A Light in the Window, a Fire in the Hearth

And she found, as she sat near it at the window, that she truly did hate the thing. She had grown up very used to the absence of people in her life: her father, who had raised her himself after her mother split, had done more working than staying home and she had always been too cold to make many friends or find love, wherever it was. This ugly, lifelike thing seemed to almost breathe. It sat there with far too much presence for the woman to be comfortable. She regarded it with mild disdain and said, as if to a living person “Don’t look that way, don’t look so tragic and comfortable in my window. I hate you and I’ll have you gone before the week is out.” She paused as if waiting for a rebuttal, but the statue merely looked on as if she hadn’t said anything important at all.

The Prince & Queen (Part 3)

A week after returning home, Ada helped her father clear away her mother’s presence. Clothes and shoes were put into boxes in the basement, her paintings–endless bleak desertscapes–were carefully wrapped and stored. The only thing allowed to stay was her dresser, with all of her perfumes and lotions still on top. They did, however, move this into Ada’s room, because even though her father couldn’t look at it all the time, he still wanted to every so often. Ada kept the dresser in her room but never touched a single piece of her mother’s finery. The perfumes, combs and hairbrushes went untouched because she didn’t want to make her father even sadder by walking around looking and smelling like her mother. How much help she was, Ada didn’t know because every now and then she would find her father sitting at the dresser and holding the different perfumes near his nose.

there’s something sad about it

walking down the road Alone at night I see heaps of broken furniture dark, aromatic sodden fractured beautiful bones of a long-dead creature worn smooth from the short span where they got to be part of a life but holding the long sweet aching memory of the Tree without understanding why I carefully pick through […]

the hole

it is because of you that I have taken up shovel and spade and hoe and scraped and speared the ground until I began to sink into it deep, deep, until I began to sink into it and the rain has begun to fall and the rain has begun to fall and I have dug […]

The Prince & Queen (Part 2)

Ada turned to stare at him. Silhouetted by the fire she looked even smaller and frailer than before. Her eyes were hard and bright, though, and she didn’t seem at all warmed or amused by him. For a full minute she stared hard at him, then she crossed her arms and sat back down at his table. The thought crossed his mind that Ada was really just a terrified, lost kid, holding all that feeling inside with tight seams. Another moment of silence passed and just as he was about to say something awkwardly encouraging, her stomach growled loudly.

hungry, so hungry

I crave a field I crave a field so huge I’m terrified to wade across its face I crave a field at night with warm breeze and fireflies with warm breeze that hums and sighs in under my skirt kisses my calves, thighs, cunt and draws in a dry, cool lightning storm and my heart […]

The Prince & Queen (Part 1)

He had lived in this town as long as he could remember, alone as long as he could remember. His neighbors had told him the truth: His parents had come into town with enough money to buy the house he lived in and start a life. They had seemed like nice folk, his neighbors said. They had been polite enough, though they never came to town hall and they had their groceries delivered to the door. He was no more than four years old when he’d come here with his parents and he didn’t remember where he’d been before that. Whatever sort of people his parents were, whatever their situation, Ezra didn’t know. One day, without warning, they had packed up their things and left him in the house. Everyone in the town saw them driving their nice silver car out through the main road and had thought nothing of it. It wasn’t until a week later when a policeman went by the house to inspect that they knew Ezra had been left behind. He had been eating canned beans and bread for days. The milk had gone bad.

Joy

We all know that life for children is a dramatic balancing act on the line between bullying and being bullied, tormenting or being tormented. As a child I stuck close to Darwinism. I wasn’t raised that way. My father didn’t teach me to be so afraid of the world that I had to grind it down into the ground just to feel safe. My mother never told me that the only way to avoid cruelty was to be cruel but, being a child—and a particularly unlikeable one—that was the only truth life had taught me so far. And I, like everyone else my age, taught it to someone else.

On March 17, 2017 I Had This Dream

As I open my eyes and discover these monsters, there is a pause–containing infinity–where I look up and into their eyes and my whole heart is calm. I am the eye in the storm of fear that looms around me. Then I chug the last of my drink and swing my barstool in a wide circle around me to get to the door, which I kick open with phenomenal strength, breaking the hinges and the wall.