History of the World

Piles of books stacked crooked next to blue dumpsters with a cartoon snake, painted yellow looking confused, above the name of the disposal company. The covers of the tomes saturated with prisms of all the basic shapes signifying math, and the others were laden with globes to denote the history of the world. A girl […]

Bored

We are told what we are from the start. Yellow light hitting new born pupils like the first struck match of a fresh pack. Entangled in the energies of those around us, falling from the sky until our parachutes get caught up in the trees. We are bored into lives we don’t want. Forced like […]

Components

No sleeping but my eyes are closed, the vague shapes in the dark like tea leaves at the bottom of a clairvoyant’s cup. All I hear are the truck’s loud breaks, pulling into their places. Unloading everything they’ve carried with them for so long and so far. My eyes are open and the wooden beam […]

Radiance

Broken wine bottles like thin obsidian scattered across the pavement. Skin cut open by cold wind, worn down by fingernails chewed jagged from the nerves. Hotel paintings sag inward supported poorly by splintered broken frames, covered in gasoline, to be burned for warmth and something bright to look at. The acrylic paint starts to melt […]

First Snow

Empty storefronts boarded up like they were trying to keep the sunlight out. I watch three men push a white truck up a hill, surrounded by traffic, doing whatever they can to get out of the way. Chunks of concrete fall off the sides of decaying overpasses, and crush small dogs on leashes sniffing around […]

Explicit Messages

The sidewalks are empty for miles, snakes drying out into skins. They had something important to tell us, but we couldn’t hear them over the roaring wind, and the music from the radio, tied to a tree branch, spinning. Disorienting sounds so loud they made the birds take off and curse, in that bird language […]

Refraction

I wait on the curb worried about how I look to everyone. I know logically no one is watching. They are focused on their destinations, and nagging nightmares in the shapes of tree branch shadows; cast by moonlight through their windows like a prism refracting dark. No one else is standing still. They are all […]