Your new prompt word is
CLOSE
I like the think of this week’s word as something positive – I’m close to my family or I’m close to finishing a piece of work, for example. You might ask someone to close their eyes as you’re about to give them a surprise. Some of us live in a close – 32, Nettlebed Close – for example. We’re always closing things – doors, windows, deals, etc. But there are negative meanings, such as shops closing down. 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 CROSS.
do not cross me
i may forgive
but i wont forget
but then again you havent noticed
i ve already long since given up hope for you
Just for Me
I wear a little wooden cross.
I never take it off.
Some wonder why I do it.
Others merely scoff.
I don’t wear it for an outward show,
Or for what it seems to say.
I wear it to feel near to God
When I ‘touch it’ through my day.
You wouldn’t cross the road to see me while I was alive. So, don’t bother crossing it now that I am gone. Besides, I may be gone physically, but cross me again and you’ll find out just how powerful I am since I’ve crossed over.
“You promise not to tell a soul?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
One of my dad’s favorite expressions was his modified version of the old expression “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” Here’s the way he’d say it – We’ll jump off that bridge when we get to it. I am not going to go into the other thing, other than to say it was not only a major disappointment, but also an eye-opening experience.
A bridge can be a safe passage place,
And they’re good for back tracking, just in case.
But haters are no fun,
So be prepared to burn one…
When those relationships you want to erase!
Cross My Palm
Cross my palm with silver, dear, and I’ll read yours for you.
I’ve four-leaved clover set in amber, lucky heather too.
invite me across your threshold and your household I will bless
with riches money cannot bring, like health and happiness.
I’m not like those religious folk forever at your door.
Just cross my palm with silver, and I’ll cross your path no more.
Our Gain, His Cross
There was His birth and ministry
before there was that cross.
It could have ended that same year.
His Kingdom, though, was coming near.
He rose to Satan’s loss.
A cross is a meeting place.
Two lines travelling in different directions, intersecting for a single moment.
Sometimes a cross marks a road. A decision. A place where one path ends and another begins.
Life is full of crosses.
We cross borders. Cross fingers. Cross rivers, bridges, and oceans. We cross things off lists and sometimes cross lines we wish we hadn’t.
And then there are the invisible crosses.
The burdens we carry. The grief we shoulder. The lessons that shape us whether we welcome them or not.
Growing up between cultures, I often felt like a crossroad myself. Part Norwegian. Part Greek. One foot in the north, one in the south. Belonging completely to both, yet never entirely to either.
But perhaps that is the gift of a cross.
It reminds us that life is not one straight line. It is a meeting of experiences, memories, people, and possibilities.
Every choice becomes a crossing point. Every goodbye makes room for a hello. Every ending quietly prepares the ground for a beginning.
A cross is not only a symbol of burden.
It is also a symbol of connection.
Of where we have been, where we are standing now, and where the road may lead next.
Sometimes the most important moments in life happen not while travelling the road —
but while standing at the crossroads, finding the courage to choose.
I am not superstitious, but crossing someone’s palm with silver means something different to me than a bribe or backhander.
When my great niece was born in 2011, I sent her mother a shiny 2011 10p coin to cross her palm with silver and bring her good fortune in life.
Of course the silver content in UK coins is non existent now, but the thought and principle was there. As to whether my niece did cross her daughter’s palm or put the coin in her money box, I have no idea, and hopefully I’m not the only one to think this is a lucky tradition.
Cross-tacking
Overcoming the dreaded headwinds,
navigating or cruising
*
Facing the dreaded headwind
successfully
by cross-tacking endlessly
*
Felt Wind
over by
a final handle
*
Le vent contraire redouté
est surmonté
après avoir cloué sans fin
*
This fearful service
is overcome
by navigating a single
Susan Batten:
Crosspatch
He’s crotchety, cantankerous,
a grumpy sod – my dad.
Both bigoted and boffiny,
beleaguered, always sad.
As sharp as any needle,
and as pointed as a pin,
he can’t decide which day it is,
which crossword clue fits in.
Unreasonable and humorless,
just callous, it’s a sin.
There never is an argument
that my old dad can’t win.
I’ll miss him when he passes on,
That cross I bear, my kin.
