What would you write if you knew that you were writing your last words.

Writers don’t usually leave a lot of money when they die, but their estates can include big treasure. My father was an inspired and celebrated writer who hated to give me writing advice; he hoped I would have an easier life than he had. Still, his occasional slips have turned out to be solid gold. When, as a young writer, I was worried about taking a television job, he told me to go ahead. “A writer’s life is an improvisation,” he said. When I pressed him for technique he suggested that I never use a dialogue tag. If the dialogue is strong, it doesn’t need an adjective.

Best of all, I inherited the writing prompts that he used when he taught at Barnard and the University of Iowa. He asked his students to write a story linking six disparate objects; his student Allan Gurganus did this so well that his exercise ended up being published in The Atlantic. Over the years I have added to the prompts my father left, collecting from writers like Frank Conroy, Bret Anthony Johnston and John McPhee, but the one I keep coming back to, and the one my father liked the best was this one: write a letter from a burning building. What would you write if you knew it was your last chance to connect with another person? What would you write if you knew that you were writing your last words. Last words can change the world. An example: “I can’t breathe.”

What would yours be?

– Susan Cheever

Prompt:

Write a letter from a burning building. You are trapped and will not be able to escape. No rescue. You know this is the last thing you will ever write. Who will you write to? What will you say?

Erin Hiatt

Location: New York City
About: I've sometimes fantasized about what it would be like to start over with a clean slate. The pandemic, as alarming and frightening as it is, has brought clarity to how I would like to move through the world, what I want to remember or change, and what I'd like to forget.
Age: 47

It’s the smell that wakes me. Something acrid yet familiar startles my eyes open. I’ve only just fallen asleep I think, the fireworks only recently quieted down. I wake my phone and just make out the numbers of the clock as my eyes adjust to the blazing light. 4 am. It must be smoke from the fireworks, I reason, and put the phone face down.

I turn to slip back into sleep but what seems like a shadow is moving along the floor near my door. As the hair on my arms start to stand up, I walk slowly and quietly to the door, then drop to a crouch to see the moving shadow more closely. With my nose in the grey mist I feel like a bloodhound, but now the smell is unmistakable. Something is on fire.

I remember the Ricky Schroeder commercial from my childhood, “Stop, drop, and roll,” but there are no flames here, only smoke. I place my hand on the door and feel the heat, then open it a crack, one of a catalog of mistakes. Shutting it quickly, I scramble now, heart pounding, and wonder briefly about the importance of pants.

But the smoke is taking advantage of my mistake by flowing in freely through the gap between door and frame. I find a precious corner with air enough to breathe, and I use my fingers to find a pen and a scrap of paper. I have to tell someone about this fire, leave a note to someone, make a list of things to take with me.

I look through the dark to take inventory of my collected life here. There are only a few things that matter, some official papers, maybe some pictures? Everything else here can burn. Not much here belongs to me.

I place the paper on the floor and squint through the smoke, pen in hand. I write the date on the right and “Dear,” on the left, and my pen hovers over the page as the coughing begins in short and sharp exhalations.

Maybe it would be better if it all burned - scorch me out of this inertia, strip me bare of anything that looks like me right now, crouched as I am in my underwear and tank top, scrap in one hand and pen in the other.

Dropping to my stomach, I reach up blindly to grab my phone, then pull myself on my stomach to the door and use my shirt to turn the knob. The door now open, the smoke pours in, and I drop again to the ground, inching toward the living room, feeling my way by fingertip to the fire escape window. I use the hem of my shirt to push open the window, and suck in lungfuls on New York City’s thick and humid air.

I unhook the fire escape ladder and watch it clang loudly on the sidewalk below. Free from the smoke, down the ladder and onto the sidewalk, I take stock. There are flames lashing from the top story

windows, and the sirens wailing, coming closer. “Some people are kind,” I write on the scrap. “I think I am one of them. Some people are inadvertently cruel, and I think I am one of them, too.” I turn west, start walking toward the A train, see a newsstand where I place the scrap with the pen on top, in case the wind tries to blow it away. A few steps away, I change my mind, take the pen away and drop it in the nearby trash. What does home mean during a pandemic, when you can work anywhere, and love nowhere?

