Ten of our Favorite Drabbles of 2016

To celebrate the conclusion of the second calendar year of our existence, Drabble editors (both of us) have compiled a list of some our favorite posts of 2016.

While we are grateful to every Drabble reader and writer for helping to make this small corner of the Internet such an unexpected success, we wanted to call out a few pieces that we feel truly accomplished what we were setting out to do when we began this blog back in March 2015.

Here (in no particular order) are ten drabbles we truly loved in 2016, enjoy:

Writing Advice by Jamie Thunder

Dear Me by Anonymous

Goodbye by Mentalist at Work

The Field by Ali Grimshaw

Vesuvius by T.N. Haynes

The Haunted Mirror by Rufus Woodward

Her Blank Page by Isabelle Andres

Q & A by Nick Dunster

The Color of Poppies by S.S. Hicks

Run by Vidur Sahdev

Dear Me

By Anonymous

You will fall in love with words and writing, and in the process, you’ll hear this a lot: “Don’t write like a victim.”

Don’t listen! Don’t let anyone else tell you how to express your truth.

Someday soon you will come to realize the Universe is arbitrary. Things will happen that are outside of your control, and some of those things will be painful. Yet, somehow you will make it through, I promise.

I’ve written this because I love you, and I don’t want you to ever forget that.

Love,

Your future self

Run

By Vidur Sahdev

Tonight,
even the moon failed
to decipher
this strange paradox
of finding love,
why was it
that when
one falls in,
the other
so often
finds a reason
to run.

Goodbye

By Mentalist at Work

I can’t recall our first kiss
but I remember our last.

You tasted of coffee and toothpaste.

I murmured goodbye,
still naked, bleary eyed.

You let yourself out and drove back
to your work
your wife
your life.

I fell asleep and didn’t dream
of anything.

The Field

By Ali Grimshaw

A crack,

followed by a breaking open.

As the walls fall,

you will no longer be contained,

held separate.

Grieve and they shall crumble,

until the last stone is still

Leaving you in a field of golden openness.

Wide and light,

No need for protection

Bare

In the warm air.

     
Bio: Ali Grimshaw is a poet and blogger. Her blog called flashlight batteries, https://flashlightbatteries.wordpress.com/, offers hope for those struggling in the darkness and a mirror for tough times in life.

The Haunted Mirror

By Rufus Woodward

My Grandfather had a haunted mirror. He said, “If you look into the mirror very closely, so very closely, you can see the ghost and the ghost can see you.”

“Did you ever see the ghost, Grandfather?” I asked him once.

“I did better than that,” he said. “I put it there!”

My sister giggled. My mother scowled. Only I believed every word he said.

* * *

Now the mirror is mine and I look into it every day. Sometimes the eyes that look back at me are not my own. They are my Grandfather’s, and he is smiling at me.

____
Bio: Rufus Woodward lives and works in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is the author of three volumes of weird tales.

Vesuvius

By T.N. Haynes

They say
the aftershocks shook paint from chapel walls,

For days

Rendered pillars into powder—
a triturate of

promises/                   /oaths

unmet/                        /betrayed,

And

hopes/                         /prayers

dashed/                      /unheard.

They say a sooty residue
forever clogged the cogs of gratitude, and

Encased

a void

to forever and ever

avoid.

Her Blank Page

By Isabelle Andres

When the words go, the writer’s loneliness installs itself,
makes its home into her head.

She is there, silent as always
only this time the words no longer flow through her veins
No longer supply her oxygen.

She sits there still and the words are within her just as always
only this time she can’t feel them cuddling her.
can’t feel them loving her.

She can’t connect to them and see that they are there just as always
only awaiting for her to wake

“Unintended Consequences: The Movie”

By Todd!!!

From his cloud-top throne God bellows “Silence!”

All goes silent.

A drunk girl screams “Wooo!” (She’s from New Jersey.)

God clears his throat. “Ahem.”

Jersey girl shushes the already-silent crowd. “Shut up people! The creepy wizard guy is talking!”

God unfurls a tattered scroll titled, “Screenplay Idea,” and reads aloud:

“In a dystopian future, a handsome deity endows a species with a unique capacity called ‘reason!’—

… blah blah skip to Act 3 … aha! Plot twist! …

—Species then uses said ‘reason’ to invent rationalizations for its barbarism against ‘lesser’ species …”

“Bor–ing!” (It’s Jersey girl.)

Lightening strikes.

She never sees it coming.

The Color of Poppies

Photo supplied by author.

By S. S. Hicks

How long did it take
turning battlefields into blooms?
Nourished from fallen soldiers,
clutching hearts not their own.
Nameless warriors, yesterday’s schoolboys
with combed hair and brushed teeth.
Given bayonets, helmets and cigarettes,
whispering to their mamas as they
colored fields with their death.