“I’ve never been perfect. I’ve never been… what other’s expected of me. But that didn’t matter… Because despite everything I had lost, everything that he knew, hehadstayed. ”
The words that left Tabbitha’s lips were agonized, her chocolate brown eyes flicking from place to place, her jaw tense and back a straight line. She didn’t talk about him, he had been so important to her yet she couldn’t bring herself to utter his name. She couldn’t bring herself to send his family a letter or call them, she couldn’t bare the thought of throwing out his worn down jacket. The memories that follows her over through the hiking trail and over the sandy water’s edge at the lake, through hallways and around backroads. Everything in Albion held an echo of him- of who she used to be.
*•.¸¸.•*♡*•.¸¸.•*♡*•.¸¸.•*
“C'mon Tabs! Just pick something and I’ll pay,” Alexander’s voice was full of laughter as he watched the redhaired Damphir, his body leaned against the shelves as Tabbitha glanced over the makeup, her iced coffee propped on her phone as she blushed, throwing the taller werewolf a glance, unable to hide the grin that filled her face.
“Anything I want?”
The Peruvian asked with some hesitation before she stood, looking at her boyfriend, chocolate eyes on his blue ones as she stepped closer, her darkly stained bottom lip pulled between her teeth. Alexander nodded, his own toothy grin reflecting her shy one as he gently ran his fingers across the guardian’s cheek. Stepping closer, the damphir pressed her lips to Alex’s, a brief kiss shared as loved poured from the senior student’s hearts.
“Then I want you to be my forever.”
*•.¸¸.•*♡*•.¸¸.•*♡*•.¸¸.•*
The memory flooded Tabbitha’s eyes as her stomach twisted into knots, in her hands was a carefully mailed invitation from Xander’s parents to his funeral, her heart shattering as the night replayed over and over within her mind. They had been in the United States over Spring break, their last spring break as High School students. At sundown Alexander had proposed with a simple ring as they stood against the water’s edge as the sea lapped at their feet. They had gone to a party to celebrate, a bunch of drunk humans packed into one flat… Tabbitha knew something wasn’t right but ignored it.
Then, someone pulled a knife on Alex. A silver coated blade, and Tabbitha froze.
The Damphir are the protectors of all species, from a young age each one is taught that their life is the first to go on the line for anyone else. This mentallity was not one that Tabbitha had, especially for those who she didn’t know and didn’t give a shit about her in return… But she had cared about Alexander and had sworn up down and backwards to protect him.
“I couldn’t even do that right.”
Brokenly, Tabbitha slipped the invitation within the locked diary she had, shaking hands reaching for the cardboard box of Camel Crush Silvers, pulling a cigarette out and lighting it.
“You’ll always be my forever, Xander..” The broken 17 year old whispered before she broke into a fit of sobs, the only answer was the echo of the home she’d been gifted as a going away present from her mother.
“I used to be a shy, innocent college girl. That changed when I met Issac, and he promptly introduced me to his dick. His thick, black dick that is. I had only sucked dick once before his, and it was no fun the first time I tried it. I wasn’t a virgin, but I might as well have been before meeting Issac. My prior relationship had been my first, and it had been a dismal affair, something I’d prefer not to remember. Life for me can be divided into two: before I met Issac and after I hooked up with Issac; the exquisite fun began after we met and I became his slut.”
“Gladys didn’t let down from her wailing. His cock was now easing in and out of her cunt. She opened her eyes briefly and thought she saw galaxy of stars explode before her sight as he fed her pussy with his erection. She slipped into a moaning frenzy as more pent-up emotions flowed out of her mouth.”
Blondie came and hugged them; she giggled as they took turns kissing her while they caressed her body. Jonesy lifted her skirt and slapped her buttock, which enticed Blondie to lean toward him, rubbing her huge tits against his chest. Jonesy turned her to face Ray, while he dropped to his knees, simultaneously pulling her panties down her waist. Blondie concentrated on kissing Roy, who rubbed his thumbs against her nipples.
Blondie bent forward to stick her butt against Jonesy’s face. He, in turn, spread her ass cheeks and slid his tongue into her ass crack. Blondie tensed and then cooed as she got hit with a fervor of arousal as Jonesy’s tongue probed her nectar region and her anus.
