Your Story #92: Winners

• Prompt: Write the opening sentence (just one sentence), of 25 words or fewer, to a story based on the photo above.
• You can be funny, poignant, witty, etc.; it is, after all, your story.

Out of more than 300 entries, Writer's Digest editors and readers selected the following 10 winners:

1. Thirty-five days had passed since they ran away from him and, for the first time since they left, they both relaxed enough to laugh. —Jennifer Lagasca
2. The innocent, life-affirming giggle of her daughter anchored Meg in truth and, for just a brief moment, they floated together—weightless from their haunting past. —Meaghan Artigues
3. Mom looked up and handed the picture back to me, the wrinkles in her forehead becoming deeper as she furrowed her brow: She couldn’t remember. —Sabrina Barner
4. I envisioned myself both old and young lying in the surf, dreaming about my beginning and my end. —Ian Taylor
5. With each passing year and with every scroll through her newsfeed, she held a hope she’d one day have a child. —Sarah Ginter
6. Happiness washed over me in waves that glorious afternoon at the beach, our last moments together before the fateful day you were taken from me. —Dana Zambon
7. My mother wept, shamefully burying the photo of us from that summer on the lake, the last happy moment of my life. —Susie Tierney
8. Ever since Maddy died, Jess swam alone—to talk to her, I reckon—but as I listened, Maddy’s laughter echoed across the lake. —Angela Litterio Hastings
9. The familiar feeling of a mother-daughter bond almost made me regret kidnapping the little angel. —Tyler Brown
10. She lay on my belly, giggling, bobbing along as clouds collected over Corolla, North Carolina, and the horizon drifted away. —N.H. Merchant