Traversing Intersections
Crossroads mean you have to make choices. Not all of what you want or would like are supported by those closest to you. Often the choice you want is at odds with those who disagree with the alternatives.
For example there was a man who moved to a warmer climate for his wife’s health, but then moved back north because her parents missed her. The cold was too much, she became ill… and died. Then for years no one would speak about his wife, to share her memories especially to the children that were left behind. One relative had saved their wedding album which eventually found its way to the younger child. As the eldest didn’t seem to care as much. But that same relative didn’t make an effort to copy old family films that even had sound and the voice of the woman who died.
The man and his children constantly feared that asking questions or bringing up their mother’s memories would be more painful than the silence. The only time the younger child heard a few stories was when the man was drunk at the adult parties he arranged to bring some relief into his life, with his new wife. And it made the younger child very cross that her father couldn’t share them with her when he was sober.
We have to learn that some roads cross; those that are labeled Forgiveness Avenue and Letting Go Lane can lead to a healthier life. All the lessons learned can cross and tumble in our brains as we as individuals move on in our own lives. What could have happened, what will never be are those items that can weigh down the ‘baggage’ of our existence and even prevent us from crossing into new adventures.
caviling
can cause confusion
calm crosswords
Lou by the Sea:
Justice
She was so cross that he wouldn’t cross at the zebra crossing. You really wouldn’t want to cross her. He just crossed his fingers and strode out into the path of the number 56. It had crossed her mind that a little shove in his back would serve him right. It ended a 25 year marriage to the blind man. It started a 25 year stretch for her in Holloway. Ah well, we all have our cross to bear.
Saloon Showdown
I’d been riding two days without sleep worth mentioning, and every mile felt like another hand closing around my throat. And yet here I was, sleep still evading me, waiting for dawn to break in the desert that was quieter early that morning than any place had a right to be. Quiet in the way a graveyard is quiet, as if the world itself were holding a lantern low and whispering for you to tread soft.
They call me Cole Brannigan, though I’ve worn other names when the law got too curious. I wasn’t looking for a fight that morning, only a desperately needed cup of coffee and a quiet corner in Red Butte. But the West has its own ideas about a man’s plans, and it’ll upend them like a spooked mustang.
I’d just tied off my horse when the saloon doors swung open and a fellow stepped out. He had broad shoulders, a scar like a lightning bolt down his cheek, and eyes that said he’d buried more than one man without losing sleep. I knew him. Billy Denkinger. Worse, he knew me.
“Cole,” he said, voice low as a rattler’s warning. “Didn’t expect you to cross my path again.”
I tipped my hat, buying time. “World’s a big place, Billy. Shame it ain’t big enough for the both of us, or so it seems.”
He smiled, and it wasn’t friendly. “You took something of mine in Abilene.”
“Just my life,” I said. “You were fixin’ to end it.”
His hand drifted toward his holster. Mine stayed still. They say a man who moves first often dies first. The street went quiet, even the wind holding its breath.
Then a shot cracked. Not his. Not mine. Billy fell face-first into the dust.
From a second story window in the hotel across the road, a woman’s voice called out, “Cole, you owe me for this one. Now get your sorry ass up here and thank me proper or you’re next.”
I didn’t wait to see who else might be hunting me. In the West, debts and bullets both had a way of coming due, and I’d just added one more to the ledger.
Esther prompts us to write about the word ‘cross’, and there are lots of meanings to this word. But I got sidetracked and instead of writing something (until now), I just went and found a lot of my actual crosses that I have. I kind of collected them for awhile and some are on the wall above my computer desk, and some are just on the tv shelf, and other places around. Most all I got from yard sales. They are all pretty and different kinds and styles.
To see pictures of the crosses and for an explanation, please click here
I saw him walk out. What a flake
Your beauty more than he could take
What a dumb mistake to make!
With me here hiding in his wake
Stop your crying. Don’t be cross
Although my gain may be your loss
Let your tears become my gloss
(I hope that guy was not your boss)
Let me show how much I’d care
To soothe your weeping over there
I’m over here. But please don’t stare
At ugliness (my cross to bear)
Around my neck, an albatross
This rolling stone has gathered moss
Let’s throw the coin. I’ll call the toss
Let’s climb the bridge that we must cross.
