Esther Chilton

Your writing prompt this week is

BLUE

This word is so much more than just a colour (and the Smurfs!). There’s music – the blues; it’s used to describe a mood; there are various aspects to it spiritually; it can also be saucy and a naughty joke; or perhaps it means something else to you.

Fact or fiction, prose or poetry, I would love to read your thoughts on this week’s prompt, but there’s no obligation to share your writing. Here is the work you shared on the last prompt PAPER.

Kim Smyth:

Yes, stationery! I remember how I loved getting different pretty designs. I loved writing letters…where did that go?

I had a tin box with small note-sized stationery and envelopes.i loved giving and receiving cards. I hate that Christmas cards are kind of going out of style.

In fact, so many “personalized” things are.

It’s becoming a cold, technical, impersonal world, so we need to keep our friends and family connections strong and growing. We need our “tribe” so we have comfort in this cold, harsh world.

Pensitivity101:

Pretty paper is always a nice backing for some of my cards. It takes off the plainness of white and gives a little ‘panache’ to a simple image.
Saying that, it doesn’t always work, and I have had to revamp several having not been pleased with the end result.

fenlandphil:

I had my first paper round when I was just nudging thirteen, a morning round in Huntingdon. By the time I left school at fifteen, I had not only a morning and Sunday round but also my own evening paper business. When I started working full time as an apprentice mechanic, I gave up the morning round and my evening paper business but kept my Sunday round until I was about seventeen.

Until my son asked me to return his paper bag to the shop when he gave up his own paper round, I had apart from helping him out when the weather was rough or he was unwell, little more to do with papers. When I took his bag back to the shop, there was a notice in the window asking for newspaper delivery people. I returned home with the bag mine now and a Sunday paper round. that was over twenty years ago and I’m still delivering Sunday papers. When I was a lad, it was the Sunday quiet I loved and still do.

Ladyleemanila:

I wish I may have limitless supply

Supply of pencils, colours and papers

Something to write or to paint

Something to show when it’s done

I wish I may have limitless luck

A lady luck always by my side

A green light on my way

Nothing to fear, nothing to hide

I wish I may have limitless love

Love to give and to share

Love for everyone so they’d smile

Love even if it hurts

Back to office supplies

I can never have too many

Paperclips, staples and papers

Pens for scribbling, brush to paint

K Morris Poet:

I once met a journalist named Caper

Who worked for a most disreputable newspaper.

He wrote about Miss Hocking,

And my loss of stockings!

So I no longer buy that newspaper!

John W. Howell:

John and Joe planned a caper,

To rob a bank of only paper.

In the vault with intent to perloin,

There were only bags of coin.

Tony:

The paper is not silent: it waits.

It is this docile matter that offers its whiteness to the tumult of thoughts.

Support of forgetting as much as memory, it collects the shadow of ideas before they die out.

We think we write on it — but it is he who records our tremors.

Because every word on the paper is a fragment of oneself, offered to the world or to nothingness…

Frank Hubeny:

Once upon a time there was an innocent piece of paper. Then Brian began writing.

He wrote fluently like a Pentecostal preacher speaking in tongues (thankfully without an interpreter). Unfortunately, the tongue Brian wrote in was English.

None of us could stop our minds from making sense out of what he wrote. None of us could stop reading. None of us could close our ears because we had already heard too much. We wanted to know what happened next.

Like that piece of paper once upon a time our minds were innocent.

Teleportingweena:

Doll World

A little girl sits all alone

Her thoughts are running wild

What captivates her interest so…

This introverted child?

A mother, father, son, and daughter

Aunts, and uncles, too

Grandparents, and friends, and pets are there

No more will she be blue.

She’s created a world that’s all her own

She speaks as their creator…

They may be dolls, but to her they’re real…

Her family made of paper.

~

I used to cut out and play with paper dolls all the time. I’d get my little safety scissors, and cut carefully around the images of people I’d find in catalogs, magazines, and sewing pattern books. Then, sometimes I’d get to buy a new book of the paper dolls at the dime store. These would be sturdier, made of cardboard, and have a selection of clothes (with those little tabs) to dress them in. Many hours playing with these.

Sanny M:

Paper makes me think of books and magazines and newspapers and how in today’s modern world we have kindles and ebooks and online newspapers.

I grew up in a home filled with bookshelves full of encyclopaedias, atlases, novels and so much more.
I am so happy that most of my friends and family still like the paper version of a book, sifting through book shops or charity shops for their next novel.

I will always have a bookshelf in my home and now have the joy of enjoying reading some of my favourite children’s stories again reading them to my grandchildren.

A Multitude of Musings:

I could be writing about my rather disastrous attempts at paper crafting, but did so already in 2022. I could also write about my first diary, which I kept on Braille notes stuck into a handmade notebook. That would be a short post, as the diary was short-lived. I only regularly kept a diary once I got a computer.

Instead, a phrase I read in a teen magazine back in 2006, comes to mind. The magazine interviewed a futurologist, a person who scientifically tries to predict the future. They asked whether the teen magazine would still exist in 2020. The futurologist said it would not be in the same form, because “paper no longer exists in 2020”.

