Week in Seven Words #302

capacities
It's possible to keep finding out fun things about people you've known all your life. Like how fiendishly good someone is at Connect Four.

carnival
Her dress makes me think of key lime pie and margaritas.

evidently
A "how to be happy" advice piece makes its rounds among people I know. It offers unelaborated suggestions like, "Don't be stressed!" and "Surround yourself with happy people!" Well, if we're all reading about how to be happy, we'll be surrounded for sure. We've definitely got a shot at this.

hit
He scrolls through online comments sections for an emotional charge: outrage, anger, confirmation of superiority.

scripted
Another rigged conversation, weighted in favor of the answers she wants.

stretch
I think the train is going to blow by the station. But it stops, with the sensation of a rubber band about to snap.

swirly
His thoughts travel like a paper airplane that drifts off-course and gets lodged in a ceiling fan.

Week in Seven Words #292

bolster
She's happy making life a little softer, a little kinder for people.

careering
They gallop across the dance floor with their arms around each other's shoulders.

disarray
Sentences get tangled in my head. Words get caught in dark upper branches, beyond sight. It's time to take a break.

disclosing
She insists I'll feel better if I tell her what's bothering me, but I hesitate. There have been some occasions where I've felt better, but usually the main focus becomes her emotions. I have to make omissions or tiptoe around things to keep her from becoming upset. I'm the emotional caretaker. I'm also not always sure what she does with what I tell her, how she might fling it back at me at some future point.

plinking
Her dress makes the sound of a rainstick when she settles on the bench.

timidly
The house looks bashful, its windows peeking out from branches held like fingers to its face.

wherefore
Maybe the path in the garden is shaped like a question mark, and you stroll there wondering, "Why am I here?"

Week in Seven Words #286

commencing
Mornings are delightful when I get a lot of things done. When I don't, the whole day seems to slow down. Futility and fear creep in with the lengthening shadows.

confronting
When he walks by, he hisses at us through his smile. I don't shrink away, but feel a rising strength, like I could strike back viciously if I needed to. I look over my shoulder to make sure he hasn't turned around and started following us. He's looking back over his shoulder too. Nothing happens. But we were purely animals, at that moment.

festively
The summer dresses on the rack look more like banners in blue, orange, and purple, meant to wave from the front windows of a house.

quake
The thunder sounds like it's emerging from the ground.

rosy
Asked what an ideal vacation would look like, I imagine lots of hiking, train rides, and English country cottages with gardens in bloom.

selfdom
I'd forgotten how funny these magazine quizzes can be, where stating your preference for a forest or a beach helps unlock the secrets of your personality.

trove
In what most people would use as a jewelry box, she keeps a collection of erasers. Some shaped like cupcakes, others like flowers and friendly robots. Also a few without any design, just the standard small pink block.

Week in Seven Words #260

digested
He admits to getting most of his news from The Daily Show as a way to relieve anxiety about the awfulness of current events. When the news is delivered in humorous form, he's better able to accept it.

entrapped
In the subway station, a toddler is shrieking. She's stuck in one of the vertical turnstiles. The bars pin her into a small dark space. They shiver when she pushes against them, but they don't swing around to let her out.

hints
There are signs of life on the stairwell - cigarette butts, a candy wrapper, a bookmark with a black kitten.

lushly
A wine-colored taffeta gown swaying at the ankles.

productive
Anxiety often stifles creativity, but sometimes it's a source of new ideas - a solution I hadn't thought of before, a twist to a plot that hadn't occurred to me until the problem began to eat its way through my mind.

stormy
The eye of the media is on them, and with it comes the windy noise of commentary. It will pass soon.

swapped
Instead of trains, he pushes trucks onto the tracks; dump trucks linked to cement mixers that are hooked up to tractor-trailers.

Week in Seven Words #241

fissure
The photo of a canyon, blown up and stretched wide, looks like a marvelous chasm in her wall.

hacked
When people substitute an ideology for self-knowledge, they talk and act as if parts of them have been carved out.

hued
Dresses draped all over the closet like colorful skins she has shed.

inhibitions
Does writing in a journal help? I think it can, as long as you're honest with yourself. I know that over the years, growing up and even a little into adulthood, I forced cheer and optimism into some of what I wrote - writing things as I wished they were or as I thought people would want them to be were they ever to discover the journal. Sometimes I just wrote, uninhibited, but it didn't come easily. It's important to write freely, especially when writing to myself. Though looking back at past entries I've also learned some key things about my younger self from what I omitted or how I spun a certain event.

prioritize
As his grandmother raises questions about the bill, he leans towards the waiter and whispers, "Can I have chocolate milk?"

renovating
Their house is littered with power tools, the cabinets gaping and furniture stacked in the front room. They look forward to the day when order will emerge from the obstacle course.

sinking
His speech is a series of smooth white pebbles that sink slowly to the bottom of a pond.

Week in Seven Words #173

daughter
She understands him and is fond of his curmudgeonly ways.

kinfolk
We don't look alike, but people can tell we're related. It's the posture maybe, the way we hold ourselves. Or some facial expression. I don't know what it is, but I smile when people make this observation.

maturing
She's nervous, but poised. Proud of this moment, but also good-naturedly self-deprecating.

meltingly
It's been a while since I acted on my love of cheesecake. So I try three different kinds this time. Not large portions, but smallish melting pieces to be savored.

neat
A display of cupcakes that looks like a flowering shrub.

scampering
I can't remember all their names. They all kind of look the same too, boys and girls, making noise and running around.

vogue
That dress in the back of the closet; I feel more light-hearted, putting it on.

And now, some words from the Bennet sisters

Jane

"I would not wish to be hasty in censuring anyone; but I always speak what I think."


Elizabeth

"I do assure you, Sir, that I have no pretension whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man. I would rather be paid the compliment of being believed sincere. I thank you again and again for the honour you have done me in your proposals, but to accept them is absolutely impossible. My feelings in every respect forbid it. Can I speak plainer? Do not consider me now as an elegant female, intending to plague you, but as a rational creature, speaking the truth from her heart."


Mary

"Far be it from me, my dear sister, to depreciate such pleasures! They would doubtless be congenial with the generality of female minds. But I confess they would have no charms for me - I should infinitely prefer a book."


Kitty

"I do not cough for my own amusement."


Lydia

"Have you seen any pleasant men? Have you had any flirting?"