Resurection
they say we all carry a cross
splinters pressed into skin,
a daily burden meant to prove
that we have lived,
that suffering has shaped us
into something stronger,
wiser, holier.
they say pain is a teacher.
but if my cross is you,
i would cast it from my shoulders without hesitation.
i have dragged your shadow through too many seasons,
worn grooves into my soul where your name once rested,
mistaken chains for devotion,
mistaken wounds for miracles.
no need for Mt. Calvary.
no need for nails driven through flesh.
no need to leave a trail of blood
for strangers to call sacred.
loving you has already been a crucifixion.
every unanswered longing,
every hope returned broken,
every night spent feeding the ghost of what could have been
these were my thorns.
i have drunk from your cup of bitterness
until my tongue forgot the taste of joy.
i have stood beneath the tribunal of memory,
enduring the silent verdicts
of what we never were.
and still, i carried you.
not because you were worth carrying,
but because i believed suffering had a purpose.
now i know better.
redemption does not live in your absence.
it begins with it.
so i will not climb another hill for you.
i will not offer my heart as kindling
for a fire that never learned my name.
i only need to look at you once more
at the ruins,
at the altar I built from my own longing,
at the love that fed on me and called itself destiny
and say:
i am done.
done carrying your weight
as if it were mine to bear.
done loving you in plain sight,
done loving you from the safety of distance,
done mistaking my suffering for love.
let this be the resurrection:
i choose to put you down.
and this time, i do not look back.
Rall:
a cross
she has to bear
her end will be the same
as her grandma’s it is written in
the stars
Top Ten Reasons as to why the Dog Crossed the Road
- The dog got sick and tired of this side of the street.
- The dog wanted to stalk someone on the other side of the road and then not bark at them and get a treat for not barking at people.
- Because he wants to chase a cat on the other side of the road.
- The dog wanted to smell something on the other side of the road.
- A dog is barking at us on the other side of the road, and our dog wants to put him in his place.
- There was a scary noise on this side of the road.
- Someone the dog knows and love is on the other side of the road.
- The dog has to cross the road to get to grandma and grandpas house.
- Because someone said let’s cross. Note: our dog Rollo knows the word “cross” very well.
- Because someone accidentally said the word “cross”, for example, “After graduating from college, I found myself at the crossroads”. Now we all have to cross the road.
About number 2. Our dog Rollo loves getting close to people and not bark because he knows he will get a treat if he does not bark at people. So sometimes it appears that he wants to stalk people to get a treat. He even spots people half a mile away. However, we do not actually stalk people.
For pictures and more, click here
Oars
dipping in water
baptizing the same ancient lake
a pair of oars cross
The Man That Knew Too Soon
I keep missing the last train from King’s Cross station. Every time it happens, I see the same man, sitting on the same bench on platform 8, clutching a cross around his neck, a single red rose on his lap and in the other hand, the same cup of cold coffee from the kiosk that never seems to close.
Tonight, I sat beside him.
“Waiting for someone?” I asked.
“Waiting to stop waiting,” he replied.
The departure board above us unexpectedly flickers. Platforms are reshuffled, making the sound of a pack of playing cards being riffled. Then the sound of a steam locomotive’s whistle arriving at platform 9 turns my head towards the past. I look for myself on the train, but it’s always empty as if we’ve all been left behind.
When I look beside me again, the man is gone. I feel cross that he left me, but I wonder if he’s ever been there until I look down and see a puddle of coffee and a single red rose on the cold platform floor.
Then I realise where I am again. King’s Cross station was the place he once proposed, had the train not derailed.
The garden in cross stitch
Him Indoors design
Hours of hard work
I worked for six months
His parents garden
Given to them for Christmas
Many moons ago
Old piano at the back
Apple tree, rock garden
Klimt, the cat
A bottle of red wine
Flowers blooming
Vegetables growing
Stripy manicured lawn
The greenhouse with tomatoes
His parents not there anymore
Got the cross stitch back
Now hanging on our wall
Focus
When Brie first got with Tonio, being with him felt like standing in a beam of sunlight- so warm, so embracing. He made her the center of his world. He noticed everything- the way she tucked her hair behind her ear when she was nervous, the way she hesitated before saying something important. His attention wrapped around her like a hand at the small of her back, guiding her, steadying her.
