[x]

ThirteenOne day I'll let her go -
my balloon child,
made of air and stuff so thin

I don't know how it holds her in.
Nor what I'm to do then,

but watch her go, with her string
still attached like a doubt

she's not cast off yet. Not today,
but soon. For now,
she's still my child balloon.

.

He WavesHe waves. It's a friendly little gesture, almost a two finger salute to an old friend. He's watching you through your window.

Strange.

The Boy has fine, burnt umber hair that shines like silk in the midmorning sun. It's almost a shame to see it in the unisex, unflattering buzz cut of the OldGens. He is obviously one of them; the OldGens. No self-respecting NewGen would be caught dead in this kind of state – muddy face, torn knees, his empty collection sack over his shoulder. It is the NewGens who are expected to keep themselves neat and orderly. They are the only ones for whom it is worthwhile doing so.

Strange.

As a NewGen child, yo

FoxholeDearest Ella.

Excuse my handwriting, for I am in an uncomfortable position as I write this. Please take the time to decipher what I have penned down because it is of the utmost importance. You see, Ella, I am cowering in a foxhole. Every few seconds, a shell will land and spray me with dirt and shrapnel. I cannot hear anything but the earth-shaking thunder of explosions, and I cannot see anything because my head is pressed close to the dirt, for fear that a stray chunk of rock or mud will take out my eye. I am waiting to die, you see, just like everyone else in this God-forsaken country. Waiting for that mortar round with my name on it to wh

Burger QueenShe ate her French fries as if she were high society. She cut each one into small pieces with her plastic fork and knife, then pierced one with her fork and dipped it into her side of ketchup. Then she raised it to her mouth and nibbled it. When she went to take a drink from her small Coke, she did so with her pinky raised and only drank in small sips. She set her drink down gently, as if it were a delicate china cup she was afraid of breaking.

I looked around and sighed. The burger joint reeked of humanity. Grease hung in the air like humidity, and there was tension between everyone, as if all the customers were negative magnets repelling e

Nothing to SeeI wouldn't have taken any notice if it hadn't been for the laughter. It wasn't merry or even cruel. It was the barbarous laughter of evil and vicious darkness and it chilled the marrow of my bones. Turning my head to look down the dim alley, I saw them: a semi-circle of four men focusing on their entertainment for the evening—namely, a fifth fellow and what I assumed was merely a cheap piece, some drugged up doxy earning a wage for her next fix.

Oh God, how I wish she had been a whore. Some pathetic moll who let herself be roughed up and down for a few bucks, but this was no whore. I wasn't innocent; I'd seen plenty of cocottes a

Shadows of WhalesWhat I wanted to say was that I remembered the clouds,
that I watched them paint shadows across the ground,
giant birds of prey gliding across the aether - whales,
lost in a different sea, to float
white and pregnant

with all the sounds of things; thundering out
threats of the sky, sounds full of fury
and the disease that catches you off guard
"Open your door. I must come in."

what I wanted to say was that the echoes are the same
that the pulses of sound are just pieces of the original
instead of slightly dimmer copies
every one a herald
of the silence, soon to come.

I wanted to say things that, maybe, you'd listen to -
that sort of alab

Last Stops

The kid was quiet for the first several hours after he had picked her up. Obe glanced at her occasionally, particularly when he changed the radio station, looking for a sign that he had found the one she liked. She was quiet, but expressive, and she wrinkled her nose for the first five that he tried. When he found a classic rock channel, she smiled slightly and her shoulders relaxed. She was staring out the window at the endless dusty desert, but he caught her stealing glances back at him several times. Obe was patient, and waited for her to start the conversation.
“I don’t remember how I got out here,” she said finally

Escape VelocityF = G(m1m2)/r2

Black – true black – is the absence of light. Darkness is defined by what it is not, by the lack of something else. When we say a black hole, we truly mean that; black. Blacker than black. An absence of not only light, but of time, distance, anything.

The night was scary when I was little. I hated the dark, but couldn’t bear to sleep so long as the light was on, any light, burning on the other side of my eyelids. I used to have nightmares about dark things in dark corners, shadowy figures with shadowy fingers trailing along my spine. I always woke up cold and fumbling frantically for the lamp, but the aura o

The art of blacking outHow I wish I could say strangers

crept inward, night by night,

stealing my medication and

rearranging my furniture.

But I know it's not true.

There are holes inside

my head. Oxidation.

No one unlocks this door

but me. I am just

forgetting.