Ray continued to kiss her while her hands cradled his cock. She went on jerking his penis, yearning so bad to have a taste of it; already, she had discarded her dildo. Ray took a step back to give Blondie room. Her blonde hair fell over her face and she repeatedly swept it back as she rolled his mouth around his cock.
Jonesy went on injecting his tongue back and forth into Blondie’s velvet wetness as farther as his tongue could travel while grasping her butt cheeks apart like two thick slices of bread glued together. He burrowed into her ass crack while squeezing his chin between her labia folds. Blondie continued to thrust her buttock against his face, wanting more of his tongue. Blondie held onto Ray’s hips and struggled to focus on dishing out her brand of foreplay while simultaneously getting hit from behind. Ray wrapped a fistful of Blondie’s hair in his hand and jerked his cock hard into her mouth. Strings of saliva dribbled out of her mouth as she groaned in frantic response from Jonesy’s actions.
While Barras had directed operations on the 9th of Thermidor, the overthrow of Robespierre had been partly due to a woman–Tallien’s mistress, whom he afterwards married. She was known as ‘Our Lady of Thermidor’, and gathered about her a new society of influential men and pretty women. Here the banker Ouvard, the most brilliant financier of the day, first encountered Napoleon Buonaparte.
General Barras dominated this society. Another of its members was General Hoche, whose ardent soul and indomitable spirit were reflected in an expressive countenance.
Mme de Beauharnais adorned these circles by the sweetness of her nature and the charms of her mind. It was there that fortune, which was to raise her to such heights, made her acquainted with Bonaparte, then only commander of an artillery brigade, but already, on the occasions when his frigid reserve forsook him, betraying the profundity of his schemes and the burning ambition which filled his soul.
It was some time before the 13th of Vendemiaire that Bonaparte was introduced into Mme Tallien’s circle. Of all those composing it, he was perhaps the least prominent and the least favoured by fortune.
Politics furnished the usual stuff of conversation, but did not altogether engross it. Often, in the middle of the liveliest discussions, little groups would form in the drawing-room, where people were chatting frivolously to forget the grave interests which had too often preoccupied them.
Bonaparte rarely joined in. But when he did so, it was with a kind of abandon. He then exhibited a gaiety full of fire and wit.
One evening he assumed the tone and manner of a fortune-teller, seized Mme. Tallien’s hand and talked a flood of nonsense. Then all wanted to have their hands read. But when it was Hoche’s turn, his mood seemed to change. He studied carefully the lines of the hand offered him, and said in a solemn voice, clearly with malicious intent:
“General, you will die in your bed.”
For a moment Hoche’s face kindled with generous anger, but a sally from Mme Beauharnais dispersed the cloud, and revived the gaiety which had been chilled by this incident.
The equality prevailing in those days was chiefly based on a feeling of goodwill which over-rode differences in wealth and standing. The revolution had demolished such brilliant lives, it had taught us to put so little faith in the stability of the present, that no one could either blush for his distress or pride himself on his affluence.
A decree of the Committee of Public Safety dated Fructidor, year III, made officers on active service a grant of cloth for a uniform coat, waistcoat and breeches. Bonaparte applied for the benefit of this order. But as he had no right to it, not being on the active list, he was refused. Mme Tallien gave him a letter to M. Lefevre, quartermaster of the seventeenth division, and shortly before the famous day of Vendemiaire, the commissary acknowledged Mme Tallien’s recommendation by a grant of cloth to Bonaparte.
About the book: In a split-second, a car crash killed almost everything between them. Ten years later, can one accidental ride fix tattered spirits, uncertain futures, and broken hearts?
Lily Grantham has always done what she’s been told. The daughter of a senator, she grew up as the good girl of Fawn Hill, and carried…
Derek stared at the grave in front of him, someone had brought his wife flowers recently.
It would probably have been his mother-in-law, she had absolutely destroyed when Beatrice had died.
His wife had suffered a long, drawn out illness. One that the doctors, no matter how much they tried, could not heal, until she finally lost her battle.
He decided against kneeling, the message he had for his wife could be said standing up, “You know Bea, I never thought that I’d be free of you.”
As soon as he spoke, the wind picked up and a Beatrice’s voice came from behind him, “And you never will.”
