The rift opened, dragging me with it.

I fell down,

down,

down,

as the darkness engulfed me

The farther down I got

The louder yet grew the voices

The voices that told me I would never escape

That I would be stuck here forever

I couldn’t breathe

Eat,

Sleep,

Think straight without correcting course at least once,

I couldn’t live here forever

I couldn’t be trapped in the ravine

Waiting for someone...

“Somebody cut out your eyes, you refuse to see,

Somebody cut out your heart, you refuse to feel.”

- Sinéad O’Connor, “Drink Before the War”

Nobody followed King Claudius out of loyalty; it’s hard to be popular when you’re feared.

The King was too focused on ripping up forests to notice that his people were starving.

He was so busy building fancy factories where they weren’t needed to realize ...

I am not a woman

I am a piece of clay meant to be shaped and sculpted until it is perfect

And the artists have an uncanny control over me

They tell me to shave the extra hair off my body

For “sanitary reasons”

And if I cut myself, the bleeding will lead to beauty

They assure me

They tell me to douse my face with chemicals

Because it makes me “less ugly”.

And if the effects of those unpronouncea...

It was 5:38 a.m. exactly when Marietta stepped into her garden.

It was 5:40 exactly when she pulled her pink gardening gloves over her frail and wrinkled hands.

It was 5:41 exactly when she grabbed her metal watering can.

It was was still 5:41 when she started watering her plants. All of her beautiful flowers and trees filled with juicy fruits needed to thrive.

It was 5:43 exactly when she rea...

The Little Fellow peered up at his father as The Clever One was presenting.

“Fellows!” The Celver One boomed. “We have translated a human poem from its original lexicon. The humans, unlike the grey ones, have thousands upon thousands of languages, but this one came from English, one of the most common.”

There were murmurs among the crowd of researchers.

“What is its name?” One of the humanologi...

“My dear friend, the amount of cells you have left in your brain doth equate to zero.”

Julian scoffed. “You call that Shakespearean? Homeboy was more, ‘thou art a foul, purple-appendixed peahen’.”

“‘Appendixed’ isn’t a word!”

“Shakespeare made up words!”

“Touché,” I replied, picking up my sword (fake, don’t freak out) from the table. “Can I try again?”

Marjorie shook her head, which made her ...

Today

It is warmer in the winter

Than it is

Than in the sun’s unforgiving rays in the winter

Than in the warm repose of spring

Than in the bonfires we light on autumnal evenings

Today

It is warmer in the winter

Than it was before the two degrees

Today

It is warmer in the winter

And our ice is melting

But not just the ice cube that is left mindlessly in our sink

Or a child’s ice cream cone droppe...

Whatever I say,

It’s moonshine.

Nobody listens,

No one even hears.

To them

It is as silent as the dead of night

And I am the moonlight,

Cutting through their perfect sky.

Whatever I say,

I’m an inconvenience

I’m an object

I’m a nuisance

A problem to be fixed

I am the moonlight

Disrupting their flawless fantasy...

“Inconclusive.”

The whole lab was silent as the DNA test results came through. Dr. Ramirez extracted the black hair from the machine, being careful not to lose it. She brought the hair up to her eyes and looked at it carefully. That’s when she realized that it was too shiny and too smooth to be a human hair.

It was too fake to be real.

“Mr. Moore,” said Dr. Ramirez, “This isn’t a human hair. Th...

What I remember most about my childhood is those outings with Aunt Jessie.

It was formulatic most of the time: she would pick me up from school in days she was in town, and we would go get ice cream, go shopping at Claire’s, and then she would drop me off at home after we did some sightseeing. More importantly, though, I remember the way Aunt Jessie got attention.

A lot of people thought Aunt J...