I’d gotten used to the clink of glasses bouncing off the crystalline windows of Rag ’n’ Joley’s, as well as the troubled chatter of bitter pharmaceutical reps hunched in the corner booths. Sometimes pieces of their conversations drifted in my direction. I knew if I so much as tried to pick up on the words, my sanity would roll out the back door—which needed to be fixed; it was letting the cold win...

His name was Jupiter.

That was all anyone knew. Not a single soul living in the worn-down, forgotten city of Ferytt could tell you what kind of man he was—they could only tell of assumptions, presumptions, hopeful predictions about what his character could, perhaps, entail. He was a dream. A ghost of the past, present, and of the future. One minute he was there. The next, gone. It was unexplainab...

Every inhale is a heavy heartbeat,

Each exhale a sigh of misery.

Days bleed into one another.

The trees grow greener,

And bare once again.

I am burdened by your absence.

Left alone,

I drag myself through

The deep woods we once ruled together,

And though I cannot see you

I know you are on the other side

Of this tyrannical thicket,

Feeling the same heavy, malicious pull

That consumes me

At every wa...