The threat song undulates like a to-term child in the womb, its definition complete, lyrics like limbs scraping from inside, punching and kicking for birth. Hold it in. That fire and melody, that rhythm of the darkness, the thudding black purge that desires to evacuate, needs escape. Move and sway under new moon struggle, the […]
Read MoreAloysius slayed canvas like the knights in shining armor of his childhood slayed dragons. He’d had these plastic men with their faux feathered helmets, plumes that should have danced in the wind of the sandbox, but were instead still, solid as the shields and swords each beared with unyielding courage. And they won every time […]
Read MoreShe leapt through age, even as she knew tip-toeing was the more logical approach. The skies bled their failure in cold hues when she saw them, never in the vibrant pallet of her youth, but in lovely melancholic blues and she wondered if that’s why they called it the blues. Somewhere in the alleys of […]
Read MoreCalvin always argued to never think of today. He just kept looking forward, to not just tomorrow, but next month, next year, the next ten years. He planned and executed. He saved. Days were rungs of a ladder and the top was in constant view, his green eyes gleaming as he spoke about each step […]
Read MoreCarol and Bruce had said all they could say. The day was expiring the same way their words had; quietly, but with a kind of ferocious inevitability that spread like hungry fire across the cloud-bruised sky. Carol looked up often, noting to herself how the gray had exploded into rich orange above the sea, their […]
Read MoreIf it’s said aloud enough, then maybe it’ll be true. Love you. Love you more. Love you most. The repeated assertion that you’re the sun around which orbit is necessity for being. The light of you breeds possibility, even in this world of reigning confusion, where clouds billow tall in once perfect skies and shed […]
Read MoreGreat houses won’t contain the surety of will possessed. The fast, clumsy fingers performing for the first time; the grip on a kite string, the drumming of that song, the counting in measured cadence. 1, 2, 3, 4. Can you open the bedroom door? Is the light allowed into this tiny world of fierce fantasy? […]
Read MoreIt was gleeful, This delight. The hand finding wet, The body curling under Each hot kiss And confident breath Bred from decades of waiting. She sung high quiet Into a pillow stained with lipstick And the smear of mascara. The moans of approaching release A chorus of measured patience eroding As cliff ledges falling To […]
Read MoreThe accordion slide of days, with hours squeezed from dawn and released after dusk, sets minutes to measured tones. Low notes suffocate. Highs liberate. And each compression unpredictably threatens discord to open souls, divine fingers either imperfect in their play or malicious. So close off, lock up, place a grand shield over a hole in […]
Read MoreI can touch Heaven, yet only believed in Hell. The mirror taught nothing, costumed in a pyre of disdain with eyes vacant of faith in anything but a deserved torment. “Burn,” it would say. “Burn and know you earned this.” And so my soul turned to ash, brittle, flaking. I bled black on every love […]
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