She was a small woman with an anxious air. The shine in her eyes dulled as worry sunk in between the grooves of her well-worn face. She hovered nearby and wrung her hands together, then unclasped to pull at the sides of her pants and placed them back together again. Words streamed from her lips softly like bubbles in a language that I could not ( Read more... )

The pen would stain the page a tipple of dark, inky blue. I always fancied the thick nibs: they flowed so much smoother than the thin ones. With the G205s, you would get chicken scratches on the pages behind, and scraggly skeletons of what you had written before. Suppose you got caught passing notes? Suppose somebody shaded over the epigraphs with ( Read more... )

And I ask myself, "is this not love?" every night, as if reaffirming the verb would reinforce the noun; this feeling that I have been experiencing, these actions that have seized control of my muscles over recent days, they are substantiated by each other. I don't know the grand gestures; my first declaration was in initials, and I left the puzzle- ( Read more... )

There was a large oak tree, with strong, arching branches that lifted their chins towards the sky, waiting for kisses from the sun. Its leaves fluttered coyly like lashes, and breathed in the sweet, sticky air of summer with a thousand diaphanous nods. It almost always felt like summer, accompanied by the far-echoing giggles of little children, ( Read more... )

There was a newspaper article today about undergraduates becoming their own bosses: artists, and entrepreneurs, and business owners. They are young, plucky, with stars in their eyes. Off in a little corner, was an advertisement for a forgotten trade. It was either that it was a dying art, but mostly that, it was a job that nobody has ever paid ( Read more... )

He must be about six or seven years old. Bowl haircut, skinny joints, and bright, eager eyes; a typical Chinese-boy face. They were a typical Chinese family, from what I could see anyway: a father with a horseshoe pate and wire-rimmed glasses, a youngish-looking mother wearing a pink headband, and a squirmy, fidgety worm of a boy. The bunk-beds on ( Read more... )

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Where we rest with water
It's raining all day long
(When the cold is over
Pull me out the ground)I have been looping this song endlessly for the past two days. The first time I heard it, a gasp escaped involuntarily. It was akin to a soul twitch: the slight shiver when one senses ghosts of a beautiful before. I like to think that magick is ( Read more... )

it is all flowers bursting from the ribcage, and there are roots snaking in between the bones, twining up and around, and resting their straggly heads on a loamy bed that swells and contracts to the beat of bumblebees. i can't speak anatomy; i just rest my hand over what blooms at the sight of you, and it is a field of lilies. in my haste, i clutch ( Read more... )

You would be the kind who would count the days. You would count the number of days that had elapsed since somebody told you you were beautiful. The last time somebody held your hand. The last time he brushed away a leaf from your hair, and tucked a four-leaf clover behind your ear, whispering that he now had two good luck charms, and one of them ( Read more... )

Rain is falling in a continuous cascade outside the window right now. I feel safe, for the first time in a long while. For a few weeks, it had felt that the world was coming undone. Things were unraveling. But now, the edges are hemmed in. Messy, bulgy, and temporary, but that will stop the leaking until tomorrow, at the very least. I have ( Read more... )