“No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now.”
-Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
Today’s LitBowl prompt is inspired by this quote from Ray Bradbury’s classis book, Dandelion Wine. For more inspiration, get the book below!
Prompt: Write about something you used to be but that you no longer are. This could be a happy thing (something you’re proud to have overcome) or a sad thing (something you miss about your life or your past self) or anything in between and across the spectrum of emotion.
Feel free to respond in the comments below! In the future, we plan to share some of our favorite excerpts from writers like you!
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she wears her heart
on her sleeves.
maybe that’s how she lost
pieces of herself—
in the spilled secrets,
the broken promises,
and the tainted memories…
I used to be a writer.
I’ve tried so hard to write again, but it seems I have writer’s block.
You found me,
Wrapped in a pink tourniquet with long jet black hair.
My tongue has nowhere near the articulation strength needed to pass on the secret that set my mind on fire.
You left me,
Wrapped in a blue tourniquet with short, dark brown hair.
Bruised from the words you said to me the day my tongue had the strength to withstand the chains from my fear; “you’re simply, not a man.”
One jab after another fly at me the moment I am no longer weak, isn’t that funny?
How I can stay still and quiet, and this is your definition of strength.
No, mother, strength does not sit in silence.
Strength rebels against fear, and shows fear their reflection in a mirror because that is what fear fears the most…
I was once lost, but I’ve found my light; I shine brighter than I ever imagined.
I was once weak, but I’ve found my strength; I can pick the weight of my depression and carry it on my back for miles and miles.
I was once blind, but I’ve found my sight; I took a hard look in the mirror the other day, and the reflection staring back at me had no words of discouragement. Rather, it was proud of the man I’ve become, and of the strength that woman had to end her facade.
Outside in the heat of my 21st summer, the daisies are dying, and there is a ringing in my ears.
Move and you’ll miss it kind of faint, but I, along with the grass and the trees and the wind, am oh so still.
I’m trying to relive a moment.
One that I almost don’t remember, but for the vague lilt of laughter, the hazy glow of sunlight in the tall grass.
I think I was happy, then.
But I’ve been told that memories, the more they’re replayed, morph into what you want them to be.
Maybe all that I know about myself is a false reality, every moment altered by my desperate mind.
Maybe I’ve been planting happiness all along the gnarled roots of my childhood when I know, I know it doesn’t belong there.
Or maybe there were moments, fleeting though they be, where the lightning bugs really did burn brighter.
Blink, though, and the fog of remembrance clears to the view of freshly cut grass.
Outside in the heat of my 21st summer, the daisies are dying, and there is silence.