You see us as monsters?
Perhaps when you’ve prodded us with sneers
And covered us in lampshade to translate our words.
Maybe when you’ve performed your convincing cries
Of past oppressions.
When you’ve screamed swanky expensive phrases from Webster’s page.
Displayed your bruises, one by one,
Blackened by your own nurturing.
When you’ve torn and ripped and slashed our last bit of humanity left.
Maybe then, when you’ve beaten us down to nothing but a foul, revolting, icy creature.
Maybe...

    One, two, three sprays. Susan set down the vanilla grapefruit fragrance on the vanity and hopped back to the bed to finish putting on her heels. She checked her phone: 10:33 am.
    “Shit!”
    She rushed back to the vanity, smeared more bubble-gum lipstick, and clipped on violet hoops. Just as she turned on the curling iron and started brushing out her bleached blonde hair, her cellphone rang.
    “What? Hurry up, I’m late.”
    “Your mom just called. Said she hasn’t heard...

Verse 1
Tied/stuck to your sheets again
Fixed feet and nervous/worried/anxious hands
It’s a problem, I know, my dear/It’s a problem, I understand.
 
Verse 2
Empty head, full mouth
Of words you came up without
A single strand of truth.
At least that’s what it is to you.
 
Chorus?
Seize every kind word
Squeeze till you feel.
The thoughts may linger,
But you are more real.
 
Verse 3
Cut every pill in half.
Spill every unfiltered laugh. ...

Verse 1
Stab your brother today, for tomorrow you’ll gain another.
Bury your heart in seeds, that have yet to grow.
Can’t see farther than what’s right in front,
but the mind’s got a pen of its own.
Never honest, nor kind, nor happy now —but tomorrow
 
Verse 2 
2 in the afternoon, can’t recall what you ate for breakfast.
Unsure how you drove home at the end of the day.
So detached from your nose and your toes, ...

    But as I looked down at the creature pulling me through the crowd, I couldn’t help but think of Clara and Lewis and wonder if it is not us who lead them, but they who lead us. Perhaps they start right but somewhere along the way of life they get lost. And they don’t spend their life searching for the right way, but rather trying to get back to it. And I was inclined to believe that this little girl—who...

The trees stood in a gray depression dried out and beaten naked from the wind. But watching from the car, they appeared so still one could not tell the wind was present at all. I thought them rather pathetic, sitting in their own self-pity.