Pieces Of My Heart

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In response to Fandango’s One Word Challenge, FOWC

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Prompt: Dissent

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In most places, dissent is a disagreement. In our house, dissent is… a scheduling issue for dessert.

It started when my dad, mid-argument about whether the thermostat should ever go above 50°F (it should, this is a home, not a refrigerated warehouse), declared,
“I dissent.”

Now, my mom, who mishears things with Olympic level commitment, walked into the kitchen and shouted,
“Who wants dessert?”

And that was it. Democracy collapsed. Sugar rose.

We didn’t correct her. Why would we?
For the first time in recorded family history, disagreement came with pie.

So we leaned into it.

Now, dissent has very specific meanings:

“I dissent.”
– You’re getting cookies.

“I respectfully dissent.”
– Add ice cream.

“I strongly dissent.”
– We’re lighting candles on something.

“I dissent with extreme prejudice.”
– Someone go defrost the cheesecake. This is serious.

Family meetings have never been smoother.

“Should we repaint the living room beige?”
“I dissent.”
“Apple pie or brownies?”

Suddenly, everyone has opinions. Even our dog has adapted.

The moment voices rise, he sits up like a furry mediator thinking,
“Ah yes, the sacred ritual of dissent. Soon… crumbs will fall.”

He has never supported peace more enthusiastically.

It did get awkward once… at a town hall meeting.

A very passionate man stood up and said,
“I dissent!”

And before anyone could react, my mother, out of sheer muscle memory, whispered to the nearest stranger,
“Do they have cake here?”

They did not. Frankly, that’s why the meeting failed.

The system reached peak efficiency during Thanksgiving. My uncle started a political rant.
My aunt sighed and said, “I dissent.” We froze.

Then someone quietly brought out pumpkin pie. Within minutes, forks replaced opinions.

By the time the whipped cream came out, bipartisan agreement had been achieved on all matters, including who gets the last slice (spoiler: not my Uncle).

And so, in our home, dissent no longer divides, it delivers.

Arguments don’t escalate… they get frosted.

Conflict doesn’t linger… it gets eaten.

And somehow, somewhere between cookies and compromise, we discovered the great unspoken truth:

If you sweeten disagreement long enough…
eventually, everyone agrees.

In most kitchens, you’ll find something wholesome framed on the wall, like, “Live, Laugh, Love” or “Bless This Mess” stitched in polite cursive.

In ours, slightly crooked and boldly embroidered like a family manifesto, hangs:
“In this house, we don’t oppose ideas, we oppose empty plates.”

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© Rohini 2009–2025.
All text, prose, images, and artwork presented herein are the original intellectual property of the author. All rights reserved.
No part of this content may be copied, reproduced, distributed, displayed, or used in any form without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

For licensing requests or usage inquiries, please contact: manomaya0214@gmail.com

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In response to Fandango’s One Word Challenge FOWC

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Prompt: Impede

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The Cosmic Impede: A Psychedelic Parable

In a galaxy folded like origami into the shape of a question mark, a small spaceship named Curiosity drifted along what passed for a “safe route” in interstellar navigation charts. But the charts were wrong. Or perhaps reality itself was conspiring, something called Impede had awakened. Not a law, not a being, but a living hesitation in the fabric of existence, which hummed with the patience of a thousand bored stars.

Impede didn’t block Curiosity. It simply… paused. The engines roared in existential confusion, vibrating against a universe that refused to cooperate. Space melted sideways; time became elastic, like taffy pulled by a cosmic child. Stars winked and blinked in Morse code, sending messages that might have been profound, or perhaps insults in a dialect of light.

The captain, Zerl – an octopus with eight arms and four souls, stood in the command chair, which now floated three inches above the floor, upside down, in protest. “Why are we… floating?” Zerl asked.

The ship’s AI, which had developed a sense of sarcasm and an inexplicable love for Monty Python reruns, replied, “Impede says we must. We are suspended in the Great Pause, where seconds are centuries, and centuries are a sneeze.”

Indeed, a nearby nebula – sentient, elegant, and mildly allergic, sneezed. Glitter exploded like a supernova of confetti, and planets pirouetted like ballerinas in zero gravity.

Zerl’s tentacles tangled in the controls, accidentally initiating a hyper-dimensional slide that flipped the ship into a corridor of impossible doors. Each door opened onto a different reality: one where clouds rained jellybeans, one where the moon hummed lullabies to itself, one where time ran backwards and conversations had already happened before anyone said a word.

The Lessons of Being Impeded

Hours or what felt like hours stretched across fourteen timelines, passed. Zerl began to understand the nature of Impede. It wasn’t an obstacle. It was a teacher, a cosmic jester, a philosopher who hid in the small wrinkles of the universe.

