Your writing prompt this week is
FISH
You may think of physical fish, swimming in the sea, or being part of a delicious meal. But it’s another word with multiple meanings. We sometimes use it to refer to a person who is a little strange, seeing them as ‘an odd fish’. It can be used instead of to search or look for, with our fingers – for example, ‘He fished in his rucksack for his ticket.’ Or you might try and ‘fish for a compliment’. Also think of the simile ‘like a fish out of water’. What does this week’s word mean 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 GLASS.
Rall:
a lace hanky
the smell of eau de cologne
a cut glass vase
filled with roses
on a polished wooden table
all things
that remind me of you
Glass Or Looking Glass
Between what I see is a glass,
a looking glass, perhaps, alas.
Peace Talks
amid shattered glass
aggression in the kitchen
but in the bedroom
neither was invincible
they both surrendered quickly
The first thing I thought of was Anthony Nolan. A Kiss Through Glass was written by his mother Shirley Nolan, who in 1974 set up the Anthony Nolan Bone Marrow Register. Sadly no match could be found for her son, and he died in 1979 aged just seven. It was a story that touched everyone. You can read of the 50th Special Edition of her book HERE
Looking at the glass as half empty or half full is a moot point after the bourbon is drunk. Time for another attempt at a philosophical view. Three fingers of bourbon please.
The Boy Next Door
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.
A Glass Carries the World’s Needs and Wants
A glass is more than just a receptacle or a dish.
It’s what comes in it that makes life so sweet.
Wine that lifts our spirits and brings a smile,
Or Orange Crush, that transforms a meal into a treat!
It might be a beer in a large stein in Germany
That we share with others from around the world.
Or it could be milk with our favorite cookies,
Or just water when thirsty, that goes unheralded.
A glass contains some of life’s greatest liquids,
As our most needed thirsts, they surely meet.
It is more than just a vessel or a container.
It is a means to make life more complete.
blurred glass reflections
the memories distorted
first protect the heart
the simple mind’s intentions
revisiting cold actions
damage cracks the fragile glass
Sand of Time
Like the magic of a wand
the hour glass full of sand
takes away all doubt
line running out
when my hand
makes it
flip
the speed
of the ship
logged by tight knots
is telling me lots
of what I need to know
to make this old vessel go
Glass Eye Verses
Only up close, and if one was looking, if they knew
Could they spot the glass eye – so life like, the one lost
To the disease that takes pieces and parts
And sometimes comes back to ravage the rest.
~
Some famous folks have had glass eyes –
Peter Faluk – the famed detective Columbo
As well as Sandy Duncan who played Peter Pan
Something to look for if you ever films they’ve been in.
~
Some jewelry have depictions of eyes,
For ‘protection’ some are glass, some are gemstones.
It is all a matter of the faith you put into the object
As to whether you believe in the wards they grant.
~
I was watching a mystery *show, where a police office
Had to go through cremated ashes trying to attempt an ID
Back then for the common man, there was only a box.
The body who it was supposed to be, it wasn’t.
There was the melted remains of a one glass eye.
Which meant the villain had escaped, and was alive
A human diseased with a panache for murder
Who was coming back to seek revenge…
The Glass Eye
What a marvelous treasure!
Trey was kicking stones across the vacant lot when he heard a tinkling sound. When he retrieved the smooth rock that had produced the intriguing sound, he realized it was a glass eye! It must have been there for a long time because it took him a whole afternoon of soaking and polishing to bring it back to “life”.
That night, the dreams started.
A crippled old man with dreadlocks and an eye patch kept pursuing him. The man silently crawled on his belly while holding an outstretched hand but was somehow able to beat him to every street corner as he raced for home. This dream repeated throughout the night.
In the morning, Trey nearly fell asleep in his breakfast bowl. He took the long way to school avoiding the empty lot. With the glass eye safely tucked in his pocket, he turned the last corner on School Street and stopped dead in his tracks. There was the old man with the eye patch leaning against a boarded-up storefront! The man reached out his hand and Trey placed the glass eye into it then tried to turn and run but his feet wouldn’t move!
That’s when Trey heard his mother’s voice calling. “Trey… Trey! Wake up, Dear.”
He found himself in the recovery room after having an emergency appendectomy. It had ALL been a very bad dream!
It was 3 weeks before Trey felt calm enough to scuffle across his shortcut in the empty lot again. That anesthesia induced nightmare had really stuck with him.
That’s when he kicked a rock only to hear an eerily familiar tinkling sound…
Trees in My Glass
remember the day
when there were trees in my glass
upside down giants
Journey into Wonderland – A Random Ramble
When Alice stepped through the Looking Glass a whole world, she discovered.