I *finally* got started on Book 4 of Eternity’s Empire! (Can I get a HELL YEAH!) Here’s a peek at the first draft of the opening:
While Aeternitas and her guardians huddled in the Earth queen’s palace, waiting for doom or salvation, her mother’s distant realm seemed like a dream.
But now that she had returned to the stars, it was Earth and not the empire that felt like a dream.
She still loved the Earth as much as she loved its queen; that was indisputable. She saw nothing but potential in its rolling green fields, jagged mountain ranges and rolling plains. But now that she was back among the ease and technology that permeated every aspect of life in the empire and its surrounds, the time she spent there seemed more like a fantastic camping trip, a venture through the wild, untamed reaches of the galaxy.
In other words, it had been a vacation. And it was time for that vacation to end.
A casual animatic I drew last month ft. Zero & Harpuia from Megaman Zero! I must get it out from my mind so here it is.
//enjoy me trying to refrain myself from talking too loud in the dead of night :”P there are Japanese and English version already in one video. The video is also already in youtube!
The Retro Fitness in Wall, NJ has some SERIOUS monkey bars that lead right to the men’s locker room. I exit via them EVERY GOD DAMN TIME like an adamant Ninja Warrior hopeful. Pretty sure I am the only one who has ever utilized them in the history of the world… or the gym… What a bunch of nincompoops, get in the game Retronites, enrich your lives with a daily taste of whimsy.
This is a slightly reworked excerpt from another novel-length story I’m sort of working on, my take on the Child of Prophecy trope.
The prophecy runs as follows: A girl will be chosen. A brown girl born in the five hundredth year, poor and proud, with unknown gifts and a hero’s heart, and she will free us all.
… that’s a lot of girls, over a whole empire.
Three girls from the same village make a run for it, one bringing her twin brother along. They almost immediately collect a Traveller girl of the same birth year, along with her uncle, deciding they’re all better off together. This is just one of their adventures….
#
Three girls and a boy should not know aught of fighting. That, surely, had been what the soldiers thought when they came openly, demanding surrender, their swords still sheathed. A farmer’s brat, two forester’s whelps, and a barmaid? What threat could they be to real soldiers? And after all, the soldiers hadn’t known about the Travellers, Patrin and his niece Mireli.
They’d learned their mistake quickly. Nia and Gethin were foresters themselves, and fast with a bow. They’d had three soldiers dead and one wounded before the others could raise their shields or draw their swords.
Althena had been raised on a farm, but Patrin had trained her in magic for weeks now. Simple magics. Small magics. But calling fire wasn’t small when she called it into men’s clothing, or hair, or under the noses of their horses. A farm girl knew what would burn, and what would frighten.
Mireli was swift with a knife, though she knew no magic. While the fire blinded and confused, she ducked in among them, cutting straps with a knife like a razor. Saddles slipped, and sword-belts, and helms.
But they were soldiers. Surprise had helped, but Beata wasn’t sure it had helped enough. She waded in with a staff to rescue Mireli, when a man caught hold of her, but then they were cut off from the others. A staff was longer than a sword, but there was a limit to how much damage she could do to men with shields and armour. They were pushed back, through the door of the temple, and that was bad. There was no other entrance. They were trapped.
Beata backed up, and backed up, until she felt her heels hit the altar stone. “Get behind,” she told Mireli, shoving, and Mireli went around the altar in a tumbler’s roll, taking shelter behind the tall plate of stone that formed the back piece for the low altar. She probably expected Beata to follow.
Instead, Beata jumped up on the altar, a standing jump she couldn’t have made a month ago. Two feet wasn’t much height, but it gave a solid advantage to the woman holding six feet of seasoned oak, and a strong disadvantage to men with short-swords. She held them off for what felt like hours, but was probably only minutes. One went down and stayed down after a smashing blow to his face with the steel-shod foot of the staff. Another went to the floor clutching a broken arm, swearing and gasping.
The others were wary, now, and kept their shields up. There were three of them. It was hard to keep her eye on all three at once. If Mireli came out, she might be able to take one, if they didn’t see her - but she only had a short knife. A bad weapon against men with swords and shields.
If one of their archers came in, Beata was doomed. If Nia or Gethin did, they might win. But there were other soldiers out there, and none of the other four knew anything about close combat. She wasn’t hopeful.
Then one of them backed away, lowering his shield so she could see his grin. Still grinning, he lifted his sword and moved to follow Mireli behind the altar.
