Below you’ll find the responses to the Sage Challenge for July 2024.
Entries to the Challenges published previously are found in individual issues of the SouthWest Sage. Public access to the February 2023 to February 2024 issues of the newsletter are on the Sage News page. SWW Members have full access to the Newsletter Archives of issues published from 2004 to 2024.
Go to the Sage Challenge page for details about the current Challenge open to SWW members.
Short Story or Poem
Write a short story or poem with words containing only 4 out of 5 vowels (a, e, i, o, u). Choose one vowel to omit from the entire selection. Make sure that you omit the same vowel throughout the piece. So, if you don’t use the vowel ‘a’ then no words should contain an ‘a’. No more than 1000 words. Have fun!
Desert Delight
by Rachel Bate
Raindrops gently impregnate the arid desert
A startling rebirth transpires
Of ancient perennials
Propelling amongst lonely barren clay
An astonishing celebration
Dampness freshens the air
A novelty aroma
Resting on new thirsty wildflowers
Pollinators dance a whimsical gypsy ballad
Fantastical Rain
My Amore
My Desert Delight!
Snowflakes
By Amelia Greco-Welden
Snowflakes are frozen stars
Silently transported to Earth
Winter Starlight kissing my cheek.
The First Missiles of Summer
By Helen A. Jack
Letter omitted: A
When the end of the world hit, Sophie Krometzky perched on the slumped front porch of her lopsided mobile home, observing the courting rites of two plovers under the mulberry trees she’d grown with Milo countless summers before.
Sophie thoughtfully brought her spoon to her lips while the shriek of missiles sliced the summer breeze thick with cricket song. It’d come, she thought, just how Milo predicted.
Mouth full of Cheery-Loops, Sophie frowned while white butterflies bisected the burgeoning dusk. Red clouds billowed out behind the horizon, bleeding out into the indigo sky like open wounds. Mosquito time, she thought, while the itchy prickling of insect bites tingled on her exposed knees.
She poised her bowl of soggy generic Cheery-Loops on her knees while the birds fluttered betwixt wildflowers, oblivious to the end of the world, their future offspring their top priority, even while bombs sounded with the superior species lost its collective shit.
Life continues. Milo’s voice sounded deep in Sophie’s mind while the missiles continued to strike. Closer, this time, producing shock currents. The ground lurched, tossing Sophie from the porch.
She tumbled forth, her cheek hitting the dirt, the sickly-sweet scent of wood rot creeping into her nostrils. Her belly hurt, the collision enough for Sophie to regret wolfing down three bowls of Cheery-Loops.
Extinction occurred once, Butterfly. Milo’s soft kisses on Sophie’s neck, returning home from the university, clothes disheveled, jumbled files sticking out of his binders. When we welcome the truth, life becomes so much sweeter. Some of us will survive, though, enough to form tribes, then cities, countries, whole societies…
We’ll come full circle.
Sophie rubbed her cheek. She could still see it – the excited glint in Milo’s eyes, the lust for life he’d welcomed following his meeting with the oncologist six grueling summers before.
The loud thump of the neighbors’ screen door shook Sophie from her thoughts. She righted herself, brushing dirt from her worn Milton’s Feed Supply t-shirt – once Milo’s most prized possession – while squinting over the drive to the West house.
Buck West – followed by his wife Jenny West – hurried out the door, bulging duffels in tow. Tilly – soon to be twelve – filed out next, with the household’s new kitten nestled to her chest.
“Going north?” Sophie hollered, then felt stupid, given how close to the shoreline they were. Like there’s other options.
Buck West looked in Sophie’s direction, then turned to his wife. Buck gestured to Sophie while he spoke to Jenny, enough for Sophie to wonder if she should’ve even spoken. Tilly peered, wide-eyed, out her window, still holding the kitten.
But then, Jenny circled the household’s rust-covered VW Bug, striding through the thick weeds to Sophie. She beckoned.
“Come with us!”
Sophie blinked. “With…with you?”
Jenny clutched Sophie’s fingers, trying to pull her from the porch. “Yes. There’s room, supplies, everything we need.”
But Sophie’s eyes locked on the tiny kitten peering from Tilly’s window. Green eyes, white fur with yellow spots.
“I’m sorry I could never give you children.” Milo wept, his brown curls like thorny vines on the pillow. The beeping monitors positioned ‘round his gurney like sentinels drowned out his cries. “Now I’ll never…”
Sophie kissed him. His lips were sweet, like the first berries of summer. Milo gripped her fingers. “Promise me you’ll keep going. Find something – someone – to live for.”
Simple words for the dying. Not so simple for those left behind. Now, with the missiles striking closer with every second, she wondered why she shouldn’t look the end of the world in the eyes.
“I’m fine, Jenny. I promise.” Sophie frowned, nodding in Tilly’s direction. “You need to focus on her. She needs you both.”
Explosions rumbled close by. Sophie pushed Jenny on. “Go. Now. They’re coming closer.”
The words fell from her lips seconds before the sky erupted. Sophie dove under the porch, thorns digging into her skin, the red clouds scorching her world to nothing.
Something struck her brow. The world fell down – like the stupid song Milo would sing on cold winter nights outside on the porch, the two of them bundled in fleece on the worn wicker furniture.
“Bowie sings it better,” Sophie would giggle, shoving him.
“Seriously? You won’t let me be your Goblin King?”
Throbbing in her brow. Sophie opened her eyes to the murky gloom.
The bombs were silent. The night fell still. Sophie tried to cry out, but her voice withered, blood in her teeth. She closed her eyes. She needed to rest. The end of the world would be there, even if she didn’t rush.
She’d been right. The end of the world indeed expected her when she emerged from the dirt under the house.
Her world burned, though mostly cinders lingered now. The fires reduced the row of blooming mulberry trees to splinters. Sophie’s pulse stopped in her chest.
Legs trembling, she stepped forth, knowing there’d be nothing left.
There, in the burned dirt, one single, crooked seedling – offshoot, Milo would correct her – quivered in the bitter wind.
Sophie retrieved the chipped pot from the front porch. Using her fingers, she dug into the soil, uprooting the fledgling mulberry. Green tendrils quivered.
Life continues.
She hoisted the pot over the porch, knowing it wouldn’t slip from her grip. She figured out the things she needed to collect before she left. Clothes, food, medicine. Petrol for the Ford. Enough to get her over the Mississippi border. Then…
It would come to her.
Groups, tribes, whole societies wouldn’t form without her.