Paola Piccioli

Location: Los Angeles, LA
About: These prompts have been one of the rituals that kept me grounded and loved during this pandemic, and I thank you immensely for giving me an outlet to cry out loud, and a beloved certainty, again, a ritual. The most common inspiration are the people I love. I have been blessed with many of them filling my life with chaos and joy.
Age: 32

My love,

You are forgiven. Really, truly, there is nothing you need to be forgiven for by me: that, I want you to know before I go. I want you to know how brilliant, perfect, talented, smart, sweet, immense you are. I only left you because I loved you very much: your happiness is essential to the world, and I know that together we were always going to be two half-grown little trees, too weak to bear fruits, too sturdy to die. I just need you to know I never deemed you unworthy: that was never the case. You are too bright to be sacrificed in a room that is too small. Please never, ever think you don’t deserve to be the bold beautiful light that you are, and to stun the world with the power of your daring. You are a creature of utter wholeness and I need you to know you are enough. You are more than enough: you have been my miracle. Do a thing for me, don’t live a life in the shadow of us. Please allow deserving people to love you. Please let them hold you and let them be delicate with the beauty of your vulnerability. When you are under stress or pressure, please breath and wait ten minutes before you do anything. Please! Do it for me. I promise it’s gonna make wonders. Know that you deserve money. Brush your teeth at least twice a day and go to the dentist and cure your cavities. I would love if you could make peace with your father. I would love if you could finish the documentaries we left unedited. I want you to have my pizza stone ‘cause, you will see, it really makes a difference! Please go back to Italy if you want to, choose whatever makes you happy, don’t judge yourself. You have all the answers, but breathe!

I love you immensely and you are my rock. I am not afraid of burning down. Be free. I kiss your very hairy head

Paola

Serene Asaari Duhaithem

Location: Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
About: I'm a writer because somehow, the words always find me. My inspiration has always been my hope and faith in myself and the world in how it is and how it can be.
Age: 21

Dear children of the world,

I say children because no matter how much we grow up, there always remains a child inside of us and this is for the child in you, whoever you are.

In my last moments in this burning building, a lot comes to me but in this flood of memories, thoughts and feelings, I can see some things shine brighter than others. One of those things is this overwhelming feeling of gratitude. I don’t know if you’ve ever felt the same but I hope you do one day.

I am awash with gratefulness because I now know that every misstep and mistake lead me to a greatness I couldn’t even imagine. The truth is kid, is that we often focus so much on what we miss that we aren’t able to notice what we didn’t miss, what we actually have. It comes to say that not all our choices are sound and right. Our choices may not reflect what it is truly meant to be so relish in the truth that even when things don’t work out, they work out in a different way. What is yours will find you, no matter how far your hide, no matter how much you reject it. It’s just a matter of being and letting go. People are so often preoccupied with the decision of whether to jump of a cliff or not that they forget to just let go and let their bodies guide them.

Maybe you’re not meant to jump. Maybe you’re meant to rest at the cliff and watch the sunset. Maybe you’re meant to dive off into the ocean. Maybe you’re meant to walk away and go somewhere better. Just listen to your heart and body and let go. Let your heart guide your body. Let yourself be filled with wonder, excitement and even fear. Let that kid stuck inside you out.

Know that it is okay and valid to feel whatever you feel, to just follow the flow of yourself. Don’t feel obliged to follow this imaginary plan or blueprint that the world has set out for you. Do you.

That’s what matters for me to say right now. Just do you, kid.

Sincerely,

Serene

Ryan Chepita

Location: Ottawa, ON, Canada
About: I am so grateful. Writing in this beautiful community feels like I have unlocked long-dormant treasures within me, or unearthed a treasure chest in the forest. The Isolation Journals have not just helped me to stay afloat in this era; it has helped me to thrive.
Age: 42

I never wanted you to end any relationship. Now you’re ending mine with this world.

You’ll commandeer the inevitable headline: “Fire Takes Ottawa Man”, as if I’m reducible to a city, sex, and your dominance of me.

That article will also prioritize my exit over my future home. Maybe you’ll help generate clicks by photobombing this exit.

Perhaps I’m partly to blame. I saw your value.

You accentuated winter walks with your aroma, sparked romance in a controlled setting, and illuminated connection with earlier inhabitants of my future home.

I shouldn’t have played with you. I should have embraced you.

81. From Inside a Burning Building – Susan Cheever