It made her feel good. It made her feel powerful. It made her feel like she was wanted in a way she’d never been wanted before.
But over time- that warmth shifted. Almost imperceptibly at first- and by the time she noticed the change- the same focus that once made her feel special had begun to feel like scrutiny. The same intensity that once thrilled her- like pressure.
On New Year’s Eve, they were at a party- everyone was drinking- when he turned to her and asked who she’d been talking to at the grocery store earlier, when they’d stopped to buy a bottle for the party. She blinked, confused- she hadn’t spoken to anyone. But Tonio looked at her with that same laser focus she had always taken as devotion.
“Just tell me,” he said quietly. “I won’t be angry. I just want the truth.”
The words were soft. The tone wasn’t.
Brie felt something cold slip under her ribs. She tried to laugh it off, but he didn’t laugh with her. He just kept looking, waiting for her to confess to something she hadn’t done.
That was the first time she felt afraid of him.
Over the next few months it happened again and again. He’d ask why she’d worn a particular sweater to work. Why she’d smiled at her phone. The questions made no sense, but he asked them like a man building a case.
One night she came home late from a work dinner- nothing unusual, she’d texted him the whole time- and found him sitting in the dark kitchen, waiting. He didn’t yell. He just asked her to recite, in order, every person she’d spoken to since she left the house that morning. When she got to the bartender who’d taken her coat, he stopped her. “Why him,” he said. “Why is he the one you remember.”
She had no answer that would satisfy him, because there was no real question underneath the question.
Each time, Brie felt him stepping closer to a line she could feel but couldn’t name.
The night he punched a hole in the bedroom door- because he thought she’d looked too long at some guy at a red light- was the night she decided she had to leave before it went further. She felt like he was looking for a reason to be angry. A reason to justify whatever punishment he was already planning for these imagined indiscretions.
The next morning- she packed a bag and left while he was at work.
Over the course of the next few weeks, he reached out with apologies that were just gentle enough to sound sincere. He said he missed her. He said he loved her. He said he was ashamed. He said he understood why she left.
And eventually, when Brie got tired of how quiet her apartment felt, she began missing the version of him who made her feel illuminated- her dread turned to longing- and she started checking her phone all the time- now hoping to find another text- a missed call.
Then one night, he texted- I’m outside. I won’t come in unless you want me to. I just want to talk.
And against even her own better judgement, Brie opened the door.
Tonio was sober. Calm. Attentive. He kept his distance. He spoke softly. He didn’t accuse her of anything. He didn’t question her. He didn’t push.
And Brie- who had always been vulnerable to his gentleness- wanted to believe him.
Talking turned into closeness. Closeness turned into familiarity. Familiarity turned into a moment of passion she knew she would live to regret- even as it happened.
In the morning, she woke to him watching her with that old, all-consuming focus- only now she knew it wasn’t devotion.
“Were some kind of star-crossed lovers you and me,” he said, smiling like the night had rewritten the past. “Ain’t nothing ever gonna tear us apart.”
Brie felt the bottom drop out of her stomach.
What had she done…
The Place Where Two Roads Disagree
I once met a man who claimed to have achieved enlightenment after being hit by two bicycles simultaneously from perpendicular directions. At the time, I dismissed this as nonsense.
Years later, I realized he had accidentally stumbled upon the philosophy of the cross. But before we get there, let me tell you about the ferryman.
The Parable of the Ferryman’s Knot
There was once a ferryman who lived where two rivers met, not merged, mind you. Merging is civilized. Merging is what respectable rivers do after exchanging paperwork and agreeing on a common future. These rivers crossed. One charged north to south. The other barreled east to west.
They sliced through each other at perfect right angles like two stubborn uncles arguing at a wedding buffet about politics, cricket, and who had secretly taken the largest piece of cake.
The villagers called it Stubborn Water. Frankly, they showed admirable restraint. If water could roll its eyes and refuse to cooperate with authority, this water would have been elected mayor.
Every traveler who arrived at the crossing asked the ferryman the same question.
“Which is the true river?”