He probably meant paper tabloids and magazines, not paper in general. More generally, he probably meant that our digital age would’ve progressed so far that people would no longer read traditional paper media. That isn’t entirely true even in 2025, though I wish it were (because that’d make media much more accessible to me).

In other ways, the futurologist was spot on about life in 2020, though not in a good way. He predicted we’d have found a cure for cancer and AIDS by this time. This was what soothed my mind each time I had a health anxiety attack and worried about cancer: if I just made it to 2020, it’d be cureable. As we all know, it isn’t and most likely won’t be anytime soon. That being said, the flip side of the cure the futurologist predicted, did turn out to happen, ie. a global pandemic. And actually exactly in 2020.

Back to paper. I just reread the article and it said that digital paper, which the futurologist claimed would completely replace regular paper, would look just like traditional paper but be wirelessly refreshable. I know some people have digital photo frames, but I haven’t heard of refreshable paper that’s as thin as the regular kind.

Oh, and in case you were wondering: the magazine I got the article out of, no longer exists.

Life Lessons:

Wallpaper

Clinging to the wall
like an old wallpaper scrap
are the words
I want you, I want you, I want you, I want you.

Their refrain slides up and down
the musical scale—
an old country tune,
plaintive and clear.

Why do I want you?

The first time I met you,
there was something about the curl of your hair.
Your eyes, so familiar­—puzzled, as though
you, too, were trying to remember.

After that, it was
the set of your shoulders—
the arm stretched between your seat and mine
with your hand on the back of my seat.

All of your restraint an aphrodesiac.

The truth is
that I pined
for two days after I left,
then went on with my life.

Still, that scrap
of wanting
comes up early in the morning
as I waken

and my mind walks,
looking for someone to pin it to,
and every time
it stops at you.

Michnavs:

Paper Dreams

paper dolls,
paper boats,
paper planes—
my childhood scattered in soft,
folded corners of wonder.

days stitched with awe,
where the world could be molded
from a single sheet—
a girl with painted lips,
a ship braving puddle-storms,
a plane soaring from open hands.

but they never stayed.
not for a day,
not a week—
never long enough
to outlive the rain,
or the tug of careless time.

they vanished—
before i could learn
the full weight
of their magic.
and now—
you.

you were not a paper doll,
no fragile fold,
no crease to come undone.
you were real—
warm breath,
solid touch,
a promise i dared to believe in.

but why, my love,
why did you leave
as if you were made
of paper too?
why did you not
stay long enough
to be mine?

Dawgy Daddy Responds:

In the pre dawn darkness of this mornings dark roast delight my muse came up with an idea to make an epregne for Father’s Day. It will be made from the misprints of my recent order of books from Ingram Sparks. The paper of the pages will be glued together to produce a catchers mitt to hold different strains of flower to be smoked after dinner. This thought was a brilliant idea and will come to fruitation soon as I know how it feels to be in his shoes.

Heidi Dare:

The first thing that comes to mind is school supplies. The teacher creates a list of supplies for her/his students. The prospective students would take their list to the local department store to gather supplies.

My memories are of me and my mom going to Walmart to buy school supplies. The highlight of my list was always the pens and paper. Ah, the look of that new spiral notebook with its freshly blank paper.  Sheets of white with horizontal blue lines to write on with a single red vertical line on the left side for a margin line. I remember I tried to write my best on each side. The most perfect formed letters and the prettiest handwriting I had possible.  This notebook was going to be pretty and neatly organized. That was until notetaking came into the picture. When notetaking, I would somehow get more sloppy with my writing. Still, I have good memories. That’s what matters.

Lisa A Paul:

Magical Paper

Paper, such a trivial thing. It isn’t sturdy, or expensive, it cannot withstand a storm and it tears easily. But paper has a quiet power, a secret strength, for when you interact with it, paper can become something magical, beautiful, a keepsake or a gift. Your handwriting on paper can become a letter, a story, or a diary. Your designs on paper can become a drawing, a portrait, or a picture. If you attach lovely things to paper, it can become a handmade card, a thing of beauty. What would life be like without paper?

Sexagenarian Scribbler:

When it comes to papers, I can’t be without my Daily Mail. I’ve been a reader for as long as I can remember, probably when I started work at the age of sixteen.

I remember my dad teaching me how to do the Skeleton Crossword ( from a rival paper ), and that’s how I learnt about symmetry.

Now my favourite day of the week is Sunday whern I attempt to do their equivalent, Bare Bones.

I’m a regular contributor to their P,boro column, in the Wordywise and One line Philosphers, as well as my limericks, often taking something in the news as my theme, and part of my morning routine is attempting the daily crossword.

We go to Majorca every year, and a few years ago they stopped selling the Mail, something to do with contracts. Thank goodness it has been restored. Even on holiday I have to have my fix.

Similarly, we cruised to New York and didn’t see a paper for a week, or civilisation!

Nowadays, you can read anything on line, but it’s not the same, I don’t do Kindle either, there’s something about physically turning a page.

My husband may be happy to do that, but not me. He begrudges having to pay out for a paper version. It’s not as if we can’t afford it, and to me my Daily Mail is worth every penny.

The Bag Lady:

I used to love shops that were paper stores.  All the different writing tools, notebooks, cards, writing paper and notes…I could spend hours just trying to decide.

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