i remember reading a ghost story, from when i was ten or thereabouts

skulls in my sleep

my mother said, i should read less, and handed me her bible

now rotted, succumbed to poverty and mould

but not my mother, nor her mother, surviving still a century old

but i was too weak and

i

well, that's all it was really

We had no idea what was coming. But we who survived must tell our story. Those who did not, are the shudder in our spine as we try to forget.

I feel as light as a feather. Some bones.
A bird in the wind, high
above it all.

Sometimes it's like walking barefoot to Jerusalem, sometimes it's like laying in the sun. Sometimes an empty shell, sometimes an egg. Sometimes I'm running away, sometimes I'm falling in ( Read more... )

Outside, walking back from the barn. I see Mars glowing low in the sky towards the south, a little ember hinting at conflicts still unimagined. I stop and wait for my eyes to adjust. One by one our celestial neighbours reveal themselves as a vast field of wonder coalesces around me. Directly above, the arch of the galactic centre, holding it all ( Read more... )

An excursion to the village hall for an evening of traditional entertainment. Which is, apparently, old men singing songs about young maidens and the pitfalls of love. Pretty much every song has a penis in it somewhere or another. There is also tap dancing, but they call it step dancing because they are farmers. Some of them stomp like bulls. I ( Read more... )

The ground has appeared beneath my feet. An unsteady sensation ( Read more... )

The curious oscillation of water as it flows from a tap, dozens of little streams combining into a crisscrossed shape glittering in the light, curling back and forth. A touch of a fingernail and the pattern is disrupted, lost like the water that momentarily formed it ( Read more... )

With every step, a choice: to move forward, or submit. Survival as an act of will, deliberate, mindful.
With every breath, the taking in, the giving out - I will myself to live.
With every thought, I hold my mind together.