Your new prompt word is
VISION
Sight and being able to see is the first thing that came to mind when I thought about this word. I feel very fortunate to have clear vision when I wear my glasses or contact lenses. This word also has other meanings. We might have a goal in life – a vision of what we want to achieve that we keep hold of. When you’re asleep, an idea may come to you in a vision. We also speak about someone or something looking amazing – for example, they were a vision in their outfits. What does this week’s prompt 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 BOARD.
My Core
what you see is what you get, they say;
but i am no glass display, no polished window.
i whisper: look again.
you’ll have to wade past the glitter,
past the sequins stitched by strangers,
past the neon glow of curated feeds
and the masks that smile on command.
beneath the shimmer,
there is a quieter fire—
not meant to dazzle,
but to endure.
i am not on board
with the passing tides of trend,
not a name pinned to a moving board
of borrowed voices and borrowed light.
i do not drift where the crowd surges;
i root where the ground is real.
and at my center—
not hashtags, not applause—
but a pulse that beats steady, insistent:
for women,
for voices long softened,
for stories that refuse to be small.
this is my core,
my unfiltered truth—
not what is seen at a glance,
but what remains
when the lights go out.
Sky
I saw a cloud above, so high,
and then a plane go flying by.
I’d board the plane, but now the sky
fits fully in my heart.
Building Our Own
This prompt reminded me of a fun activity I made up for my daycare friends. We built our own board games. Creating the game was half the fun!
There were a few themes we used but the one I remember best was a Shopping for Groceries Game. It was a familiar scenario to even the youngest kids. They’d all ridden around grocery stores in a cart.
I drew out a board with spaces on paper and glued it to a sturdy posterboard (or recycled a broken-down cardboard box). We had a starting point and a finish line. Along the way, you could land on a labeled space and ‘lose your turn’ or land on one that allowed you to take a ‘shortcut’. The object was to collect 5 grocery items before you crossed the finish line. There were 5 key spaces on which you collected that grocery card by landing on it. Some spaces made you put your grocery item back on the shelf. If you reached the finish line without all five items, you had to go all the way around again. The first to reach the finish line with a “full cart” was the winner.
The kids helped coloring in the arrows and designs that I had pre-drawn for them, and we had fun making our own special game pieces from items in my “junk drawer”.
The use of counting with dice and adding/subtracting items was a math lesson they were totally unaware of.
Of course, taking turns, following directions, and being a “good sport” were also valuable lessons.
[If I were homeschooling Junior High School kids right now. It would be great fun creating games on the topics of “making laws”, imposing regulations, voting or monetary policies including taxes, inflation, tariffs, etc. “Oh, The Places We Could Go!”]
Board is a simple word —
but it carries many lives.
A wooden board beneath your feet,
balancing between falling and flying.
A board game spread across a table,
pieces moving, rules shifting, someone always waiting for their turn.
A notice board —
messages pinned in place,
memories held by drawing pins and fading ink.
And then there are the invisible boards.
The ones we are placed on without asking.
The board of expectations.
The board of roles.
The one where people move you like a piece,
thinking they know your next step.
I have been on many boards in my life.
Some I stepped onto willingly.
Others I didn’t even realise I was standing on
until I chose to step off.
Because that’s the thing about boards —
they can hold you,
but they don’t have to define you.
You can leave the game.
Walk away from the table.
Choose not to play by rules that were never yours.
And maybe that’s the real meaning of board —
not where you stand,
but knowing
you can step off
whenever you’re ready.
Susan Batten:
Big Cheese
There squatted that Roger, big cheese on the board, fat jowls and red braces, a toad on his hoard. Strained buttons, gold cuff links, best shoe leather, too. Old school tie, Armani. He’d cheated a few, Man stank of cigar smoke, striped shirt from the best, ringed fingers stained yellow, he laughed at the rest. His cronies laughed with him, adoring the fun. The last laugh was Roger’s – shooting down every one. Jolly laugh and best Cognac, oily voice, wicked leer, old Roger, the chairman, with nothing to fear.