Much like the trip down the rabbit hole and entire new truths were uncovered.
Like where you ought to go depends on where you want to get to.
And a raven and a writing desk may be very much the same.
The truth may lie with a Cheshire cat or perhaps with Humpty Dumpty.
And if you’re an oyster stay away. From walruses and carpenters..
beware the jabberwock my son unless you have your vorpal sword,
if your don’t gyre and gimble, at least remember to galumph
and try you best not to lose your head.
But if you do, never fear,
as the wise Cat more than once has said “We’re all mad here.”
Glass House
I live in a Glass House
With glass windows
To look at the world
Comfortable and contented
I pass judgement… make opinion
Create my own image for others
To venerate or vitiate
My neighbour lives in her Glass Chamber
She looks at me with brittle laugh
She too comments and criticizes
Through the glass…
But sometimes we have to walk on the road
And stare at others …those unknown
Without a roof of their own
Its then that we make haste to rush back
To our shield of glass to be safe from
The pebbles their glassy eyes pelt at us
Lest we crack up in their weight
And melt as glass does under fire
Broken Promises
broken promises
cut deeper
than shards of shattered glass.
words once wrapped in gold,
spoken by leaders
with honeyed tongues,
to protect,
to uphold,
to serve—
the people’s rights,
the people’s needs.
but promises bloom only
in election season—
bright, fragrant,
beautiful lies
that wither once
the votes are cast.
then silence follows,
and the broken pieces
glint in the dust,
reminding us
that trust, once cracked,
is never whole again.
Through the Glass: The Colors We Emanate
When I was little, I had a small cloth pouch filled with marbles, bright, shiny ones that seemed to hold galaxies inside them. I’d pour them onto the floor, watching the sunlight catch each one at a different angle. My favorite was a clear marble with swirls of blue and gold, a miniature world suspended in glass. I didn’t know why, but whenever I looked at it, I felt calm, as if all my chaos found its quiet center in that little sphere.
Sometimes, I’d hold it up to my eye and look through it. Everything changed, walls melted into colors, light became soft, and my ordinary world looked like a dream. I didn’t know it then, but that was my first encounter with perspective, how what we see depends on what we see through.
As we grow older, we lose our marbles, not just the literal ones, but the metaphorical ones too. We lose the ability to look through life’s glass and see colors shimmer in the light of ordinary moments. The glass becomes fogged by disappointment, by routine, by fear. Yet, like that childhood marble, every emotion we experience still refracts light in its own way, it paints us in colors we may not even realize we’re emanating.
Emotion is energy in motion, and like light, it vibrates. Neuroscientifically, each emotion triggers a cascade of chemicals in the brain, dopamine for joy, cortisol for stress, oxytocin for love. These reactions don’t just alter our internal state; they radiate outward, affecting how others perceive us.
It’s not just metaphorical when we say someone “lights up a room.”
In color psychology, emotions and hues have long shared a quiet dialogue:
Blue is calm and introspective, the color of empathy, of thought, of trust.
Red burns with passion, courage, or sometimes anger, it’s the heart beating faster, the spark of life itself.
Yellow shines with curiosity, laughter, and lightness, the playful hum of optimism.
Green soothes, it’s growth, balance, and renewal.
Purple is wisdom and imagination, often seen in the minds that dare to dream beyond what’s visible.
Even our brains respond differently to these colors. Studies in affective neuroscience show that blue hues lower heart rate and anxiety, while reds and oranges activate the amygdala, stirring alertness and emotional intensity. We don’t just see colors; we feel them in our nervous system.
Our emotions, in turn, emit their own spectrum, invisible yet deeply felt. When someone walks into a room carrying peace, it’s like blue light diffusing softly. When someone brings laughter, the air seems to glow yellow. We are, quite literally, walking rainbows of human experience, refracting light differently depending on what we’ve been through.
Glass, like emotion, is transparent yet strong. It lets light in but also reflects what’s within. The younger me saw the world through the playful refraction of a marble; the older me now realizes that we are all that glass, delicate yet resilient, clear yet full of color, capable of both reflection and illumination.
The neuroscience of emotion teaches us that awareness changes everything. The moment we name what we feel, the amygdala, our emotional alarm system, calms down. Naming the color of our emotion helps us see it clearly.
I am feeling blue today becomes less of a void and more of a shade. And every shade, no matter how dark, can still catch the light.
So perhaps the challenge is not to erase emotion but to observe it through the glass, to see how even sadness has its own quiet beauty, like rain streaking down a window, softening the world beyond.
