Rachel
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vignettes.bsky.social
Rachel
@vignettes.bsky.social
2.6K followers 3.1K following 1.8K posts
Absurdist, writer, explorer, escape artist. Copywriter, writer of poetry and prose.
Bookish & writerly banter. British, living in Italy. 🇮🇹🇬🇧
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vignettes.bsky.social
Your page showed up in a fellow wrIters feed. We're an empathetic lot. Just wanted to thank you for the work you do supporting people experiencing homelessness. I wrote this short piece and wanted to share it. I've not lived in London for a few years but I've not forgotten.
Cardboard Weather Semi-dressed chestnuts stand in an abandoned, locked square, their spiny brown burrs littering the wet, dormant grass. Autumn has gathered the clouds and bleached the sky. An indiscriminate wind gusts through dark, gridded streets, while bundles of hair, elbows and blankets burrow deeper into a doorway. Cardboard flaps as pain pokes, and the last copper leaves cling lifelessly to branches. A stillness, as the wind draws breath. From time to time, a tinge of green emerges from lifeless limbs. Somewhere, far beneath, a train rumbles.
November 11, 2025 at 12:01 PM
vignettes.bsky.social
It's getting cold, the evenings darker. Time for me to get creative. Experimenting with print making techniques.
Print making process with botanicals Print making result, part 1
November 5, 2025 at 4:52 PM
vignettes.bsky.social
I live near Chianciano, Siena is my closest city.
Here's that glorious Duomo with moody winter skies 😊
Siena, Tuscany Duomo, Siena, Tuscany
October 28, 2025 at 7:55 AM
vignettes.bsky.social
Morning Rosanna. Autumn in Tuscany.
Persimmon tree, olive groves; Tuscany, Italy. Autumn
October 28, 2025 at 7:41 AM
vignettes.bsky.social
Abandoned industrial spaces. Years ago this was a brick factory.

#photography
Black & white window, frame blown out. Abandoned brick factory Old rusted telephone Abandoned spaces.
October 27, 2025 at 7:58 AM
vignettes.bsky.social
They rise from the soil like dark feathers, each rooted in centuries of bone. The wind slows, as if entering a chapel. Their silence is not peace but vigilance, the long attention of stone. Beneath them, the air thickens with forgotten prayers and the soft rest of wings.

#prose #writing #nature
Ancient cypress tree, tuscany, Italy Cypress trees, Valdorcia, Tuscany
October 26, 2025 at 10:17 AM
vignettes.bsky.social
Olive picking season. This will hurt tomorrow, but I'm happy to be outside & helping. Also I get paid in olive oil. 😊

#Italy
Olives Olive picking, Tuscany, Italy
October 19, 2025 at 8:43 AM
vignettes.bsky.social
Autumn in Italy. Still blue but bloody cold. I'm out dog walking. 🥶
Yellow autumn leaves Vineyards, Italy.
October 14, 2025 at 6:56 AM
vignettes.bsky.social
Thanks @dragonslayerma.bsky.social
What a delightful prompt to start Monday morning. My secret simple pleasure that returns me to childhood joy is flying a kite. I keep it in the boot of my car.
#promptcombo #simplepleasures
Simple Pleasures The wind frets at the pebbles, salt spray burns my face. The kite jerks like a stubborn gull, its red plastic heart flapping, tail tangled, untamed. Thin bamboo bones creak as it strains for sky— a sailboat chasing invisible tides. I laugh, barefoot, skirt & hair whipping, each tug of string a pulse returning— old hands, yes, but the girl is still flying.
October 13, 2025 at 9:19 AM
vignettes.bsky.social
In Trevi’s piazza Mazzini the cold bites, sky a hard blue. We lean into sun warmed ochre walls, devour fennel slick sausage & black celery’s snap, fat bleeds through paper, red wine stained lips— smoke rising like incense to the hills, celery’s green spine holding winter’s soffritto.
#writer #Italy
Trevi, umbria, Italy Annual black celery festival, Trevi, umbria, Italy Black celery cultivated here for centuries. It has been designated as an IGP product of Umbria (Indicazione Geografica Protetta), indicating that the product is guaranteed to have been grown exclusively in a designated and very restricted area). Celery chopped & sautéed with carrot & onion forms the basis 'soffritto' of many winter pasta sauces. The Trevi Sagra del Sedano – Celery Festival Street food.
October 4, 2025 at 3:22 PM
vignettes.bsky.social
Thanks to @rfsmith.bsky.social for this weeks #PromptCombo #Character
I've been distracted over summer but getting back into a rhythm & it's good to see and read everyone.
Thalassa She keeps her counsel, watching boats bow and sway like disciples before a hidden altar. She inhales whole forests, teaches wind how to breathe, rain how to fall, stones how to wait. Her voice is a pendulum— golden-faced, merciless— swinging between lullaby and dirge. At night, she lifts her hem of foam, bares her salt-bitten throat to the moon, and laughs in the language of glass breaking itself smooth against her tongue.
October 1, 2025 at 4:07 PM
vignettes.bsky.social
The carousel spun too fast,
a blur of teeth and painted horses.
Laughter cracked in my throat~~
each orbit dragged me nearer
to the dark centre
where music forgot how to end.