AJ Wilson, a dear friend and collaborator turned me onto a new drug as “Huey Lewis” would say when she showed me the Suno app. I was instantly hooked on the quite unique way of bringing my poetry to life. I dove into this endeavor without testing the depths and learned I had to either sink or swim in the murky waters of AI enhancement.
Making videos soon became a part of this journey and my imagination went into high gear. Slopsoon followed with a couple of videos I no longer have out so I found myself drifting away from them for now. Legal issues soon had me thinking I needed to quit doing videos and find something else to occupy my altered mind.
This in turn became a new journey in itself, nothing like writing the books I did last year. Copyrights are totally different and the use of AI music is sketchy to say the least in the eyes of staying legal. Enter more Dawgy Daddy schooling.
I became obsessed with continuing to put music to my poems and soon found out that if I wanted to continue this I needed to get everything protected. I finally decided to slow down on the construction of the “Dive” as it looks okay to me and concentrate on the legal side of where I want to go.
I’ve learned that to do this right is going to take longer than a couple of generations of a song. I needed to learn how to use a DAW which will change everything I make in Suno. A quiet space needs to be built [sound booth] where I can record my vocals and replace the ones generated by Suno. I then need to get my name, band name and label all trademarked [$$$ ouch!] After finding all of this out I still was not ready to give up and so will move forward into a long journey of getting ready for the release of my first album.
The next move in this journey is to gather all the muses and voices in my altered mind and have a board meeting to decide if I want to move forward, the answer is a unanimous yes.
This is the first post in a series describing my journey into the making of AI music and what it will take to try and do it right.
wide is broad
as to ennui is board
The board finally did the right thing. They voted to resign their positions and set up a new election of members. The Chairman was stunned and not only refused to accept their resignations, but also fired them all. It all happened during the annual wine tasting event. We’ll see what the morning brings.
The Board that Watches Back
I wake up to a silence that feels nailed in place.
Not quiet, no, quiet would be kind. This is the kind of silence that presses against your ribs like cold wood, like a BOARD you’ve been fastened to without consent. Every morning, I lie there for a moment, staring at the ceiling, wondering the same small, useless question:
Why me?
The room doesn’t answer. It never does. But it creaks, like it remembers something I don’t.
They say every BOARD has a story. Mine splinters. I can feel it in the way my days unfold, not in hours, but in fractures:
B – Beginning
A reluctant inhale. The world loads slowly, like it’s unsure whether I deserve to see it again.
O – Origin
A memory surfaces—half-formed, half-forgotten. A laugh that doesn’t belong to me anymore. I try to hold it. It dissolves.
A – Action
I move, but it feels scripted. Coffee. Steps. Words. Faces. Everything echoes like I’m performing on a stage built from someone else’s intentions.
R – Result
Nothing fits. Conversations slip. Smiles misfire. I walk through people like a ghost who forgot how to haunt properly.
D – Destiny
A question mark. Always a question mark.
Sometimes, I think I’m not living on the board. I think I am the board. Cracked. Written on. Erased. Written over again.
“Out of my BOARD,” I mutter once, catching my reflection. The phrase hangs there, wrong and right at the same time. Because I’m not out of my mind, I’m stuck inside something flatter, harder, colder.
And then there are the games. I didn’t notice at first. You never do when you’re inside them. But patterns repeat too precisely. Misfortunes align too cleanly. Hope arrives with suspicious timing, like bait.
It’s then I imagine it…A vast, impossible space. A universal picture board stretching beyond comprehension.
And somewhere – someone – moving pieces. Not cruelly, not kindly, just… curiously. Like a player.
“Welcome ABOARD the BOARD,” I whisper once, and laugh, too sharp, too sudden.
Because what if that’s it?