This week’s word, “glass”, made me realize that what we look through matters more than what we look at.
Maybe your glass is fogged with memories, maybe it’s cracked by loss, or maybe it gleams with hope. Either way, light still finds a way in.
The marbles of childhood taught me that beauty lies not in perfection but in the way light bends, in the way we let ourselves be changed by what we feel.
So here’s my invitation to you readers, pick up your glass, whether it’s a window, a tumbler, or the quiet reflection of your own eyes, and notice the colors it holds.
Every shade tells a story.
And believe… that maybe, just maybe, the light passing through you is illuminating someone else’s world too.
A Toast!
I raise my glass half empty, nest abandoned, last chick flown.
No Mum’s free taxi. No more, ‘Mum, can you mend…’ Time’s me own
to take up hobbies, join a choir, redecorate my home.
My glass is half full as I hover on retirement’s border.
We meet for family catch-ups – most arranged by son or daughter.
Engagements, weddings, grandchildren… though rarely in that order.
So if your world’s about to change, don’t meet it feeling miserable.
Smile and raise a toast and make the most of life, on principle.
Don’t fret into an early grave.
The glass is yet refillable.
I had a wishy-washy feeling as I looked out the dirty glass pane of the subway. The impound was a block away and I needed to claim my limo from the tow yard. I was running late for the violin solo being preformed by Joe Walsh of the Eagles fame. I would sit in the balcony during the show holding the roster which was sticky from the smores made of marshmallow and graham crackers I was eating.
Shattered Vessel
The heart does not break cleanly. It fractures like glass, each crack a memory, each splinter a scream that never found its way out.
He remembered the emptiness first—it was a black void of nothingness that he descended further into with each passing moment. Now, sitting alone in the cold light of dawn, he could still see her reflection in every shard of his mind’s mirror. Once, she’d promised forever. Now, her spirit whispered lies through the fissures in his thoughts, each word slicing deeper than the last.
He had tried to glue it back together—whisky, silence, and denial used like epoxy on a wound that refused to heal. But the cracks spread, webbing out across his fragile heart, each new crack making the sound of bells as it ruptured in his chest. The sound was music from the abyss.
When he finally looked in the mirror, he didn’t see himself. He saw the glinting mosaic of a man rebuilt from sorrow and rage, the kind of beauty only madness could sculpt.
He smiled, though his lips bled. The reflection smiled back, but it wasn’t him anymore. It was the thing that crawled through the fracture.
“This too shall pass,” he tried his best to remember that, but not all pain goes away—some of it lingers for eternity in the fractured soul of the broken-hearted.
Her Mother’s Daughter
The glass yielded like the surface of a still pond under the gentle pressure of her palm.
In an instant she was seven again, barefoot on dew-wet grass, running in circles- exuberant just to be alive- her mother looking on from the porch, laughing.
Then, the wind shifted- carrying with it the scent of the bacon she had set to frying, just moments before.
The porch, though empty now, carried the imprint of her mother’s laughter. Just for today- that would have to be enough.
Her hand, still resting on the glass. The world beyond it- now anything but ordinary.
Glass Topped Coffee Table
My family moved from Cape Town back to George in the Western Cape when I was 10. We’d spent two years in Cape Town and Dad was itching for a change.
For Cath and I it was another move, another house, and another school. This time, my parents enrolled us in the Catholic convent which was English speaking and small in size. All the teachers were nuns and the number of girl learners vastly outnumbered the boys.
Mom bought a few new pieces of furniture for this larger house, one of which was a coffee table with a glass top. Mom was very pleased with this table and placed it proudly in the centre of the lounge.
It was a rainy and miserable day and Cath and I were bored. The weather had been relentlessly wet and we were tired of being inside. Even I had run out of interesting ideas to keep us entertained. I was reading ‘What Katy Did’ by Susan Coolidge and this book inspired the idea of a game of chase inside the house.
Before long, Cath was running away with me hot on her heels. We charged into the lounge and Cath tripped on the edge of the carpet, cartwheeling right on top of the new coffee table. She went straight through the glass. I shrieked in terror, thinking my sister must be dead. Through some sort of divine intervention, she was not dead. She wasn’t even cut or harmed in any way. She rose up out of the glass debris like a small angel.
Dad shouted at me for being so silly and running about near the coffee table which disappeared never to reappear. To this day, my blood runs cold when I think of this accident.
glass table
impractical choice
accident
in waiting
thank goodness for miracles
walked away unharmed
glass is a pane
repeat echo yet again
glass houses
and stones of the garden
all sin the dark side
of us and the moon
full and the beaver
remember
the fifth of november
boom!
***
Esther Chilton 
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