumped against the wall, its black wood dull without the distraction of reflection. The paper in its center had a splotch of mold shaped like the face of a bearded man.

The guests stared at the shattered disaster. No one moved to clear it up. The shards taunted them with their knife sharp edges, eyeing soft finger with greedy lips. Come on, they seemed to crow, sweep me up.
I dare you.

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ON the way here

3/25/2018

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On the way here, the sidewalk started wobbling. I thought at first it was me, like maybe I broke a heel or something, but then I saw a guy in front of me lean against a mailbox. Too much to drink, he muttered. I didn’t correct him. I figured out that if I slid my feet while I walked the wobbling sort of evened out so it was more like ice skating, or how ice skating would be if there were hills. It would have been okay then except the wobbling turned into something more like bouncing. I was starting to take it personally. What did the sidewalk have against me anyway? Did it want me to be late? I tried stamping my feet, pushing down really hard in an effort to quell the cresting concrete. It didn’t work. I tried jumping from swell to swell, timing each leap so I could skim the tops like a squirrel leaping across branches. That didn’t work either. I looked around me to see how other people were dealing this this sudden complication but the other side of the street was calm. Flat. Gray. Normal.
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grand central

3/17/2018

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The train pulled into the station in a gush of steam, hot and smelling of metal. There was a flurry as everyone searched for lost gloves and missing handbags. The children pushed their way along the corridors, scrambling to gather up their suitcases and stuffy winter coats. 

Amy left her novel squashed between two of the cushions.

Nathan left his glasses on the window ledge.

Mrs. Morris left her new lipstick, the dark plum one, in the dusty space beneath the seat but she wouldn’t realize it until the following Sunday when she got dressed to meet Daniel at the fairground.
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    carolyn O'Doherty

    When the muses refuse to come out and play, free writes are one strategy to try and trick them into coming back. Sometimes I use prompts, sometimes I just start putting words down on a page. The short pieces posted here are some of my favorites and, yeah, I spent way too much time finding photos to go with them. Shout out to pixabay, openphoto, and stocksnap.io for their huge array of copywrite free images.

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© 2020 by Carolyn O'Doherty
  • Books
    • REWIND >
      • Buy Now!
      • Excerpt, Chapter 1
      • The World of Rewind
      • Rewind Photos
      • Study Guide
    • UNLEASHED >
      • Buy Now!
      • Excerpt, Chapter 1
      • Unleashed Photos
  • About Me
    • Top Five
    • Reading List
    • Author Interview
  • Flash FIction
  • News/Events
  • Contact