“Design me,” said the clay. “Mold me. Make me unique.” Continue reading
Tag Archives: amwriting
Defeat
The war isn’t over yet. If there ever was a war.
We fought our own way, with words not blood,
But silence brings the same death, and there is no further reason to reject
A common ending.
What We Remember
Together we looked out against the Sea of Time, but we caught only glimpses of the past. So much has happened that will not be remembered. Overwhelmed and ashamed of my own smallness, I looked away. But Hasha caught my hand and pointed.
“This was the day the walls of Hannok fell,” she whispered. “I remember.” Her breath was lost on the wind, like so many memories swallowed by the yawn of time. What words, what wisps like anyone’s secure themselves in history? They are not the noblest, nor the most beautiful, nor even the loudest. They are what we find after the dust has settled.
Sisyphus’ Content
The prairie is vast, flax seed blooming from your toes to the horizon. Blue touching blue, a union. Incurable sweetness in your lungs. This would be a good death, you think. It’s peaceful. It’s pure.
But you move on.
The challenge of a hill and the pleasure of a valley – the arc between your shoulder blade and spine – marks a preferred route through the blazed trees. There’s pleasure in a climb. Your lungs sigh with exertion. Not all labor is toil, you say as your calves grow lean and strong and your back straightens towards the sun.
Urban Decay
There are more ghosts than people here. The past has pushed us out.
Gentrified by poltergeists, the city renames itself “Nostalgia You’ll Never Recapture.”
Skyscrapers like headstones. Car horns like dirges.
We spirit westward, far from here, in search of hills without cairns.
In search of homes unhaunted.
In search of spaces for life to begin.
Elevator Ghost
All the way on the sixteenth floor, tenants often hear singing from the elevator shaft. Sometimes blues, sometimes ballads, sometimes the voice gets down with the funk. Continue reading
The Fear of Drowning
He was a bullet swiftly guided through the azure pool. Twenty feet down and his chest tightened like a hammer pulled back to click. This was the farthest he’d dove since childhood, when dares were innocent and stakes unknown. Continue reading
Waiting by the Station
Because a gulf of time surrounds me, I sit at a coffee house across from the trains to await departure. Each engine roars into the station with a wash of passengers, comings and goings. Fresh surf. The wave rumbles. Then they’re gone. And I wait, and wait, my nose in latte foam. Jealous for their oceans, impatient for my own.
The header image is adapted from a photo by Flickr user RedBull Trinker.
The Story Coat
Logs crackle as Hasha watches the needle in her mother’s hand pierce and reemerge from the embroidered hem of her father’s coat. Threads weave their family’s history into the garment’s borders: the victory with the defeat, the joy with the loss.
“Here is the day your grandparents married,” says Mother, pointing to two silver doves. “And here is the night fire claimed their barn.”
“What happens when the border’s complete?” Hasha asks, wondering if her life will count towards the colorful threads in her family’s coats.
“Then we’ll begin again,” Mother smiles, and clips the threads between her teeth.
Trying something new this week with Six Sentence Stories. You can check out others’ takes on this week’s cue “BORDER,” here.
The Wordsy 
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