A Pocket Full of SkyWhen I was young, my father would take me to the highest tower of Notre Dame precisely once a year. It would be cold. Freezing. But we'd stand there, and take deep breaths of air, and peer down, towards the tiny ants of people below. Down, towards the sprawling city beneath us. It was always winter, when we'd go. Always cold. Freezing, freezing. But however cold it was, and however dull and bleary the weather, my father would ask one thing, and one thing only: that we adhered to tradition.

"Lucie," he would say, with the fond smile and kind eyes I always remember. "Lucie, my peach. Whatever you become, and wherever your heart and mind leads

here's what i think.I was a better person when I wrote.

I was a better person when I wrote about boys who'd never return my feelings on silver platters, and ships long lost, or drowned, at sea. It sounds like a disaster, but I only write well with the ashes of a crumpled, discarded spirit mixed with the still-warm tears of a troubled soul.

Words kept me human, for they are what makes us human, and they distanced me from the animal I could become. All I do now is stalk around the concrete city, pace about my enclosure, and think about how my bitterness and I can never be released in the wilderness again.

Before the city stole my words away, I was living in the

Beautiful   Today, you are beautiful.
            Your parents tell you that you’re beautiful on every other day, too, but no one else ever does. The only time you matter to the world is at your shows. When you’re not beautiful, you’re nothing.
            Today, though, you are shining. At least, you think you are, but you’re not feeling great. Your stomach hurts, just like it does before every pageant. Your dress is brand new, and you haven’t gotten used to the way it itches yet. You’re sure your wig is gorgeous, even though the hairspray smells bad.
    Your teeth, though, are hurting the most. You know your flipper is a good one, but it doesn’t fit anymore.
                The other girls are all beautiful too, crammed here in this

Changing GearsMy morning oats taste particularly bland this morning. I look outside the clouded windows and see the city across every inch of my vision. Buildings of all shapes and sizes are formed from copper, brass, and iron. At all times of the day, the city's Gears are churning.

The Gears are the machines that run the city, the country, possibly even the entire world. Metals are formed together to form them, robotic men designed to replace our government. Their voices boom over the industrial noises of the factories and drown seem to drown out all individual conversations. We're free, I suppose, but they all say that there was once a time when freedom

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thicker than waterTheir hands are pressed close
index to index-
like a three pointed star,
spilling scarlet across the sand
drip-drip-drip
as they mingle their identities
under the early august sun.

"It all comes down to this,
in the end."
says the biggest boy
with the serious eyes;
already turning hard
from the inside out,
shaking back his hair
like strands
of copper filigree

"We're blood brothers now!"
cries the smaller,
with the easy smile
he can't seem to put away;
grinning despite himself
as his glasses slip-
crooked and slantwise-
down his nose,
and the sun whispers
innocent melodies
through his white-blonde hair

paper lanternsIt always starts with deep probing looks
before the lights go out-
then blind hands brush blind hands
the cave-fish of the bedroom;
fingertips twine together,
and legs tangle-
like leafless vines
in clouds of steam

I love yous are whispered,
breathlessly-
as eager lips part,
and the night wears on
beneath spinning stars
and cartwheeling constellations
while unanswered questions
float away into the blackness,
like wind-tossed
tissue paper hearts,
glowing from within-
on the threshold of August.

NeverlandI want to tell you that you're my midnight muse,
sending words dancing across my lips
and tingling up my spine,
like spiders-
of ink and dreams.

I want to write them all,
let them flow-
scrolling and slant-wise
across my keyboard,
because the best memories are made
in the just-broken morning
before the rooster stirs his feathers,
and breaks-
from his hen-colored dreams.

I want to run my fingertips
along that pulsing membrane
that separates my world of cacophony
from your realm of glorious silence,
and rend it in two;
twisting in the poet's breeze,
like bars of moonlight
split by eternal night.

And I want to dive
into

as we atrophyI can feel my life ending
when our entwined hands
split down the middle
like aged parchment,
or a ripe peach
whose skin peals away
in perfect, tender rolls-
under the ravaging sun;

when I look into your eyes
and see only myself,
reflected back-
a flat, mirror image,
lonely and restless,
like a book whose type
has been swept from its pages
and abandoned beside the peach,
to slit itself to ribbons
charred and cauterized-
irreparably damaged-
upon the blacktop.

the last daysThe bibliophile bends
-all hipbones and elbows-
sharp angles
like an ancient, twisted tree,
and runs his knotted fingers
roped through with wrinkles-
over ivory pages
stained with blood and ink;

(the same ink
that runs
undiluted-
through his veins,
bulging black
under beaten veils
of hermit's skin)

And his eyes-
the misty blue
of the mornings
they haven't seen in years,
devour spidery letters
penned by peasants
and priests
in the darting halo
of a solitary
slow-burning candle.

