Kelsey Schurer, poetry and fiction reader, wrote this week’s writing prompt, and Tolu Adeyeye, TMR fiction editor, wrote this week’s sample response.
Prompt: Rewrite a memory from the perspective of your dead self, as in: congratulations, you are now a ghost!
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A Ghost on the Stage of London Bridge
If I could have disappeared as I have now, I would, I tell you, have saved myself from this sheer embarrassment I face now, standing here, on this stage, my mouth open, no words coming out, for I suddenly have forgotten the words to the song I toiled to memorize, but clearly not well enough; and the crowd, they make me want to cry, they stare at me, waiting for me to continue, perhaps this is a part of her act, they think, and I, knowing it is not, feel to run off the stage and into a dark corner and cry, for I cannot disappear as I have now into a grave, my family crying around a casket, and the priest reading from the Bible, and the people who called me friend saying things about me they think they have to say, but I know they never truly knew me; and on this stage, I would disappear if I could because the light shines directly in my face, glaring, yellow as the sun, a bright and morning star, and I cannot help but wish that a stage light would come loose from above and drop down upon my head, crushing me, so that they would remember me as the girl who died so tragically on stage, mouth open wide, rather than the girl who forgot the words to Hallelujah and who, four months later, died by jumping off London Bridge.
Tolu Adeyeye is a first year fiction writer at Virginia Tech. She is the fiction editor for the minnesota review.
Kelsey Schurer is a second year fiction writer at Virginia Tech. She is a poetry and fiction reader for the minnesota review.
The Minnesota Review 