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