Forty Prompts for Thanksgiving Dinner
kaydance rice
One
Write a story about painting classes with all your favorite people.
Two
Write a story about cookie dough covering your hands and sticking underneath your fingernails. Chocolate chips, flour, egg. Write a story about gingerbread swirl and cinnamon crunch. Write about cookie crumble pie.
Three
Write a story about what colors go together and what ones don’t. Green and orange, red and yellow, purple and blue. Write about the color wheel, write about why I can’t wear my blue dress with the orange leggings. Write about rashes.
Four
Write a story about Christmas Eve traditions. Describe every bit in detail. Start with the week in advance, when I come over and help you start cooking. End at three am, when you begin to stuff stockings, after spending the last three hours arguing with my mom.
Five
Write a story about women like us. Write about how we are different from everyone else in the family. Don’t write why. Only that our lives will be hard, really hard. Write about how people will hurt us, and we will forgive them, not out of naiveté, but because we are gracious. Write about how when people hurt us, we can’t let them know it. Write about how we all need to find something else to tell it. Tell me what exactly I was supposed to find.
Six
Write a story about when you worked in a factory. Write about how hot it was there. Write about how long you had to stand and how many times you burnt yourself on an oven. Write about the time you almost got your arm stuck in a conveyor belt.
Seven
Write a story about your favorite color.
Eight
It’s periwinkle, isn’t it?
Nine
Write a story about your marriage. When you married my grandfather and why you divorced him. Write about how he kept pizzas in his car and refused to share. Write about thrown spaghetti strainers and trips to the junkyard. Write a story about how shocked you were that my uncle never became fully blind.
Ten
Write a story about why you believe in God.
Eleven
Write a story about how similar you think we are. About how art can change the world if we let it. Write about how you think we both truly understand each other. Write about how the world needs more creatives in it. Write about your favorite type of paint.
Twelve
Write a story about Puddles. How you abandoned my cat to make sure you could have a dog. Write a story about how you didn’t think I cared about the cat in the first place. Write about dogsitting.
Thirteen
Write a story about your favorites. Write about how you’ve always connected with the girls more than the boys. Write about why you took me on a cruise and my brother to Cincinnati. Write about how I’m the only person you feel like you can really talk to. Write about why you only listen to agreement.
Fourteen
Write a story about why you don’t have wallpaper anymore. Write about when my mom was young and you tied her to the chair with a belt. Write about when she tried to escape. About when she gave up, she started to peel off the wallpaper. At first by a little, then by a lot. Write about how you’re sure she was only sitting there for a little bit. My mom thinks it was more like three hours. Write about her fingertips bleeding afterward.
Fifteen
Write a story about your father. Write about how you never understood why he hated you so much. Write about how he never believed in you. Write about how he had run from Nazi’s bombs, and you think that’s why he was so cruel.
Sixteen
Write about the kind things you did today.
Seventeen
Write about the time you had a poodle. Write about how you think your Dad trained it to only bite you. Write about how much you hate them now.
Eighteen
Write about how you weren’t always as trustful in God as you are now. Write about how you wished you were when you raised your kids. Write about why you know that is the root of their problems and not because you hurt them.
Nineteen
Write about jam filled croissants. The ones with icing and pecans on top of them. Write about how I made them wrong the first time. Write about how I always make them wrong. Write about how they’re better with powdered sugar.
Twenty
Write about being ambidextrous. Write about how your father would scream at you and smack your wrist whenever you started to do anything with your left hand. Write about how you’re happy that you can use your right hand now. Write about how grateful you are that no one else in the family is a lefty.
Twenty-One
Write about wanting to be a painter. Write about how it amazed you, the way you could encapsulate the world through your paintbrush. Write about when you told your father about it. Write about how loud he shouted.
Twenty-Two
Write about the birds on the Christmas tree. The way they all hang there, swaying, reflecting light from the window. Write about how you’ve been waiting to fly away your entire life. Write about trips across the country. Write about growing wings.
Twenty-Three
Write about before Puddles, Pickles. Write about how you didn’t think my mom was able to take care of her. Write about picking her up while my mom was at work. Write about how hard I screamed when I couldn’t find her. Write about how when you kidnapped my dog, you almost dropped her.
Twenty-Four
Write about how similar my biological father and grandpa are. Write every similarity. Write about how grateful you are that I never got to meet him. Write about how every woman in this family has shit taste in men. Write about what you think this means about my mom. Write about what you think this means about me.
Twenty-Five
Actually, don’t.
Twenty-Six
About the time my mom pulled her braces off her teeth. About the blood, seeping from her gums. About refusing to take her to the ER. About how bad it hurt. About being the reason for her fucked up teeth. About twelve years old.
Twenty-Seven
About stepping through the churches and sitting under the cross at peace. Painting murals on church walls. About wishing God made us differently. About wishing God was different.
Twenty-Eight
About the Meijer’s Gardens. About the butterflies. About prison cells. About not seeing my mother for a year. About the women you write to in prison. About Bible verses on postcards. About persistence. About double standards.
Twenty-Nine
About why you’re an artist. About losing yourself in the smell of paint. About wondering where the smell goes when you’re asleep. About wishing it was the life you chose. About coping mechanisms. Whenever you were angry with your Dad, you would draw him as a butterfly. About wishing you were in a van Gogh. About Sunflowers.
Thirty
About the boys that snuck through my mom’s bedroom window. About the men that snuck through my mom’s bedroom window. About being fifteen.
Thirty-One
About the happiest time of your life.
Thirty-Two
About your bedroom renovations. About collecting the planks for the floor. About the slivers. About the mural. It’s from Peru isn’t it?
Thirty-Three
About when your step-dad forgot to pick you from school. About when you shoplifted with your friends. About cigarettes hanging from your tongues, steaming the world around you. About how walking home from school in the below freezing weather builds character.
Thirty-Four
About how you wasted your life.
Thirty-Five
About wishing the world disappeared around you. In acrylics, in oils, in an explosion of color. About the beauty of erasing it. About the murals on your wall leaking into the other rooms around you. About having never visited Peru, but absolutely adoring Brazil.
Thirty-Six
About lavender flowers. About asking me to water them while you were gone. About asking my brother to water them while you were gone. About asking the neighbor to water them while you were gone. They died anyway.
Thirty-Seven
About women like my mom. About how they work so hard until they just can’t handle it anymore. About how you could never understand her. About why.
Thirty-Eight
Tell me about women like us. Tell me how hard we try. Tell me that we’re okay. Tell me how we’ll never cry in front of anyone else. Tell me why we won’t ever learn how to be okay. Tell me when we finally get to breathe. Tell me the books we’ll read. Tell me how we’re so cruel and kind at the same time. Tell me who let this happen. Tell me until you can’t speak anymore. Tell me again.
Thirty-Nine
I don’t think you know either.
Forty
Stepping outside, you listen to the wind whistling. The sky is painted a vibrant periwinkle as squirrels claw at the bird feeder. You’re tempted to scare them off but not today, they’re the only ones left. You begin painting the entire world around you, until the only thing left is gray.
Kaydance Rice is a tenth grade creative writing student at Interlochen Arts Academy from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Kaydance's work can be found in Élan Magazine, The Red Wheelbarrow, as well as Fledge. Her work has also been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.