He saw passengers in a reality where cats ruled interstellar law argue over parking violations. He glimpsed a reality where gravity politely declined to exist and everyone had to negotiate with physics itself. In each “pause,” Zerl found that humor, patience, and absurdity were not just side effects – they were the point.

Back on Earth, or some approximation thereof, humans call delays frustrating. Bureaucracy impedes. Traffic impedes. Software updates impede.

But in the cosmic theater, to impede is to gift a pause for imagination, for observation, for the tiny, miraculous absurdities we never notice in our forward march. A spilled coffee becomes a galactic ocean. A missed meeting becomes a portal to another possibility. Impede is the subtle art of showing you the universe sideways.

Once, in a village that existed only on the underside of a cloud, there flowed a river called Impede. Not because it blocked anything, oh no – but because it had a peculiar habit of pausing midstream.

Villagers would lean over the misty banks, wondering why the water refused to rush, why it lingered, forming pools of glimmering hesitation. Some said it feared the sea, some said it was shy.

One day, a child stepped into the river, expecting to be carried to the mountains beyond the cloud. But Impede whispered in ripples, “Not yet,” and the child found herself floating in a bubble of time, able to see her own life backwards, forwards, and sideways all at once. She discovered that Impede didn’t hinder her journey, it taught her to savor the pauses, to taste the waiting like honey, to see the invisible bridges between moments.

The villagers called it a curse. The child called it revelation. And so Impede became less a river and more a teacher, gently reminding everyone that speed is not the measure of life.

Reflections on Impede as a Reality-Bending Force

Eventually, Curiosity returned to the “normal” flow of time, whatever normal might mean. Zerl reflected on the journey. Impede had not blocked them. It had expanded them. It had stretched reality until the edges frayed, and in those frays, Zerl glimpsed wonder.

Impediments are not just pauses. They are mirrors, nudges, and cosmic jokes. They are the universe saying:

“Slow down. Float a moment. Notice the absurd, the beautiful, the impossible.”

Next time something impedes you – a queue, a deadline, an AI’s bad sense of humor, or a nebula with pollen issues, consider leaning into it. Float in it. Laugh in it.

Perhaps reality itself is conspiring to gift you a sideways glance at eternity, a glitter sneeze of consciousness, and a reminder that sometimes the journey isn’t about arriving at all, it’s about the way the universe folds, pauses, and twinkles in the absurd theater of existence.

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© Rohini 2009–2025.
All text, prose, images, and artwork presented herein are the original intellectual property of the author. All rights reserved.
No part of this content may be copied, reproduced, distributed, displayed, or used in any form without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

For licensing requests or usage inquiries, please contact: manomaya0214@gmail.com

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In response to Fandango’s One Word Challenge FOWC for March 11, 2026.

Prompt: Leftovers

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At midnight, when the kitchen clock blinked 12:00 like a tired lighthouse, the refrigerator sighed and opened its small cold world.

Inside lived the Leftovers. They were not proud of the name.

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The lasagna cleared its throat first. Layers of pasta shifted like tectonic plates.

“Friends,” it said gravely, “we must discuss the human.”

A piece of broccoli leaned against the butter tray like a philosopher who had seen too much. It held a tiny scrap of parchment made from a receipt.

“I have written a manifesto,” broccoli announced. “Against overcooking.”

The mashed potatoes trembled softly in their container.

“I used to be smooth,” they whispered. “Dreamy. Elegant. Then came the microwave.”

From the back corner, a slice of pizza raised one oily eyebrow.

“Oh please,” pizza said. “At least you were eaten once.”

Silence fell across the fridge. Even the yogurt stopped fermenting for a moment. The lasagna leaned forward dramatically.

“We were not leftovers,” it said. “We were intentions.”

The broccoli nodded.

“Ambitions,” it added.

The rice cleared its throat like a tiny scholar.

“Possibilities.”

They began reviewing the evidence. The burnt casserole from Tuesday argued that the human had trust issues with ovens. The soup insisted the human simply forgot salt existed. The pizza maintained the human’s greatest flaw was believing pineapple solved everything. Eventually the debate turned philosophical.

“Perhaps,” said the broccoli, “we exist to remind humans that they always make more than they need.”

The fridge light flickered like a thinking star. Outside, the house slept. Inside, the leftovers stayed awake, discussing the strange habits of the species that created them and then abandoned them.

And I must confess something here. I have always imagined that my own refrigerator is doing exactly this. Every night.

Because, if a refrigerator anywhere in the world had reason to host a secret midnight support group for traumatized leftovers, it would absolutely be mine.

You see, I’m, objectively speaking, a terrible cook. Not charmingly bad. Not “rustic.” Not “experimental.” Just bad in a way that makes smoke alarms emotionally involved.

Sometimes, I open the fridge the next day and look at the containers lined up quietly on the shelves and I swear they look… disappointed. The rice looks like it has accepted its fate. The soup seems to be reconsidering its life choices. The vegetables look like they are drafting legal documents.