What if every stumble, every delay, every strange coincidence is just part of a larger composition? A design I can’t zoom out far enough to understand?
What if I’m both the nail and the note pinned beneath it?
Still, the cold doesn’t leave.
Days stack like identical planks. I grow BORED on the BOARD. The kind of boredom that isn’t empty, but overcrowded with thoughts that refuse to settle.
“The BOARD remembers what you forgot.”
That idea won’t leave me alone.
Because sometimes, in the quietest moments, I feel it. Not memory exactly, but recognition.
Like I’ve lived this moment before, or almost before, or will again in a slightly different shape.
“This is not a BOARD,” I say once, experimentally.
The room tilts, not physically, but conceptually, like reality shrugs.
And for a second, just a second, I see it differently. Not as a trap, but as a canvas.
What if the game isn’t about suffering?
What if it’s about focus? Because I start to notice something unsettling:
When I fixate on the cracks, they deepen.
When I trace the splinters, they multiply.
When I repeat why me, the question grows teeth.
But once, just once, I look away.
I follow something small instead. A flicker of warmth in a cup of coffee. A stranger’s almost smile. A breeze that doesn’t feel like punishment.
And the BOARD… shifts. Not entirely, not dramatically. But enough. That’s when it hits me, the strangest rule of all…
The game doesn’t just move me. I move it back.
So I try something reckless. Instead of asking why me, I ask:
What now?
The day doesn’t answer. But it loosens.
And somewhere, beyond comprehension, I imagine the player pausing… just briefly… to see what I’ll do next.
B
BO
BOA
BOAR
BOARD
BOARD
BOAR
BOA
BO
B
Again, and again, and again. Smaller, quieter, and looping.
Because if I stare only at the cracks, the cracks become everything.
But if I shift, even slightly, the pattern changes, the game changes. Maybe that’s the trick. Maybe that’s the mercy.
Or maybe?
it’s just another move on the BOARD.
‘Board’er Lines?
Boo
Overload of
Annoying versions; ‘news’
Reality, honesty – all lost
Dark
~
Battlefield
On carboard
Artistic games afoot
Rules written and bent;
Derailed
~
Baby
Over here
All night long…
Reaching for the stars
Dreaming
~
Between
Optical stimulation
Adjust attitude and
Relax, meditate, relieve the
Doldrums
~
Balance
Ocean waves
Adjust weight and
Ride the crest carefully
Dude!
Rall:
cant afford room and board?
how about
drunk for a penny
dead drunk for two pence
clean straw for nothing
doing it tough
in 18th century London
We have not had a TV since 2007, and when we sold the cottage in 2014 and bought the boat, practically everything we owned was given to charity.
This included not only furniture, books, CDs and DVDs, but board games.
So, we made our own.
The above is our snakes and ladders board. We found 2 small dice in our sewing box of all places, but our counters were coloured card as the buttons we had were tiny!
We also made a Ludo board and when we went to visit our friend one weekend, took both with us to make a change from Scrabble or Cribbage.
Sadly, he was not impressed, and made up rules we had never heard of when he was losing!
Size Matters
Mrs. F had a perplexed look on her face when she walked into my home office, where I was sitting at my desk, using my laptop, and working with TurboTax for our upcoming 2026 tax filing.
“I am sorry to interrupt you, but I need your input on a very important decision,” she said. “I can’t decide what kind of board to get for the room we set aside for our grandkids.”
“Board, what board?” I asked, as I looked at the amount we were going to owe in taxes this year, and wondered how much this “board” was going to cost us.
“A board,” she said. “Something for the kids to draw on. But should it be a chalk board or a whiteboard? And if a chalk board, should it be a blackboard or a green board?”
“I think it should be a whiteboard that uses those dry erase markers. Chalk boards, black or green, leave chalk dust all over the place, and that is a mess to clean up.”
“Good point,” Mrs. F said, “though maybe we should get one of each, a blackboard and a whiteboard.”
“One white board is enough,” I said.