And Mireli only had a short knife.
Beata didn’t have time to think. She whipped her staff around, at full extension of both staff and arm. He’d thought he was out of reach. She wasn’t sure if he had time to realize how wrong he’d been. The force of the blow, six feet of oak swung as hard and fast as a strong arm could manage, hit him like a blow from a sledge-hammer, crushing both helm and the skull inside.
It also ripped the staff out of her hand.
With no options left, she turned and raised her hand to the sword suspended above the altar. “If you don’t want this, strike me dead - or them,” she muttered, and wrapped her hand around the hilt.
Then…
The temple wasn’t there anymore. There was only a great emptiness, containing herself, and the sword, and a small, very upright form before her. The face turned up to hers was small and dark, a typically Cymrian face that could have belonged to a hundred women she’d known, old and young. “Will you take up the sword, and be my champion?” the goddess asked. “Will you protect the weak, defend the helpless, and swear never to turn your back upon those who ask your aid?”
Beata stared at her. “You want me to be a *champion*? I don’t even know what to do with this thing.”
“Will you protect the weak, defend the helpless, and swear never to turn your back upon those who ask your aid?” The goddess cocked her head. She was somehow younger than Nia, and older than Beata’s grandmother, and all ages in between. She wore age like a tree wore leaves, every tiny movement showing a different leaf to the sun.
“Great lady, I am a barmaid, not a champion. I’m no use to you, I’m just trying to protect my friend.” Beata tried to draw her hand back from the sword’s hilt - and couldn’t. It wasn’t as if her hand were stuck to the sword, more as if she were trying to pull her wrist away from her hand. The two were one.
“Will you protect the weak, defend the helpless, and swear never to turn your back upon those who ask your aid?” The voice was stern now, and the small woman raised her brows.
The same question asked three times *must* be answered on the third time, and the answer was binding. Everyone knew that. And Beata had put her hand on a sacred sword, knowing that that was what it was. The goddess had the right to ask this of her.
She groaned quietly. “Yes, I will protect the weak, defend the helpless, and swear never to turn my back upon those who ask my aid,” she said. “I do all of those things anyway. But I don’t think I’m going to be much of a champion in the few minutes I have left. Those soldiers - “
But the goddess was gone, and she was on the altar, turning smoothly towards the soldiers with the unsheathed sword in her hand. And even as she realized that she did know what to do, she was leaping forward. It was like remembering something she’d forgotten for a moment, like finding a word on the tip of your tongue, like the catching of a dropped glass before the mind had time to notice the fall. She had taken the second soldier before the first hit the ground. She was leaping for the open doorway before the second soldier’s head bounced on the ground.
The sword held the knowledge, she realized. All the skill of every champion was held inside the sword, so that a champion who caught up the sword in a moment of need would already know what to do next.
The sword rang on a hastily-raised shield. Without thinking, she seized the edge of the shield in her left hand and jerked it to the side, spinning the soldier whose arm it was buckled to until his left side was fully exposed and his sword blocked by his own body. She dispatched him without effort, and felt a sudden surge of elation which was not her own. It had come from the sword.
Even as she thought it, even as she leaped over the fallen man, she understood why. The goddess did not bestow strength or wisdom on her champion, for that was not in her gift. All she could give was knowledge, housed in a very simple sort of ‘mind’ magically housed within the sword. The sword had been expecting… well, an ordinary person. It was always an ordinary person, in extremis, who took up this sword, not a warrior.
The sword, insofar as it could think at all with about as much intelligence as a puppy, was thinking ‘hurrah, someone with muscles’, and Beata found herself laughing a little hysterically while she fought yet another soldier. It had been hoping for, at best, a farmer, used to physical labour. It was *delighted* to be in the hand of a barmaid who was nearly six feet tall and who could lift a beer barrel over her head.
As if in echo of her thought, one of the enemy archers swung a staff at her and yelped when she caught it in her free hand. “Why are you so strong?” he demanded hysterically, trying to pull it back out of her hand.
“I’m a barmaid,” she told him, and lopped off his head.
He was the last. When she realized that, and the last minute or two caught up with her, she leaned on a tree to throw up. The sword, more like a hound than ever, projected loving reassurance that *everyone* threw up after the first time, that it was perfectly all right. Killing people was very shocking and unpleasant and if she was the kind of person who liked that sort of thing, she wouldn’t have been suitable to be a champion in the first place.
