I never liked being chosen last. Having to watch everyone stand up before me, determined faces, with a hint of relief, as they stepped up to their fate. I spent my entire life having to be last. Last to be chosen during games. Last to be chosen in relationships. It seemed as though that was my destiny from the very beginning, as I was even born last.

“Grant,” the suited man called next, and the g...

I don’t regret aging, not entirely. They say it is a privilege to age, is it not? To watch your back bend against time and your face wrinkle with pride. Not being able to move. Not being able to speak without someone saying “what?” at least twice before you inevitably give up. Aging is just great. I wouldn’t change it for the world, really. 

I inched across the barren land, knees buckling from th...

“Oh, those are beautiful,” he said to the old woman. Her diamond necklace shone and sparkled when she inched her walker forward. “The diamonds, I mean.”

The old woman flashed a toothy smile, gripping her walker as if she might fall over. “What a kind young man. Would you like to hear how I got them?”

“Please.” He put down the food tray he was supposed to carry to room 209. “I’ve always been fasc...

The only thing Jane ever seemed to care about was gossip. Who went where? Who did they see? What did they do? It bordered on obsessive, almost consuming. But Jane was also very willing to share her findings, and had a skilled way of prying things out of people. Nobody seemed to be able to resist her, even me, even when I was trying my very hardest to maneuver around her mind games.

“You called me...

Life is like a sharp stick, both overlooked, until you find yourself suddenly without it. _Oh, my dear sharp stick_, I thought as I lay in the dry dirt, _where have you gone?_ My shrinking stomach grumbled and groaned, loudly enough to shake the birds from the trees. I was suddenly very aware of life, in this moment, as it was about to be taken away from me, without rhyme or reason.

Where was my ...

I sit here in this over-cluttered house

Looking at each wall, donned in a blood-stained blouse

All of my claw-imprinted artifacts 

Laying about in piles of packs

Like a museum that only I attend 

WIth broken bones that do not bend 

It could have been years 

Since I last saw any of my dears 

It is hard to remember now 

Stuck on my permanently pinched brow 

The days I left behind

My face heavily li...

I always hated that damn marble wall. It was too gray. Too tall. Too utterly depressing. Every time I had to go, it was as if a million tiny claws were dragging me there by my tailbone. So I got down on my knees, as I always did, and talked to a wall that never talked back. 

“What do I do now?” I asked the sad stone. 

It sat there, as walls do, unmoving and smooth. This wall that I had known my ...

TW: graphic details

Every year was a race to see who could get their wings first. Serafina’s sister, Bridgette, had gotten first last year, earning endless praise and a shower of gifts from her parents. It was unfair, really. Bridgette had always gotten first. First in the spelling bee, first in the gardening competition, first in the berry-picking contest. Bridgette was truly unstoppable. 

Seraf...

“It was a breakthrough like no other we have seen before,” the president chanted to the live audience. “Using DNA replication and a variety of cell research, dinosaurs walk among us again!” 

The audience cheered and hollered outside of the capitol building. Little kids, who grew up playing with toy dinosaurs, sat atop their parents shoulders for a better view. 

“And here is to the man who made i...

Priscilla Sphinx loved a good tea party. One full of biscuits and sugar and lace. The kind lost to the ever-turning years. It was all simple, really, like reciting the alphabet or blowing bubbles at sidewalk chalk.

When the guests arrived, she got out her finest dishes and silverware. The kind trimmed with flowers and porcelain. It sent those pin-pricked ladies into a blubbering wail.

“Oh Prisc...