“Fine,” she said. But then she got another perplexed look on her face.
“What now?” I asked. “I thought the decision about the board was made.”
“Okay, yes, we decided on the type of board,” she said. “Now the question is how big should the board be?”
Lou by the Sea:
Revenge
The burglar dripped white in his footsteps as he fled from the house with no swag in his bag. The old man lay on his bedroom floor. Alone. Stiff as a board. Flies a-buzzing. Pennies weighting his eyelids…
Tony:
Here is what Verlaine could say…
A pale painting shakes on the wall,
Under the too pure halo lamp,
Like a memory that fades
In the slow languor of space.
And my soul, at the edge of the night,
Reflects on it, fragile and without noise,
Seeking, in these faded hues,
A soft echo of the damned days.
In French :
Un tableau pâle tremble au mur,
Sous la lampe au halo trop pur,
Comme un souvenir qui s’efface
Dans la langueur lente de l’espace.
Et mon âme, au bord de la nuit,
S’y mire, fragile et sans bruit,
Cherchant, dans ces teintes fanées,
Un écho doux des jours damnés.
Positioning Your Board
Recently returned from their honeymoon, he decided he’d impress her with skills he’d acquired in his bachelor days. After all, he’d been doing this long before they met.
He lifted the upended board from its resting place against the wall and laid it in the space he’d prepared for it. Bending over, he lifted it by its sides and gave a little shake around hip level. He heard things click in the right places and was confident of his board’s stability. He was ready to go.
He shook out the fabric and laid it flat. He would show her how his shirts ought to be ironed.
As I was brushing my teeth one morning, I heard a crashing of cymbals out my window. Looking out there was a peacock, promoting his newsletter on a signboard saying, ‘ Not A Turkey’. I started laughing spitting toothpaste everywhere.
I’m the chairman of the board
Don’t think of me as master or lord
I’ll rule as honestly as I can
Every day of my four year span
Ignore men in uniform with guns
They won’t bother you or your little ones
They simply want to keep the peace
If taken you’ll soon be released
It’s a check for skin I like
No black or brown, only white
After you’re checked may be detained
I’m chairman and it is my reign
Uh, excuse my language, and it’s content
I’m only the president.
By definition there’s no fraud
When you’re the Chairman of the Board
And though the business be in tatters
Your opinion’s all that matters
Profits slumped and losses soared
No cause to fall upon your sword
Stand your ground. Stay safe and sound
Wait for things to turn around
Please feel loved. Don’t feel ignored
Don’t leave the room on my accord
We are one. We are like brothers
Look around at all the others
We love the business don’t forget
Of course there’s things that we regret
But if your friends don’t like the smell
Then tell your friends to go to hell
‘Cause this ain’t funny. Money. Money!
In the land of milk and honey
And when it ceases to be fun
We’ll take the money. Then we’ll run.
The Signal
It changed to red.
He stopped the vehicle just a few inches from the zebra crossing. Impatiently.
This traffic signal was long. He was trying so much to avoid the forced stop. Praying silently that it would be “go-ahead-green” so that he could just pass by.
Today the Company’s Board of Directors Meeting was to be held.
He was getting late.
But nothing could be done now.
He looked around.
This locality was known to him having spent his entire childhood and the most part of youth here.
To the left the road turned into a gully.
He knew that gully so well.
There was a mithai (sweet) shop in the corner right at the entrance where he and his friends savoured lassi for just a few paise per glass – a tall one made of steel shining in the sun.
In fact, there were two sweet shops next to each other owned by two brothers. But the one siding the gully did more business. The walls of the shop and the footpath on which it stood had blackened with soot, ash and lack of attention. However, the look of the shop did not matter much. What it sold did.
In front a few wooden benches would be occupied by bulky bodies in shalwar kameez, the scrawny in lungi and dhoti, the better placed in churidar kurta or pyjama or shirt and trouser – the regular customers – enjoying a cool drink before the start of the day or middle of work or in the evenings before going back home.
