Show some kindness to a petty thief

Photographer Unknown

Something in your voice, it sparked a little hope

Haikus ~ Sabine

I'll wait up for that noise
Your voice becomes my home
- Land of Talk

Doesn't Mean I'm Lost

Bokor Palace - Dust Mason

Still Life

At Grandma's house

Dear thunder without lightning

John Jude Palencar

dear mountainous landscape

unfolding

water in air unreveling

dear ice filled clamour that fetches

I'm fetching, tolling, a libelous suit

sold and soldiering up the slopes

navigating the trails without adequate supplies

opening up the roof of the ride

- Kazim Ali

Somehow

Photographer Unknown

We've been had, you say it's over
Sometimes I'm just happy I'm older
We've been had I know it's over
Somehow it got easy to laugh out loud
- The Walkmen

Lost

Judith Schaechter

Happen Like That

“He was dying in South Boston because it was November and he’d always known it would happen like that.”
- Alone, Lisa Gardner

Sing Out Your Death Rattle Constant

John Jude Palencar
Welcome yourself back to the ugly, glory you.
- Derrick Brown

There was a flash of light

Marina Bario

And my eyes got black, and my breath got cold
And my eyelids screamed tight
And my arms they run

Just... Everything

StorytellingRavens
“She wondered what Elliot had told them, and whether it was worth returning to school with an assumed limp and only the vaguest explanation of her absence: something about having fallen out of one of the trees at the back and broken her whole body, “You know…just everything.”
- White is For Witching, Helen Oyeyemi

Maybe We've Been Trying to Get to Where We've Always Been

Lord Whitney

Wasn't like this...

Photographer Unknown

The end of time wasn’t like this the last go around,
wasn't lake or gray morning, an apartment I didn’t know,

rumpled sheets, a glass half full of water,
the floor above creaking with the weight of

someone who wears shoes even at home—

No one knows how the mind works.

How are you supposed to remember where you live
in a world contracted to expire—



Rain pouring along the pane.
You promised to respond and still there’s nothing—

- Kazim Ali

Speech

Susan & her 5d

“What I mean is, each act of speech stands on the belief that someone will hear.”
- White Is For Witching, Helen Oyeyemi

Started Listening

Felicity Green Photography

“As he drove, Abe recalled that his grandfather always told him that any man who took the time to listen would be amazed at all he could discover without even trying. A truly observant individual could lie down beside the river and hear where the fish were swimming; why, the trout would practically give directions to any man who was willing to study them. And because his grandfather was the best fisherman in town, and had always given out good advice, Abe started listening then and there. He thought about the dark mark on the boy’s forehead, a bruise the color of wild iris, and he decided that for once in his life he’d pay attention. He’d take note of what this drowned boy had to say.”
- The River King, Alice Hoffman

It is then

Jennifer Causey

So at nighttime

When she is winding down

And I'm still writing books about how to get comfortable

In the skin she gave me

I see rock stars on stages smashing guitars

And it is then that I want to find them a comfortable chair,

Get them a snack, and introduce them to daylight

- Buddy Wakefield

The Earth Beneath My Feet

Miranda Silver is in Dover, in the ground beneath her mother's house.

Her throat is blocked with a slice of apple

(to stop her speaking the words that may betray her)

her ears are filled with earth

(to keep her from hearing sounds that will confuse her)

her eyes are closed, but

her heart thrums hard like hummingbird wings.

- White Is For Witching, Helen Oyeyemi

Blowing off the Sea

Christina Richards

“The long, drawn-out process of being undermined by inertia had made him unsure of anything anymore. He had brief interludes of absolute clarity, usually when he was on the beach or sitting among the dunes sheltering him from the biting cold winds blowing off the sea, and it sometimes seemed to him the whole thing was pointless.” - The Man Who Smiled, Henning Mankell

Reckoning

Neil Craver

“But loss isn’t science; it’s a human reckoning.” - Meghan O’Rourke, “Why We Write About Grief”

Truth

John Jude Palencar

“Now, before I tell you my story, let me tell you another story. I don’t know if it actually happened, but I know that it’s true.” - Joel ben Izzy, Snap Judgment

"My food is problematic."

Artificial Limb

“I feel as if part of my soul has been replaced by an artificial limb,” he wrote. It still doesn’t do what I want it to do. Sometimes, in my darkest moments, I’m afraid it might never again obey me, but I haven’t given up hope altogether.”
- The Man Who Smiled, Henning Mankell

Instead of Words

"But instead of a helping hand, Patterson saw the branch of a pear tree and the buzzing of bees jumping from bloom to bloom. He tried to explain this to the voices he heard, but instead of words blood flowed from his mouth."
- Wicked City, Ace Atkins

When We Forgot What We Wanted

YouKnow505

And we became what we become.

