Atrium

Empty chairs and crowded stair cases distribute people like water irrigating crops. Contradicting motivational posters make us wonder what exactly they think they’re growing here. Leaning against each other in the hallways to catch precious minutes of uninterrupted thought. They smoke packs a day just outside the atrium even though they always end up caught. […]

What They Walk In

Built up like layers of rock, the empty space increases as the fire spreads. A worm without reluctance weaving its way across the landscape eating dirt until it hurts. Arbitrary value, a shell game taking prisoners by the nation. All progress just the construction of better masks, and without accountable faces every option is, in […]

Fixation

I watch her drink water cupped in her hands and when she finishes I make sure to look away. Her body curves inward at her center and when she lets me, I put my hands there, and pull her in against my chest. She says there’s nothing I can do, but I continue anyway; saying […]

Dissonance

Generations locked in place like a disgrace without a moment of dissonance. There is no counter to this just waves of us in shifts bowing down to whatever gets us into the party. Those outside it cannot agree they’re just too free, and want to see all that the world can offer. Uneven graphs made […]

Hillsides

Chrystal buzzing in the lights, they shake when cars go by, or if something heavy drops upstairs. Dry rotting tires attached to rusted axles spinning furiously around nothing. They consider themselves trapped in a pointless orbit because of how they feel when they look at themselves. Digging in to what begins to leave the faintest […]

Nails

Fat gnats eat the air in their peripheral. Peeling paint on the walls, like the fraying of fabric, reminds them that they’re breaking down. Pumpkin patches so close to the city they turn the sky above them blank, like their expressions on the street, and they can’t help but keep their eyes fixed firmly on […]

Cage

Wonderful fire, candles in the windows, seen from way far out. Hills full of houses, full of people, full of bad ideas, making mistakes against perfection in the stars. They have run out of room for all the failed attempts. They cover everything like they were skull around a broken brain. The pain remains no […]