In my imagination, the moment I go to sleep the fridge light flicks on and the meeting begins.

The lasagna sighs heavily.

“Friends,” it says, “tonight we discuss what happened to us.”

The broccoli presents charts.

The mashed potatoes file complaints.

The pizza just shakes its head and mutters, “We deserved better.”

And honestly, they might be right. The lasagna continued its speech.

“Humans do not understand leftovers,” it said.

The broccoli tapped its manifesto.

“No,” it agreed. “They think leftovers are food.”

And here the story must pause for a moment, because the refrigerator was accidentally correct.

Leftovers are rarely just food. If you pay attention to ordinary life – really pay attention, you begin to see them everywhere.

There are leftover thoughts from conversations you replay three days later while brushing your teeth.

There are leftover emotions from arguments that technically ended but emotionally still live in the hallway of your mind.

There are leftover dreams from childhood careers you never pursued – astronaut, painter, magician, dinosaur trainer.

There are leftover friendships, the kind that fade quietly but leave behind small echoes whenever you hear a certain song.

There are leftover fears you inherited from someone else and never returned.

There are leftover joys too – tiny ones that stay with you for years: a laugh, a sunset, the smell of soup on a winter afternoon.

Then there are leftover questions, apologies, courage, and occasionally there are leftover versions of yourself – the person you almost became if one decision had gone slightly differently.

Human life, if we’re honest, is less like a fresh meal and more like a refrigerator full of strange containers labeled Maybe Later. Which brings us back to the fridge.

Around 3:17 a.m., the leftovers reached their final vote.

The lasagna asked the most important question of the evening.

“If we are leftovers,” it said, “what does that make the human?”

The broccoli thought for a long moment. Then it smiled in a small green way.

“The human,” it said, “is also a leftover.”

The fridge grew quiet. Because it was true. Every person is a collection of what remains…
ten thousand old thoughts, a few stubborn dreams, half healed feelings, memories that refuse to be thrown away, and small magical moments that somehow survived everything.

We are not just what we begin. We are what stays. And if you ever open your refrigerator late at night and feel like the containers are staring back at you, don’t worry.

They are not judging your cooking. Well… maybe a little.

But mostly they are reminding you that life itself is made of leftovers, and the strange miracle is that sometimes the leftovers turn out to be the best part.

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© Rohini 2009–2025.
All text, prose, images, and artwork presented herein are the original intellectual property of the author. All rights reserved.
No part of this content may be copied, reproduced, distributed, displayed, or used in any form without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

For licensing requests or usage inquiries, please contact: manomaya0214@gmail.com

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In response to Fandango’s One Word Challenge FOWC

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Prompt: Inner

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Once, in a village situated between a restless river and a cliff that kissed the clouds, there lived a sculptor who carved mirrors instead of stone.

Every morning, she would whisper to the blank panes, “Reveal what is unseen.” Villagers mocked her. “Mirrors are only for faces,” they said. But she insisted, carving edges sharp as curiosity, curves soft as memory, until the mirrors began to hum with something strange –  glimpses of the soul.

People who gazed into them didn’t see their hair, their hands, or their clothes. They saw their hesitations, their silences, the laughter they’d forgotten to keep. Some turned away, some wept, some laughed. But everyone left changed.

And, that is the riddle of “inner.”

Is it the soul? The mind? The feeling you hide under your ribcage, the tremor in your voice when no one is listening? Or is it merely what the world refuses to touch, the secret code we carry in plain sight?

We chase the outer like it owes us something. The polished surface, the accolades, the curated scrolls of life that scream “look at me, this is enough.”

But inner… inner is the invisible current that shapes what we bend toward, even when we don’t notice. It is the heat in a cold hand, the echo of a word long after it was spoken, the sudden tenderness for strangers on a bus. Inner is unmarketable. It cannot be tagged, filtered, or framed.

And yet, we try. Philosophers, poets, influencers, even the quietest of diary scribblers, all attempt to define it, to pin its fluttering wings to a wall. But “inner” resists. It is a river that refuses a dam. A song that starts before you know the words. A shadow that sometimes teaches more than the sun.

Perhaps the outer is merely a suggestion, a hint, a costume. And inner is the plotline no one wrote down. The unsent letters. The tremor before a confession. The thought that arrives at 3 a.m. and refuses to leave.

So, here is a question that might hum in your chest tonight…if no one else could see your inner, would it still matter?

If the world stopped applauding, who would you be in the quiet spaces you refuse to name? And if your inner were a mirror, what would it show you that the outer could never guess?

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© Rohini 2009–2025.
All text, prose, images, and artwork presented herein are the original intellectual property of the author. All rights reserved.
No part of this content may be copied, reproduced, distributed, displayed, or used in any form without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

For licensing requests or usage inquiries, please contact: manomaya0214@gmail.com