“A Slash of Sun” by Pamela Stockwell

A Slash of Sun

She stepped out into a December morning
After summer and fall had
Packed up their jewel tones
In such haste
They kicked over buckets of slate-colored paint
That splashed gray on the sky and trees
And the colorless monotony put everything to sleep
The small animals
The summer birds
The insects
All gone to ground

She walked, as she often did
When a decision was to be made
Because to not move
Is to stand still
And she knows you can’t find open doors
If you stand in a corner looking at a wall
But the pewter sky
Weighs her down
And she watches her plodding feet
On the leaden pavement
The ashen stain of winter
Seeps into her veins
And fades her ruby blood to mouse-brown

But soon something changes
The air shimmers
And she walks into
A slash of sunlight
A ray of sun piercing the clouds
Slicing through bare branches,
Glistening on wet bark
And damp pavement
And the ponderousness dissipates
And the day is no longer a monochromatic burden
But a pearlescent gift
A gleaming jewel
Of untold value
The gray spins into silver
And bronze and russett
And where before a black wall loomed
A crack of light now glimmers
A door opening
And possibilities dance
In bright beams
That make indecision look like opportunities

by Pamela Stockwell
Pamela Stockwell was born in Texas, raised in South Carolina. In between, she lived in the Philippines and became fluent in name-calling in Tagalog (she has retained only two insults—pangit baboy, or ugly pig). After abandoning her foreign language studies when she was repatriated at age 5, she went on to earn a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism from the University of South Carolina and worked as a corporate writer for fifteen years. She now lives with her husband and three children on a small farm in New Jersey and is a member of the Princeton Writing Group and Women’s Fiction Writers Association. She is the 2021 winner of the LBW Page 100 Writing Competition for a page from her novel A Boundless Place.

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On Writing Prompts

In an effort to expand my writing skills, I have just started reaching out beyond my usual wheelhouse of women’s fiction and ran across Sparked. I enjoyed the exercise and think Sparked is an accurate name because it certainly ignited a flash of creativity. Very much enjoyed the exercise and plan to do more.

This piece was sparked by the 2020 Writing Exercise Series #339: Title Mania Plus 53 which was to write a piece using a title taken from Chase Ferree’s poem “Molting Pastoral” published in Juke Joint.

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Please do not forget to mention the piece you’re nominating. To learn more about the award click here, but in short, the piece with the most $1 nominations at the end of the year will get half of the donated money, receive 20 copies of a limited edition broadside designed for their piece and have their post pinned to the front of the website for all of December. This is one of the only ways we raise money for the magazine in order to pay all of our wonderful writers and keep this lights on here at Sparked.