By the time she was done, the others had gathered near her, staring at her with round, shocked eyes. Mireli was there, and not noticeably bleeding, she noticed. Good. “Are you all all right?” she asked hoarsely, wiping her mouth on her sleeve between the bloodstains.
Nia handed her a flask of water, which Beata drank gratefully, washing the bile away. “Nothing to speak of,” Nia said. “A few bruises and cuts, nothing to signify.” She looked at the sword. “Is that the magic sword that Patrin told us not to touch under any circumstances?”
“Yes.” Beata moved to the next tree, further from the vomit and the headless body, and leaned against it. “I had to swear fealty to the goddess to get it.”
“I didn’t ask. The one who had a sword ready when I needed a sword.” Beata took a moment to examine it. The blood was already slipping off the sword like water off oil, and she could see some runes on the blade, though she couldn’t read them. “She just made me promise to protect the weak and helpless and then… let me do it.”
Althena put her hands on her hips. “Weak and helpless? I burned a man’s face off today, I will have you know.”
Gethin chuckled. “Yes, but would you arm-wrestle Beata? I wouldn’t. I couldn’t bear the humiliation a second time.”
Patrin smiled, a little sourly. He’d lost, too, and he’d taken it with much less grace than Gethin had. “Weaker than she is against heavily armed men we are, whether we like it or not.” His smile got less sour, and he laid a hand on his niece’s shoulder. “And… thank you.” He’d been too far away to get Mireli back out of harm’s way, she’d seen that even as she leaped in with staff swinging.
“We’re friends.” Beata shrugged. “I’d have done the same for any one of us.” And that was true. She straightened up, and stretched. “Oogh. I’m going to be sore tomorrow.”
“We all are.” Mireli paused, then looked down at the headless man. “What did you say to him?”
Beata glanced down, then hastily away. She hadn’t wanted to know what the inside of a neck looked like. “That I’m a barmaid,” she admitted.
“Oh. Well, at least he died confused and frightened,” Mireli said, sounding pleased. “Like the other prophecy girls he and the others have taken.”
“Does that mean Beata is the prophecy girl? The real one?” Althena asked Patrin. “I mean… she’s the champion of a goddess now.”
Patrin snorted. “Girl, you have a ridiculously powerful magical gift, and your friend Nia found a mystical white stag to lead us through the Grimwood. Doubtless Mireli will develop the ability to see through walls within the week.”
“Actually - “ Mireli and Nia said it together, and Mireli blushed. Nia glanced at her sympathetically and continued. “Mireli had a dream about Beata, holding up a sword and lit by a great light, two nights ago.”
“Foretelling. Even better.” Patrin sighed. “Which of you is the girl the prophecy truly speaks of, I know not. But I am almost entirely certain that it is one of you. Signs and portents should not be ignored.”
“Perfect.” Beata sighed, and looked at the sword again. “I just wanted to hide in the woods, you know,” she told it. “Just protect a couple of girls from my own village and hide until it was all over. Now I have to go to the Imperial Capital and kill the Mage-Emperor. Or help one of them do it. I hope you’re pleased with yourself.”
The sword was extremely pleased. Slaying tyrants was, apparently, one of its favourite things to do.
“Well, we should move on from here first,” Nia said practically, “before anyone comes looking for this lot. Then… I suppose we figure out how to get to the capital?”
“Does anyone even know where it is?” Gethin asked. “I mean, I know it’s west of Cymria, but that’s all.”
“We should search the bodies,” Patrin said firmly. “These are Imperial soldiers. Those usually carry maps.”
“Won’t they be maps of Cymria, though?” Mireli asked, crouching to open the archer’s belt pouch.
“Maps of Cymria would help.”
“How?” Gethin asked.
“Because,” Patrin said very patiently, “I’ve *been* to the capital. I know the way there. But I don’t know the way there from here, because you and your sister and your mystical stag have been dragging me through trackless woods and mountains for nearly a month and I am more lost than I have ever been in my entire life. I know where the capital is. But in order to go there, I need to know where *I* am!”
“Oh. All right.” Gethin shrugged. “We’ll round up the horses and go through the saddle bags.” He paused. “What is a map, anyway?”