Lonely, Wild Places

"Cody doesn't say a word. Just looks at her, then he snaps his cue in two, tosses the pieces onto the table. Picks up his hat and walks out. I see something in his eyes as he leaves, something in the shadows under that low brim. The desert's in there and the timberlands. All the lonely, wild places where he roams--not because anyone makes him, but because he claims he wants to."
- Someplace To Be Flying, Charles de Lint

You Better Watch Your Soul

Photographer Unknown

It'll leave you like a hundred bucks.

Free

Oprisco, deviantART

When the wind wraps me like the reaper’s hand

I will swing free until they cut me down.

The Living

Photographer Unknown

“It may be true that marjoram sprinkled onto the earth helps the dead sleep in peace, but it does nothing at all for the living. The living can pick wild garlic and place pots of clover on their windowsills and still not be able to rest. They can cut down a larch and huddle around it on a cold winter night as it burns and smokes for hours, down at the Point, where the fire ignites the black sky, yet continue to be afraid of the dark.”
- Second Nature, Alice Hoffman

That Feeling

JOCKEY’S WIFE: No, I’m not doing too good. I hurt, and I’m not sure where I hurt. Do you know that feeling?
DA VINCI: Yeah. Yeah, I know that feeling.
- Da Vinci’s Inquest, S03E10

Why Won't You Wash Out Of Me?

Audrey Hutchinson

All of This

“This was what he had to get away from. All of this. Mothers chiseling money from weans, cold rooms, waiting for knockbacks. He wanted toast and warm and pink and hair on pillows. He wanted family members who cried when one of them was taken away. Kindness.”
- Still Midnight, Denise Mina

The Night The Moon Cracked Open

Photographer Unknown

A voice came from within
And the moon looked at the astonaut and said,
Please stay with me
Please stay
And the astronaut looked back at the moon and said,
I'd love to stay. But I'm sorry to report
That when I'm with you, I cannot breathe.
- Derrick Brown

Slow Psychotic Break

ANDY: Well, this is all good. Meanwhile, a reconnaissance drone killed my battle buddy and I’m going to die, I know too much. I was hoping for a shower, maybe a little nap, but you obviously are having a slow psychotic breakdown, so I’ll just ask—do you have any money?
NANCY: No I don’t. [laughs] Uh, I have a backseat full of blood. I have two license plates that I have to remove. I have an assistant’s job that a monkey could do. I have a death wish. You’re welcome to any one of those sparkly gems, but as far as money goes, Bill, everything that comes in, goes out.
ANDY: I’m gonna go now. I like this new you.
- Weeds

Be A River With Me

Helen van Meene

Be the storm
The front porch, the bend in the path
The heat in the South, the heat in the boot
Be a boot full of banjo strings
A fistful of written songs
A mouthful of chocolate dust

- Anis Mojgani

Trouble

Jonathan Mannion

“Lately I’ve had trouble with this sort of thing (indecisiveness—along with drinking too much and fucking around and crossing the street and driving cars and thinking about pulling children from the paths of trains and Chinese deliverymen).”
- Hollowpoint, Rob Reuland

Resonances

Photographer Unknown

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Just a stray memory,” he said. “There are a lot of very bizarre resonances kicking around inside my head.”
- Wire In The Blood, Val McDermid

She Was Only In It For the Rain

"Out of the Rain" - Glitterdarkstar

In This Light I Can See Through Your Body

Lou Chapman

And I like it.

Suicide, New Work City - Lou Chapman

"Absolutely," I say for no other reason than to shut him up. I'm tired. I'm tired of the dead. I'm tired of the living. I'm tired of this mean-looking motherfucker with the finger like a gun. I'm tired of the dead girl's mother, who won't talk to me about the man who killed her daughter. I'm tired of the sun and the heat and these streets."

- Hollow Point, Rob Reulaund

Work Ethic

"I read about Stephen King... who's just this machine. So I thought I would do that. And so I get up at the crack of 9 AM, and then I kind of wander into my office and I put out my paper and my pen. And then I discover that I am in the kitchen making brownies, and I don't know how I get there."
- Diana Abu-Jaber

The Blues

Susanna Shap

“The blues make a rough blanket, like the ones they give you in the orphanage. But they keep out the cold. I shoved a cassette into the tape player without looking, waiting for the dark streets to take hold of me and pull me in, waiting to get back to myself.”
- Strega, Andrew Vachss

Howl

Photographer Unknown

I Am Leaving Out Some Details

Wire in the Blood S03E04

Nothing

“Besides, nothing is falling apart,” I say, fully aware how risky it is to say things like that out loud. “That I know of.”
- Origin, Diana Abu-Jaber

Sinners

Photo by Katie Whitman

There is a distance the size of bravery
It forms like words in the mouth of a baby
Reaching out for the point where all things meet

On one end of it sits an information man
Who I imagine holds down his second job as church bartender
Behind locked doors leading to the bell tower we are not allowed to see—
Sinners

On the other end of this space, I am standing like shoe polish on an overstocked shelf
Hoping that one day someone will pick me to make things better
This is not a showdown or a shootout, we are not facing off
But I can feel the rumble between dusk and dawn
As if the chance to come clean with myself will be outlawed unless I relax

- Buddy Wakefield