And his thoughts,
they wander-
through bare-throated meadows,
and black-tongued clefts;
back to her
and a time
when the wedding band
b

the burden of innocenceI can feel the wing-beats
like frantic flutters of angels,
or butterflies-
riven through with pins,
and trapped behind glass,
when I look into the eyes
of a child.

I can see the tatters of monarchs;
black and orange-
caged betwixt ivory ribs,
and hear the cries
of doves
tangled in punctured heartstrings,
and screaming skin and bones,
as their feathers drift
toward rivers of blood;
mixing gray and scarlet
like silk and wine,

And I stroke the child's angled cheekbones
and feel my own heart ache;
its black spires spilling wolves and vipers-
in a dark-lidded pity
for the lives of the innocent.

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two heartsore insomniacs, one

by ~ingle-nook, Oct 20, 2010, 9:00:03 PM
Literature / Prose / Fiction / Romance / General / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

^{I.

I'll meet you again in ten years. My hair will be longer and darker (the way you always liked it) and yours will be falling across your eyes the way it was when I kissed you goodbye. You'll have a days worth of stubble on your cheeks, and we'll collide in a bakery in New York City with our college degrees in our back pockets, rushing toward offices in opposite directions. You'll be drinking coffee and I'll be drinking tea, and I'll have a scarf slipping loose around my neck to catch the snowflakes drifting down. Of course, the skies will be overcast because gray has been favorite color since I found it in your eyes sixteen years ago. Maybe I'll be married or you'll be engaged, but when we say each others' names it will be just like turning back the clock; and nothing can stop those hands from rewinding.

II.

We'll have the love affair of a lifetime in The City That Never Sleeps, and my name will be on your lips again; breaking on the same syllable it always did as I kiss you. And your kisses will be the same way they were when we were seventeen; pulling me down like riptides plucking surfers from the beach. You'll run your hands through my hair and we'll share hot chocolate at midnight in your tiny apartment. The light will be yellow and there will be mathematical equations scribbled across your napkins and poetry scrawled across mine, but I won't care because we'll both be laughing and half-dressed, lovers sharing an oasis in the dark.

III.

You'll tell me everything and I will try to tell you nothing - you always liked me better mysterious, and the city will have hardened my granite heart to diamond. One morning though you'll break me; you'll be just too beautiful asleep in the 7 AM sunlight falling through your window and you'll wake up to my sobs beside you on the bed. You'll be sleepy and confused but you'll reach for me and smooth away my troubles with your fingertips, closing all my fault lines with whispered words and making me smile through my tears. I'll realize at that moment that I love you. I'll realize it and whisper it and you'll kiss me hard and hold me tight, and you'll say you love me too.}

two heartsore insomniacs, oneby ~ingle-nook

Literature / Prose / Fiction / Romance / General / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

I really, really like this one.
I had to upload something; this is what you get.

Full Title: two heartsore insomniacs; one heartstrung city

1) Do you get to know the characters well enough throughout the paragraphs for them to seem real?

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two heartsore insomniacs, one by ~ingle-nook ( Featured by ^Beccalicious )

~~mad 0 0~~

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~~neutral 0 0~~

~KinkyKinkster Mar 28, 2013

This is just lovely. The characters do feel real. I can almost feel them together in the dark. You did a really great job, I'm glad I read this.

*Lady-Yume Mar 28, 2013 Writer

_{Your beautiful work has been featured here: [link]}

!RoadRollerGirl02 Mar 27, 2013 Student Digital Artist

lol this is so cute!

~TheRedBoots Mar 27, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

Woah.

=Aitheos Mar 27, 2013 Student Traditional Artist

God, this is beautiful.

*MachinesBleedToo Mar 27, 2013 Professional Digital Artist

I love this. I don't know what else to say, it describes and encompasses love perfectly. And yes- the characters feel real.

~adifferentcase Mar 27, 2013

Omg, omg, omg my heart.

~amiyuri Mar 27, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

This is beautiful, ironically I can identify with all but the last part.
Beautiful!

~AlythePear Mar 27, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

Wow. This... this is such beautiful writing. It's so moving, I could just imagine the characters'actions and appearances in my head and just... I can only end this statement with the exact word I used to open it: Wow.

~Minkymy Mar 27, 2013

There's something immensely beautiful about how the languages slips into your mind when you read this, like silk bolts shaped like leaves sliding from a table to the ground.

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