This week’s prompt was a departure from our usual and was right out of WD’s favorite blogger’s weekly newsletter: You come home from work to find a Dear John letter on the kitchen table. Oddly enough it’s from your favorite piece of furniture.

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Dear John Letter from My Favorite Piece of Furniture

I returned home from work exhausted, and ready to relax on my favorite couch.

Taking off my shoes, I poured a glass of Chardonnay and head to the couch.

What? I dropped the wine on the new Turkish rug I had saved so long to buy.

The couch was gone, utterly gone! How could that be? No door was unlocked, no window broken. I looked around where the couch should have been and noticed an envelope with my name on the front .Picking it up, I began to read.

Dear Mary,

I seem to no longer be your favorite piece of furniture. You just go on and on about the new rug. Well, I’ve had it!

The couch next door has been after me for over a year to elope with him, but I thought you would miss me too much. Now I see I have wasted the year over someone that does not care.

Consider this your Dear John letter. I hope you will be very happy with the rug.

I hate to tell you this, but the rug doesn’t think you are worthy of him.

Good luck

Your used to be favorite couch.

By Mary Hanley

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Dear Elly,

I’m going back to Italy–Sorrento to be exact. You were going to use me, yes me, the inlaid rosewood desk, to write your novels on. Now you do it on a domestic oak desk. I feel insulted being upstaged by a domestic, built in Phoenix oak desk. Yes, I know it has a pull-out shelf for the keyboard and a file drawer. I realize that is convenient. But look at me, with a highly shiny varnish and brass handles and décor. Remember the sales man at the inlaid wood factory who was so outrageously handsome he could have talked himself right into your knickers. Remember what you paid for me, over one million liras. How excited you were when you got back on the tour bus and showed everyone your brass key.

Now I sit in the front room, my drawers full of papers, old bills and costume jewelry. Yes, costume jewelry, not even the good stuff.

All I can say is adios, auf Wiedersehen and cio, I’m returning to where I’m appreciated, good old Sorrento.

By Ellynore Smith

She picked up the rock and on the other side the word believe

The toy box was too full, really. Over the last several decades many little hands had contributed toys, all of them tattered, all of them too well-loved. As small lost children had turned into big clever adults, the teddy bears and baby dolls and cars and trains had been left behind as a final offering to the god all children worship and all adults abandon. There comes a time in every life when we are too smart to believe in magic and fairies and Santa Claus, but she had held on longer than most. The toy she was leaving behind was a little plastic ballerina, paint fading in places and completely gone from the toes. There was a stone out by the front walk of the orphanage, emblazoned “Believe”, which she had touched with her toe everyday of her life. Today she did not.

By Abby Eskew

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A Message

It started a shitty day. The toilet ran over and spilled its nasty contents on the floor. The dog carried in a rat, close to death. The two year old was teething and protested with loud howl. At the breakfast table the six and eight year old off springs not only spilled the milk but also the orange juice all over the clean floor.

Finally the school-bus came to fetch the two older chi8ldren.l A neighbor came over to get the two year-old. A plumber was called who could only come in the afternoon.

She stood in the house and looked at the mess.

‘I’ll take a walk,’ she thought and headed out the door.

At the end of the driveway a rock caught her attention. Why, she did not know. She picked it up and on the other side she read the word ‘Believe.’

By Ellynore Smith

Sweeping the Street
Was cruising along the boulevard in my running gear. As I did so I ran into the normal street sweeper guy all dressed in his garb, laced up shoes, tucked in tights and tank top. It was a hot afternoon and he vehemently disliked my wandering into his tidy results of cleaning that part of the street. My swift foot steps created wind filled steps that dislodged his work and distributed it in endless directions across his already tidily filed actions. He hurled his sweeping tools in my direction. I tripped over the handle of his broom and landed on the sidewalk abruptly thus placing a blow onto my shoulder as my body piled onto the street. He punched upon me with fist filled blows of anger. I felt great swelling occurring on my lips and tasted blood that already was oozing onto my taste buds. I rolled my body and with my feet flung intense blows of retaliation into the air. One blow caught his ear. and he went flaying across the boulevard into the path of an oncoming motorcycle. The cyclist laid his bike and slid into his body slamming him into the opposite curb and crushing his torso into the concrete. Great intense groans of agony were heard coming form his larynx. I jumped to my feet and bolted into an opposite direction disappearing into a side street.  Lookers-on yelled. He went in that direction, over the…=

By Sam Fisher

On a trip to Italy, motoring through one small village after another, I couldn’t help but notice how clean the streets were and how well tended the flowers in the town squares were. While sitting at an outdoor café in one of these villages, I saw this old man sweeping the street. The café looked out over the village square and it had a fountain in the center. As the old man swept, he kept looking at the water in the pool at the base of the fountain. Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer and got up and walked over to the fountain to see what he was looking at. There were three geese swimming around. As I could speak Italian I started talking to the old man. He told me they were his geese and every day when he would come to sweep, the geese followed him from home and would get in the fountain. When the geese would get out and start for home, he would know his day was done. Then he would follow them home.

He said he used to be the mayor of the village and the tradition was that when the mayor retired he would sweep the streets, either until he died or until the next mayor retired. When the banker of the village retired, he was the one who took care of all the beautiful flowers. It was a matter of great honor to be able to do this for the people of the village, and has been this way for generations. It seems the surrounding villages have a competition as to who has the cleanest streets and most beautiful flowers.

Jerry Stapleton