Patrin stared at him, mouth opening and closing. Mireli rolled her eyes at him. “It’s a picture of the land,” she explained. “From high up, like a bird sees it, or when you look out over flat ground from a mountainside. Just bring us any parchment you find.”
“We can do that.” Nia and Gethin chorused, and then went in search of strayed horses.
Beata went to help. She’d never seen a map either or - until just now - heard of one. But the sword knew. While she rifled through pouches and purses and any clothing that wasn’t too bloody, the sword showed her the strange, flat pictures, and how to read them. Apparently one of the champions had, in time, become a general, and generals had to learn these things.
If they found a map, or even a good hint, she’d let Patrin show them the way. Only if they didn’t, she decided, would she admit that she knew exactly where they were, thanks to the sword. She’d already beaten him at arm-wrestling and now at sword-work. She wasn’t sure he could take another blow to his pride this soon.
“Oh, you can’t be serious. If it were up to me, you would still be strung up in that cave.” She stepped forward and a hand wrapped one of the bars Loki was holding. As she lowered her voice to a near whisper, her tattoos that were indeed gently gliding across her light brown skin, began to glow. The pastel inks of the flowers and fruits softly glowed with a neon light and the skulls with grinning teeth and black sockets glowed in dark purples and reds. “I sweet-talked my way onto the throne of Hell itself. Don’t think for a second your aluminum tongue has any sway over me.” Loki yelped and jumped back from the bars. He held his scarred head and shivered as if in pain and fear. The goddess let go of the bar and her tattoo lights faded and her arms were once again normal. She turned and smiled. “Come on, guys. We’ll be late.”
I’ve been tagged by the lovely @sleepyowlwrites multiple times in the past few months, but I’ve been in a horrible dry spell with my writing and have had nothing new to share. So here’s some old stuff :)
(p.s. these words are from three different tags lmao)
Sharp Rules for the End of the World April 2022
“Okay,” Kiaan says, not quite a question.
“Okay,” Fin echoes, fiddling with the cracked corner of her phone case. She draws in a sharpbreath, hesitates, then asks, “Nothing could ever ruin our friendship, right?”
Send Rules for the End of the World July 2021
The fire crackles, embers popping in the air and sending a shower of glowing red specks across the night sky.
Slip Rules for the End of the World March 2022
A string of low, muttered curses pulls Fin’s gaze up to the familiar face of the newcomer who’s still holding Seth at gunpoint. It’s her sister, Delta. She stands a few paces away, eyes wide with morbid curiosity. She slipsher free hand up in an uncertain wave and drops into a crouch a safe distance away from the blood, gun still leveled on Seth.
Vein Pardoned (short story) August 2020
I’d flinched at every gunshot up to the forty-sixth, but then a numbness spread over my limbs, seeped into my veinsand into the crevices of my heart, and I felt nothing but an uncomfortable calmness when the forty-seventh shot sounded.
Waste Rules for the End of the World March 2022
!tw emetophobia!
Fin’s stomach churns, and she takes a moment to steel herself, begging her body not to lose what precious little food her sister had managed to convince her to eat this morning. Fin had told Delta not to waste food on her, since she hadn’t been able to keep anything down in weeks, but Delta was insistent.
“Our stockpile is running low,” Fin had been keen to point out, pushing the assortment of cans back across the kitchen table as she ignored the unhappy gurgling in her stomach.
Delta had scoffed at that. “Didn’t realize you planned to stick around that long.”
“Of course I plan to stick around that long.”
“Then prove it. Eat something.”
Fin ended up downing an entire can out of spite. She hasn’t regretted it yet, but the day is still young and the city is filled with more than enough horrors to send even the most menacing of her nightmares fleeing in terror.
Sideways Heartbeat November 2021
“I just want you to know I have no regrets.” They cast a sideways look at Jonah. “Well, except for him, of course.”
Strange Rules for the End of the World April 2021
His expression is contorted in pain even as he lays unconscious. It’s strange to see; Fin can’t remember a time when Liam Robertson wasn’t smiling or laughing.
Steam Rules for the End of the World March 2022
The three months since then have felt like forever, but if Fin closes her eyes she can almost still feel her brothers on either side of her, the crowd bustling and buoyant around them. She can almost still hear the carolers down the street and her sister mocking them loudly from where she strides a few paces ahead of Fin and their brothers, pushing through the crowd like a bulldozer. She can almost still taste the chestnuts and apple cider floating on the breeze and the steamrising up from the hot chocolate cradled in her gloved hands.
