Some story slices from my writing practice:

“I don’t want to,” she pauses. I answer, “You don’t have to” and it throws her off for a second. She sits in her carseat wearing her long-sleeve pink dress with her black and pink polka dot pants with her purple necklace around her forehead like a headband. She responds, “What?”

♦

“Stay for two more and rub me,” she says to me. She’s lying in her bed in the dark as we watch our barn cats sit outside her window as if keeping watch over her tonight though we both know they soon will move.

♦

She asks yet again if she can eat the heart piece of chocolate. “Yes,” I say, “as long as you promise to eat all the vegetables I give you otherwise no more chocolate tomorrow.” A few seconds later she asks again, “Can I eat my chocolate now?”