Previous Competitions

The Quarterly Contest

Fall 2026 (Resolution)

Prompt: At the end of every path, no matter how difficult, is a resolution. It may not be the one that was initially pictured, but it is a resolution nonetheless. Mad Woman Publishing invites you to submit a poem or short story exploring an unlikely resolution and its consequences.

Winner: Kaileen Langstone

Negotiations on Behalf of the Woman I May Become

We met on neutral ground: The Body.

The girl arrived first, twenty minutes early.
With a list of demands written in a purple crayon:

• A dog.

• A stage.

• A house with stairs.

• Someone who stays

• No dying.
  ________

She had underlined that one twice.

I arrived on time carrying amendments,
receipts, and a calendar full of reasons.
I explained inflation, genetics, bad timing, &
the cost of houses with stairs.

I moved that “someone who stays” be revised to “someone who tries.”
The girl objected. The objection was noted.

The old woman came last. She carried nothing.
No cane. No photographs. No proof of life.
Only the minutes from a meeting that hadn’t happened yet.

We offered her the head of the table.
She declined and looked right at me.

“For years,” she said, “you have used my name without my permission.”

The girl looked at me. I looked at my hands.

Her evidence:

• Every risk I had not taken

• Every hour banked like currency

• Every ‘not yet’

• Every ‘someday’

• Every beginning postponed.

I called it planning. She called it occupation.

The girl laughed.
I asked that the record show her laughter was inappropriate.
The old woman asked that the record show it was not

Then she placed a single page between us.
Her terms.

• No more decisions made on her behalf.

• No more suffering preserved like principal for a future we may never collect.

• No more calling her the reason I could not begin.

In exchange, she would surrender all claim to my life.

The girl read it first. She signed in purple crayon.
I did not sign. I asked about security, contingencies, retirement, and regrets.
I asked who would protect us from becoming no one.

The old woman smiled.
“You keep calling me your future,” she said, “as if I am a destination you are required to reach.”

Then she stood.
With my voice cracking I exclaimed we had not yet adjourned.
She said she had.

Then she disappeared with sixty years of certainty I had been counting on.

The girl and I sat there in silence.
Between us, the empty chair.
For the first time there was no witness to what we might become.

The girl pushed the treaty toward me.

I sighed. I signed.
And that is how the war ended:

Not with peace, but the sudden
consequence of having no one left to postpone my life for.