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@childrenoflight-darkness-nothing is the only person on my tag game tag list so congrats!! Your words, if you want them, are young, safe, taste, color, life, andhappy.No worries if not! :)
Parked not so privately on the side of a neighborhood street, we rolled our seats back and discreetly took hits from his green and yellow glass pipe and exhaled smoke through the half open windows and the fully open moon roof. He’d been obsessed with the Wu-Tang Clan and we were listening to the 36 Chambers album he had on permanent play the past few months. As I felt the opening energy of the weed come over me, I concentrated on the flow of words, repeating them after the rapper in my head, following the trail of the harsh, yet poetic lyrics.
“Most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody’s slavery. They do not want equality because the thrill of their happiness comes from having things that others have not.”
“It’s funny about us,” she said later. “We’re nothing alike, we don’t really have any common interests or anything, but there certainly is a—chemical affinity, isn’t there.”
–Richard Yates, from “Regards at Home,” The Collected Stories (Picador, 2001)
“After all, [the world] is on my side. That is, I’m a part of it. Not separate from it. I walk on the ground and the ground’s walked on by me, I breathe the air and change it, I am entirely interconnected with the world.”
“When you’re writing, a kind of instinct comes into play. What you’re going to write is already there in the darkness. It’s as if writing were something outside you, in a tangle of tenses. Between writing and having written, having written and having to go on writing; between knowing and not knowing what it’s all about; starting from complete meaning, being submerged by it, and ending up in meaninglessness.”
“Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction It is already happening to some extent in our own society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual’s internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.”
“I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous. I am all these things at once, and cannot add up the sum. I am incapable of determining ultimate worth or worthlessness; I have no judgment about myself and my life. There is nothing I am quite sure about. I have no definite convictions - not about anything, really. I know only that I was born and exist, and it seems to me that I have been carried along. I exist on the foundation of something I do not know.”
[Text ID: “INTERVIEWER: Is this why the language of mysticism is so erotic?
PAZ: Yes, because lovers, which is what the mystics are, constitute the greatest image of communion. But even between lovers solitude is never completely abolished. Conversely, solitude is never absolute. We are always with someone, even if it is only our shadow. We are never one—we are always we. These extremes are the poles of human life.”]
Olena Kalytiak Davis, Shattered Sonnets, Love Cards, and Other Off and Back Handed Importunities
Sharon Olds, True Love
Stephen Crane, In The Desert
Cameron Awkward-Rich, Meditations in an Emergency
ANTIGONE: The fields were wet. They were waiting for something to happen. The whole world was breathless, waiting. I can’t tell you what a roaring noise I seemed to make alone on the road. It bothered me that whatever was waiting, wasn’t waiting for me.
Jean Anouilh, Antigone
Etel Adnan, The Spring Flowers Own & The Manifestations of the Voyage
I’m trying to give you everything I have. But I can’t find it; I can’t find it yet.
Alice Notley, In The Pines
Anne Carson, Plainwater: Essays and Poetry
& if I were to forgive you (& I know I could)
who would be left
who would be left
to forgive me?
Hieu Minh Nguyen, Afterwards
Mahmoud Darwish, Mural
Fariha Róisín, How to Cure a Ghost
“You kiss the back of my legs and I want to cry. Only / the sun has come this close, only the sun.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke | Pablo Neruda (?) | Louise Glück, Vita Nova | Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro | Vladimir Nabokov, Mary | Etel Adnan, Jebu | Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary | Bangtan Sonyeondan (방탄소년단), 봄날 (Spring Day) | Artwork by Claude Monet
How happy is the little Stone That rambles in the Road alone, And doesn’t care about Careers And Exigencies never fears— Whose Coat of elemental Brown A passing Universe put on, And independent as the Sun Associates or glows alone, Fulfilling absolute Decree In casual simplicity—
“No one knows the extent of the forces arrayed against us, nor how many of them there are. We are descended from a long line of sages, for whom it is a point of honour not to know the quantities of things. Therein lies our strength.”
—John Ashbery, from “Auburn-Tinted Fences”, Quick Question: Poems