And that huge black kadhai (wok) in which simmered milk – its upper layer condensing slowly and thickening to a hard crust as the day progressed. It’s inviting freshness in the air! The wok was placed on a traditional earthen chulha (wood and coal stove) – temperature well adjusted. At times a ladel with a long handle would be dug in to give the milk a gentle swerve so as not to let it get burnt and the lower layers stuck at the bottom.
The curd was home made kept in an oval shaped utensil half covered. The lassi was handmade – a scoop of curd churned with ice and sugar in a stainless steel lota (pot) with a short, wooden baton, wet and slippery, in constant touch with milk and curd and malai. After every churn the man wiped the baton with a well worn towel and whirled the liquid from the lota to the glass and back a number of times to give the lassi a frothy texture. He loved to watch the whirl and the swirl – like pure white waves cascading alternately from a high crest to a low trough and so forth – the motion so well coordinated that not a single drop spilled out. Before serving, the mithaiwallah (sweet seller) would cut a small part of the malai (thick hard crust of milk) to top the lassi before placing the glass in the hands of the customers with a flourish.
In hot summer days the shopkeeper brandished a pankha (handheld small bamboo fan) like a wand to ward off the ubiquitous mosquitoes and flies hovering over the milk and mithais (sweets). Sometimes he covered half the milk wok too with a matching lid which opened and closed like a shutter. The sweets displayed on trays were covered with cloth covers. In winters the shop sold glasses of warm, malaidar (crusted) milk.
He suddenly realised that his mouth was watering and stomach growling. He had skipped his breakfast in a hurry to get to office on time.
On a spur of the moment he decided to step out and drink a glass of lassi with some hot, crunchy jalebis.
He manoeuvred his car slowly to the left and stopped right in front of the sweet shop.
The facade had changed. So had the owner – a young man with a dour face – the second or third generation most probably – the smiling, welcoming faces of his forefathers now replaced by furrowed brows and drooping lips.
On the outside a big neon signboard announced the presence of the “joint”. He couldn’t remember whether the one he remembered from his childhood days had a name. It was known by the quality of its products – the owner being the identifier – Bondey ki dukan (Bondey’s shop)!!
The interior now modernized was all shiny glass and aluminium. Tiled walls, artificially controlled temperature, refrigerated stuff, sweets and namkeens (tangy salty mixtures) attractively displayed in glass cases and formal, no-nonsense transactions. A digital weighing machine sat in the middle of the counter top for the benefit of both the seller and the buyer.
The iron kadhai, in which boiled the milk in the open, was gone. Gone was the whirly- swirly cascade of froth, the wooden bench, the informal air, the slurps forming creamy lines of moustaches on the upper lips, the tangy gossips, the loud guffaws, the exchange of coins, the jangle of the makeshift galla (where day’s earnings were stashed), the milk and curd smell mixed with hard earned sweat, the buzzing flies and the inadequate swish of the pankha.
He ordered a glass of lassi.
The man presented him a digitised bill with hurried efficiency before getting him his order.
He couldn’t even remember the number of times he had drank lassi from the shop without paying. The shopkeeper kept an account in the name of the family. Baba paid the money and later when in college he cleared his outstandings at the end of the month.
He looked at the slip of paper in his hand now – ₹150/- per glass! He was not surprised. With the passage of time, the rising cost of production and maintaining a shop with uniformed staff in a prime location the inflated rate was a given.
He paid and waited. The staff went to a freezer kept on the right hand side opened it and took out a glass which resembled a miniature earthen pot but it was not. This was an era ruled by plastic and it’s variants.
And the lassi was not freshly prepared in front of the customer. It was “pre-manufactured”.
Jalebis were only available early mornings or evenings. So he did without them.
He took the first sip. The watery liquid coursed down his throat.
It was too light.
Too thin.
Too sweet.
And no malai.