#vss365 #blur #writingprompt
Carousel horses alamy stock photo
October 1, 2025 at 10:09 AM
vignettes.bsky.social
Lively morning in Chiusi, Tuscany, as the marching band kicks off the 2025 grape and wine festival. The old town is closed to traffic as restaurants and cafes spill over onto the pavements.
#italianlife
September 28, 2025 at 3:35 PM
vignettes.bsky.social
Thanks. You wouldn't believe how much time I wasted in canvas trying to put these words on a bracelet😂 🙈
Love bracelet Love bracelet
September 21, 2025 at 5:27 PM
vignettes.bsky.social
🙋‍♀️ I avoid the beach in summer.
This pic is why I don't go to the beach in July and August. No personal space....at all.
Crowded beach
July 14, 2025 at 8:24 AM
vignettes.bsky.social
For #PoemsAbout #Keepsakes
A reluctant keepsake from childhood, depression referred to as the black dog.

Thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk for creating this space.
Keepsake I keep him in the cupboard with their birth certificates— the black dog, collar frayed, eyes like ash. He came howling through my teenage ribs and stayed. Years I dragged him through broken glass a sentence written in custody files before we called a truce. he circles me, a sentry made of bone. We share breath, but I sleep with one foot braced for the drop.
July 11, 2025 at 5:51 AM
vignettes.bsky.social
Thank you @rfsmith.bsky.social
for the #promptcombo #seaside
My piece remembers a two day heatwave in Rye Harbour, East Sussex. 2023?
The giant white blades hung still— monuments to a wind that no longer came. Cracked mud gripped the boats like bone, their hulls weeping the smell of stale salt. Grass crisped to tin-yellow, roots patiently waiting beneath. Ladybirds rose—crimson, black— a seething cloud over brackish pools and slivered reeds. A solitary seal, alone, adrift— a grey psalm folded into the Channel. Heat shimmered. The sky did not blink. And the earth yawned wide, swallowing a perfect English summer.
July 8, 2025 at 8:20 AM
vignettes.bsky.social
It was hard to interpret
what passed between mouths
so I disappeared
into turmeric-yellow sunflowers,
the dry rasp of corn ears
the slender rustle of olive leaves
Rain told me secrets
Wind traced my name
Now, barefoot, I play in warm clay pools
building whole towns from birdsong.

#FromOneLine 380
My photo: Natural Sulphur pools, Bagni di San Filippo, Tuscany.
July 8, 2025 at 6:12 AM
vignettes.bsky.social
You're feeling fiesty this Friday. 😂

I like this one. 😁
Two exact images of planet earth. Above the caption reads "A picture of earth before and after your opinion".
July 4, 2025 at 11:53 AM
vignettes.bsky.social
#BurnItDown a verse about abandonment and self sabotage for Friday's #PoemsAbout theme from @alanparry83.bsky.social
Thanks for the space, and have a great Friday.
Burn It Down I strike the match before the house groans— not from fear, but from certainty. Its beams speak the language of collapse, and I moan too, whispering 98.6, 1001— through lips like peeled paint, brittle with memory, a litany to keep the chaos mine. The flames aren't rage. They’re rehearsal. Vital red, like blood remembering how to move. At 572°, the beams surrender. Gasoline dreams—octane singing in stuttering flickers. I build this blaze like a cradle— a pyre of soft things no one gave me, smoke curling like questions no one answered. My face—ashen as the skull of a moon, dried wood rings for eyes—warps, wrapped in the heat’s haze. I lit the match, and the match lit me.
July 4, 2025 at 6:16 AM
vignettes.bsky.social
soft rain on warm skin /
a river smooths the stone’s spine /
like breath over bone

#DailyHaikuPrompt
#rain #stone
My photo. Pebble beach, Rye south coast of East Sussex, England.
July 3, 2025 at 7:39 AM
vignettes.bsky.social
Reminiscing on years of commuting for this weeks #promptcombo
#trainsandstations
Thanks for hosting @hool415.bsky.social
Please Mind the Gap Solitary shadows queue where time stalls and breath steams. Same place, same stare— burnt coffee clinging to breath, restless black shoes tapping cold codes only the platform understands. Grimy pigeons shuffle under sodium light. Steel tracks twitch. All eyes lift in unison. Please mind the gap, the tannoy pleads— but it’s the grey minutes that fall through, claimed by the state, swallowed whole as we pour into metal boxes, obedient, silent.
July 3, 2025 at 6:55 AM
vignettes.bsky.social
My favourite thing in Italy, and there's much to love, is the sense of community.
In my village now, there is a feast for the patron saint of the region. Events started Thursday with tonight's communal dinner marking the end.

#Tuscany #italianlife
Horses part of Sunday the morning ceremony which included a marching band. Hanging out in the shade watching the ceremony. Communal eating. Trestle tables, no reservations. Waiters and cooks volunteer..
June 29, 2025 at 12:29 PM
vignettes.bsky.social
By coincidence, I am reading this book about Iran, so the weight of your piece hits harder. A cruel regime.
Picture of the book cover - Azar Nafisi Reading Lolita in Tehran
June 29, 2025 at 6:51 AM
vignettes.bsky.social
We turn in place,
threaded through gravity’s hush.
Space sings in colour~
a silent cathedral of shivering suns.
We mouth the music,
ears pressed to the void,
naked as breath.
Everything trembles.
Nothing holds forever.

#vss365 #space
Art - Catch a Falling Star by Bob and Marie Bretz
June 28, 2025 at 6:12 PM