Previous Competitions

The Quarterly Contest

Spring 2026 (Rebirth)

Prompt: Are you the same person you were a decade ago? As we go through life, we constantly change as we are exposed to different points of view and the challenges that are in our path. Mad Woman Publishing invites you to write a short story or poem exploring the interplay between yourself as you are now and the self that is no longer.

Winner: Kaileen Langstone

Rebirth: Administered Daily

When I was small I believed in beans the way fairy tales instructed:

Plant them, trust them, and they will lift you somewhere extraordinary.

Adult me adjusted this methodology . . . . These days, rebirth is administered daily.

Eyes open, but no one is home.
A shell of a person haunted by the ghost of productivity.

My limbs are decorative, and my thoughts arrive in buffering circles.

Some say rebirth comes from within.

Those people have never met a 6:09a.m. alarm.

I shuffle toward the altar.

There it waits.
Silent, judgmental, The Machine.

I measure out the dark granular prophecy.

Water fills and bubbles inside the chamber.

A button is pressed.

The ceremony begins.

A low hum.
A sacred gurgle.
The scent of roasted absolution rising like incense for the patron saint of “I can’t today.”

Behold: Coffee.

Not metaphorical.
Not symbolic.

Just actual, caffeinated, coffee.

It drips steadily into the waiting carafe;
Brown and bold, performing miracles.

Steam curls upward guiding pieces of myself
back to my body.

The first sip is not gentle.

It is a negotiation.
A contractual agreement between bean and brain.

And suddenly . . . I return.

My spine lengthens.
My vocabulary expands.
I redevelop goals, ambitions, and the ability to locate my phone while holding it.

Where moments ago stood a cautionary tale wrapped in pajamas . . .

Now stands a human.

A taxpayer.

I have tried becoming anew through positive thinking.

I have attempted enlightenment through stretching.

But nothing.
Not therapy, affirmations, or the gentle optimism of sunrise,

Has ever resurrected me like 16 oz. of caffeine.

The magic and wonder from childhood still comes from a bean . . .
just darker, hotter,
and significantly more necessary.

Each evening I perish.

Each morning I am brewed again.