He grimaced, gulped down the rest and dashed out of the shop.
The signal had turned green.
Heather
distant thoughts a blur
a trail’s Heather counsel blooms
a sweet sounding board
I have fond memories of playing board games with the family as a youngster; my brother still has some in his attic; Risk, The Battle of Little Big Horn, Wembley, Totopoly, to name a few.
I remember nobody wanted poor dad on their team!
Nowadays it’s all done with Smart phones and computers, but we still play when the family gets together over Christmas.
The one game we made ourselves in those days was the Ouija board, only I don’t recollect it being called that; we would be having a seance…
Unbelievably it used to be sold in toy shops; I don’t think anyone realised the dangers back then,
Of course, we played it for a laugh; our board consisted of a circle of scrabble letters, along with a hand made yes and no, and an upturned glass in the centre.
It would be me, mum dad, my brother and my Auntie Dot.
Goodness knows what we ever asked the ‘spirits’, but I know there were times when the glass would shoot across the circle, spelling out its message.
Was someone deliberately pushing it? Nobody ever owned up to it, so I suppose I will never know…
The Carousel
“Dude- you musta been wearing your lucky underwear.” The EMT grinned as he helped me clear the wreckage that had been, until about forty minutes ago, both my vehicle and my address. “There is no other way you should have walked out of that alive.”
I didn’t argue the point.
They wanted me in the ambulance. I told them I wanted to ride with the tow truck driver so I could get to my stuff before it disappeared into an impound lot. But the real reason I didn’t want to go with them- went much deeper than that-
There is no statute of limitations on murder.
I was working a sandwich board six days a week for a diner called Rudy’s, walking their logo up and down four blocks of commercial nothingness for eight dollars an hour, and sleeping rough the day the Clown School Traveling Amusement Company rolled into the vacant lot up the street.
By the time I got off I could hear the music. Come dark, I could see the lights. I told myself I was just going to take a look around. The fence wasn’t much of an obstacle.
Inside it was loud and fast and smelled like fried sugar. I kept to the edges, hands in my pockets, watching the rides turn and the people move through the midway like they were part of something I would only ever witness.
That’s when I saw her.
She was running a saltwater taffy stand near the Fun House- dark hair, quick smile, the kind of easy confidence that makes you want to say something worth remembering. I knew my teeth couldn’t handle taffy, but I bought a four-dollar sampler pack anyway and we talked for maybe six minutes before the rides started closing down around us and it was time for her to put up the shutters.
I found a corner behind a supply trailer and bedded down.
It must have been well past midnight when I heard the music on the carousel start up.
My curiosity was piqued so I followed the sound and found a spot on a vendor’s steps with a clean line of sight. There was two people on it. Some guy and the girl from the taffy stand. The carousel was slow, and every rotation brought them around briefly into the light.
His voice carried. Hers didn’t.
Each time they came around he was closer to her, and she seemed less comfortable. I couldn’t make out every word, but I didn’t need to. Their body language was doing all the work. Then they went around again and when they came back into view, he had her by the arm and his voice had risen into something uglier.
“If you think you’re gonna lay down with every guy in this company except me- you got another thing coming!”
Then a sound that definitely wasn’t part of the music.
I don’t remember deciding anything. I was just moving, and then I was on the carousel, and I hit him from behind as hard as I could at the base of his skull. He went down sideways and his head caught the iron leg of one of the horses on the way down. The sound it made was bad- but he let her go.
She ran.
I ran.
The next day while plying my trade I heard the scuttlebutt- a man had been found dead on the carousel. The company was moving on. There was no mention of the girl.
I thought about her for a long time after that. Wondered if she’d made it somewhere safe. Wondered if she knew the guy who saved her skin was the same guy who bought four dollars worth of taffy he couldn’t even eat just hours before.
Probably not. In this case- I’m thinking that’s a good thing.
***
Image quote: Pinterest
Esther Chilton 
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