6 lipsticks, 2 glosses, all in the same family of pink. An inhaler lives in detente with two packs of clove cigarettes and an empty book of matches. Enough bits of paper to line a large rats' nest litters the bottoms of this structured black bag, along with two highlighters and a dead red pen. An anemic peanut-sized penis pencil topper hides under all the paper debris like a dirty secret, and fine purple powder from an exploded eye shadow coats the fingers of anyone brave enough to dare the bag.

A bottle of iburpofen large enough for most third-world health clinics clinks and rattles alongside a keychain heavy enough to use as a weapon, and a lone crusty Tictac is the last survivor fleeing from the train wreck that is my purse.

Deb, I think a scene is actually better than a list. It's just so difficult to do with the word limit.

But I loved your Ringan & Penny scene--so in character for them both.

This:

inhaler lives in detente with two packs of clove cigarettes and an empty book of matches

I love this. I love the whole thing, Erin. I'd love to see it expanded to give a reason for sifting through the purse. I think that's what's missing from the "lists."

Even though Amy's reads more like a description (very poignant, too) than a list. There just isn't enough room with a 100 word limit to *do* very much more than list items.

Oh, Ms. Moderator, Ma'am? Can we have a word-embiggening, just for this one week's topic, please? If we're very, very good? We promise to write well if you'll say yes.

Bev, I tend to think that the imposition of a 100-word limit on this kind of category is a perfect discipline tool.

Make the items in the list fewer, but make 'em count.

Okay. 's true, I'm a wordy girl by nature. I'll break out the machete.

Word limits are bourgeois.;) (says she who almost always takes too damn many, by 100 at least. Want. Take. Have)

What I Brought With Me From Erica Road

One pair of knickers, silk. Five more, stretchy cotton blend.

Bras, more than a few. He liked the lacy ones; I preferred elegant and sleek.

Fleecy pajamas. He called them my "passion-killers", laughing at me. They're neatly folded now.

That antique dress he bought me from Opening Thursday. Cocoa lace, a hundred covered buttons. I wore it to the Stones in Chicago.

No pictures, not one, that I'm aware of; I burned them all. No personal notes. No mementos. Anything not sterile would hurt too much to bear.

So how can a suitcase full of clothing cause this much pain?

Amy, I just went back and reread your two, and they suddenly went PINGPINGPING. Wow. Dark.

With apologies to Tim O'Brien:

The Things She Carries

Anna carries the clothes on her back, plus one change of dress and two of linen. She carries letters from her brother and her Great-Aunt Sophia, raked into her satchel at the last minute as she prepared to flee. In a little purse she carries coin, Spanish and English, for bribes and tips and better food and beds en route. She carries the horror of having killed a man, accident or no, and the memory of his ruined dead face. And though she won’t realize it for a few days yet, she carries a child, conceived under the stars four weeks ago.

Susan, that's gorgeous, especially those last two sentences.

One fix: "She carries a letters" Plural? Singular?

Good catch, Deb. It changed from a letter to letters mid-thought, so that slipped in.