I’m sure it’s plotting something.

Look at it— look at its smug face, the talons on its feet, its beady eyes— and when it landed on the bird feeder this morning (as I was answering the call of nature on the Human’s landscaping, but no matter) I knew in my heart of hearts that bird was, is, and always will be no good.

Thus, it was decided. I dug a hole in the mulch, buried the products of my… orde...

They’ll find it on a tombstone

With a little epitaph

The twisted twin of Seikilos

Reanimated wrath.

Or they’ll find it in the coffin

Suited up and next to me

As my shriveled inner organs

Rot away in misery.

Put a brick upon me when I go

So I, a little liar,

May rest the way a peasant church

Would bury a vampire.

No bloodlust and no violence

Did I commit in life

Unlike the bat-fanged beasts of yore...

Sacramento,

Fire brigade,

Tectonic soil’s begun to shake

Twenty-eighteen, August Eighth,

Tiny heartbeat, tiny aches.

Sacramento,

Wayward town,

Tectonic city coming down

Early summer, rose-thorn crown

Round grey eyes on sunken brown

Trembling fingers, wrathful frown.

Sacramento,

Richter Nine,

These tectonic dreams of mine,

Tie them up with baling twine,

Go the distance, walk the line,

Creeping po...

She was a little smaller, and a little dimmer, and one of her eyes was a little off-center and her hips were slightly too broad. She was not very pretty. Celine stared at the shadow-girl, squinted, and stepped back.

Her bangs were too short. Her hair didn’t curl provocatively around her jaw; it bobbed mushroom-like above her cheeks. She wasn’t wearing makeup. Her neckline wasn’t flattering. She w...

It had been fifteen years since the sun had last risen.

Eyes reflecting no light, the girl looked out upon the cold, distant stars of a planet flung from its orbit. She was not human, too strange to even be alien— no, she was far stranger and more horrible than that. She was Death and the Void Itself. Her white, wavy hair was held back by two sun-shaped pins above her rounded ears… the irony.

Sh...

Strike me down— but here I wonder

How I wound up six feet under

Buried far beneath the ground

I am

U .

P N

S W

I O

D D

E

Said my head would stay above it

Truly I thought nothing of it

Like a tide (in which I drowned)

I turned

U .

P N

S W

I O

D D

E

Keep your cool and stay ahead—

Wrong foot ...

A man stands alone in a field of stone tablets. His back is stooped and his breaths are short— and though there is no one before him or behind him, nor to either side, one thousand pairs of eyes follow his footsteps from below.

“Please,” he begs towards the yellow sky— but the sky does not heed him, staring on in golden-eyes solitude. His voice is ragged and high.

Does he expect the spent shell...

Ais kamei xi feila—

That I might dance to the battle-song

That heralds none but death and violence now.

Give me this hope.

[Written in Alamour— a personal conlang.]...

The sun dipped down beneath my feet,

The moon tipping over my head.

The weight of day is lost to me,

The night envelops all.

I do not know this blinding light

I do not know this raging sound

I dwell forever in the stars

The sun will never rise again....

The fruit stand catches fire, and there’s only a second to stare before Garou and Faira take to the streets in a mad dash again.

“I though you said you could handle these guys!” Faira screams as they tear through the busy market, dodging around Garou to avoid his blazing skin.

“I thought I could!” the Flame Guardian protests, glancing back in terror. “Great bouncing stars, I’ve got a bad feeling a...