And every single time, the ferryman replied, “Yes.”
This satisfied absolutely nobody. The travelers hated the answer. Philosophers found it profound. Accountants demanded clarification. One particularly angry merchant reportedly spent three days trying to argue with the ferryman before realizing he had accidentally argued himself into confusion.
The ferryman, meanwhile, remained perfectly happy, which is one of the most infuriating qualities a human being can possess.
One day a young cartographer arrived. Now, this was a man blessed with the kind of confidence normally found only in twenty three year olds, motivational speakers, and people who have watched three documentaries in a row.
He announced that he would settle the matter scientifically. For an entire year he studied currents, measured depths, interviewed villagers, and probably conducted focus groups with ducks. He filled notebooks with observations and produced charts so complicated that even the fish looked concerned.
At the end of the year, he emerged triumphantly with a map so enormous that it required three assistants, two tables, and what historians later described as “an unreasonable amount of pointing.”
“I have solved it!” he declared. “The north-south river is older. Therefore it is the real river. The east-west river is merely a tributary suffering from delusions of grandeur.”
The ferryman listened patiently. Then he nodded and asked the young man to stand in the exact center of the crossing.
The cartographer stepped into the water. For approximately four seconds, everything seemed perfectly normal. Then both currents grabbed him with the determination of divorced parents arguing over a child during a furniture sale.
The water spun him, not violently, but with the calm confidence of a universe that knew it was about to teach a lesson.
Around and around he went. His measuring instruments flew in every direction. A notebook vanished downstream. One boot achieved what experts can only describe as temporary orbit. At one point he spun so rapidly that several villagers reportedly used him to determine wind direction.
Finally, the ferryman hooked him by the collar and dragged him back to shore. The young cartographer lay on the riverbank blinking at reality as though he had only just discovered it existed.
“Now,” said the ferryman, “which river is real?”
The young man stared silently into the distance for a full minute. Then, with the wisdom that only follows public humiliation, he replied, “I may have been overcommitted to a narrative.”
He never finished the map.
Instead, according to legend, he became a much better listener. Which is philosopher language for saying he got humbled so thoroughly that even the universe took notes.
The crossing had taught him its secret – some truths don’t resolve into winners. Sometimes, the answer isn’t choosing a side. Sometimes the answer is getting spun around like wet laundry until your certainty falls out of your pockets.
From Rivers to Reality
Now let’s head back to reality.
The cross is humanity’s oldest user interface for paradox. Long before it became a religious symbol, a mathematical symbol, a warning sign, or the thing people draw while pretending they absolutely did not eat the last piece of cake, it was simply two lines refusing to mind their own business.
Parallel lines are polite. They are the neighbors who wave courteously, trim their hedges, and never ask to borrow your lawnmower. They coexist peacefully for eternity.
Crossing lines are different. Crossing lines wake up every morning and choose conflict. One line says, “This way.” The other says, “No, THIS way.” Geometry, apparently addicted to reality television, places them in the same room and waits for the drama to unfold.
The astonishing part is that this argument creates strength. Architects discovered long ago that crossed beams are stronger than solitary ones.
A single beam bends under pressure. Two beams crossing each other can withstand remarkable loads. In other words, the strongest structures on Earth are built from components that fundamentally disagree about where they are going.
Every bridge, every tower, every roof truss is essentially a support group for stubborn pieces of wood and steel.
Somewhere, an engineer is already preparing a strongly worded email explaining that this is actually a matter of tensile forces, load distribution, and structural mechanics.
To which I can only reply…congratulations. You have just described marriage using different terminology.
Perhaps, that is the secret hidden inside every cross. It is not a symbol of perfect agreement. It is a record of two paths meeting, refusing to merge, yet somehow managing to hold each other up.
And if a pair of stubborn lines can build bridges, carry roofs, and keep towers standing, perhaps disagreement is not always the opposite of harmony. Sometimes it is the structure that makes harmony possible.
For the next fifty years, one beam remains firmly convinced that north is the correct direction. The other remains equally certain that east is the future. Neither persuades the other. Neither leaves.
Together, they hold up an entire building.
Engineers call this structural stability.
The rest of us call it a miracle.
***
Image credit: Pinterest
Esther Chilton 
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