She laid there for an hour before moving. The waves had brought her here, and deigned not to take her away again. She had a reason to be here. Why? She rose to her feet, her eight legs working in concert, hydraulics hissing as she brought herself to her full height.
The stars burned into her eyes, their light searing their way into her memory. They were mesmerising, full of wonder, beautiful. She tore her gaze away, and looked at her surroundings. The beach expanded to the horizon. A man perched on a rock nearby. She looked at him. His...
Giving in wasn't an option anymore because I had given in too many times before.
I'd taken it time after time - too many times before, and this has me broken. I'm broken, broken from you.
You've simply abused me, in the finer way. The finer way where not all the cracks show, in the way that I can hold them in so that they are only something I know. In the way that only I will know when I see you again, and the cracks come stabbing on like a nightmare.
Now when you're feeling down, I won't risk...
I awoke, pissed, the activity, not the feeling, took a shower, got dressed, made coffee, drank the coffee, fed the dog, the fish, the cat, watered the plants, left a note for the cleaning people, heard a story on NPR that made me think of you, began to write a poem about the us we were, before we became the non-us, still it felt good to think of you, your smile, shoes, the way you opened your eyes after they were closed in the aftermath of our coupling, when we were a couple, it turned me on, I went back...
Even before the industrial collapse, animals regularly came across absurd remnants of the human race.
Always practical, birds, squirrels, insects, and less visible creatures maintained just enough curiosity to see if an object in their environment had any survival value. There were no monkeys or animals with playful dispositions around.
Plastic was generally left to photodegrade and slowly contaminate. Cloth was picked apart by birds and reformed into nesting. A small percentage of the eggs turned into malformed hatchlings, owing to the vinyl in the plastic.
Always practical, mother birds pushed the failures out to make space for the well-formed...
"Everyone has finals tomorrow, what the hell is he doing over there?" I yelled to Jake who was laying across the ground with textbooks and notebooks surrounding him. I curled my fist into a ball and hit the wall, hard 3 times. it's not like the person next door would be able to hear me over the sound of his blaring bass pumping through the divider.
"Maybe we should go to a different dorm. Or the library?" Jake suggested.
"I can't. I'm avoiding all the sorority girls because i'm supposed to have gone home this weekend because they want all...
My hands and feet ache, but it was well worth it. We are nearly there, a couple more hours. Georgie is starving and I'm dehydrated. We have made it across the mountain and river, we feel safe but I spot something in the distance. Oh no, it's a fully grown male bear coming towards us to attack. We steer the other way begin to jog, slowly pacing, and then we run. I look behind myself and see him chasing after us. I swing Georgie on the back and he is crying. But suddenly we come to a steep edge. We...
In the event that you perchance upon a mythological entity, and said entity or, dare I say, entities, have desired coconuts, the directions for capturing said coconuts is as follows:
Step 1: Determine if entity — say, your brother — is malicious in intent, or simply a selfish flesh-eating neanderthal.
Step 2: Break his ankles, or perhaps if you feel lucky, both pinky toes.
Step 3: Steal said coconut, bash open with rock and/or machete.
This of course can only work in aforementioned mythical kingdoms. If your brother is Pelops, and you are Tantalus, then you are fully fucked. Perhaps...
I could have danced all night. At least that's what I thought. Nobody told me that these shoes would be the bane of my existence - what 13 year old goes to a school dance in anything but flats? At least that's what I thought.
I will never forget my eighth grade school dance. I've never danced so hard. My feet never hurt so bad. I had never had so much fun in my life! The dancing, the singing, the laughing, and, oh man, the pictures. I still have them. Real pictures, unphotoshopped pictures, the kind you had to get...
Half a life lived
within four walls
the once unthinkable
now familiar
with endless routine
a strange comfort
a life reset every day to run
the same sweep of hours
One small act
stealing from my future
thinking to be happy
now...then
realizing too late
the mistake
giving hostages
to my good behavior
Moments of quiet
hours of noise
time in the yard
never solitary
taking comfort
in the dark
giving in
the dark
Twenty years
one more small act
now here I am
standing
outside those walls
a life lived as half a whole
now to be lived
an...
Nothing worse than weak coffee to start a Monday morning. I don't know how many times I've had to tell her, it's 2 scoops per cup of water and even then you aren't going to get a jolt when you drink it. I use three and a half scoops per cup of water and that right there is a coffee that will wake you up and send you out the door. No sense in drinking coffee flavored water, now is there.
So I poured out my cup and felt her eyes staring into the back of my head and I...