There Is A Kinder World Within All Of Us, But We Must Agree To Be As Kind As It Is To See It.

Why does life exist if only to be snuffed out? What purpose is there in the temporary but pain.

When the vine burst through cooked earth, and curved to and fro toward the sun, I knew growth was not linear, nor was it impossible to come back from the dead.

I often love men I know I have no future with. I build castles in the sand near rising tides, and I watch lovingly as they are eroded away by reality. I don’t know why I make things that don’t last. I’m afraid to have something that matters to me I think, that could hurt me more than I want it to.

Why do I crave love so much that I lie to get it. I dawn facades to taste sugar with a tongue that is not mine. Is it still sweet? Is anything truly my own?

Fairies are a gentle sort, no bigger than pointer fingers. A little fire sprite burned the tip of mine once. She wasn’t sorry about it neither, she just snickered and gave me a thimble to wear over its ugly little boil. I sort of admired that unapologetic way she had about her. Her nature wasn’t wrong after all, she didn’t burn me out of hatred or malice. She burned because she was fire.

I feel the grating fingernails of progress on my tender skin, and wonder how it lead us here. To desolation, destruction. We were supposed to be better, stronger, kinder. But instead we are are weaker, crueler and so poignantly and horribly worse.

How disappointing that evolution does not promise improvement, only difference.

Gorging herself, teeth once white steeped in hot and sticky redness, the siren suddenly felt wet coming from her eyes. She jolted backward.

What is this?

Tears. You really liked me didn’t you? The sailor lass muttered, blue eyes now hazed grey with blood loss.

What does that matter? You’re mine you know.

So I am. She said, head tilted back in the pooling sand like a mother’s lap. Something felt natural about this, an unbirth seemed gentler oddly enough, than plain death.

Do you always cry when you eat? She asked, her voice once proud and strong, tapering out

I, I don’t know. I normally do this underwater.

Am I special? To be eaten on the shore? She asked, eyes stuck upward toward a sky the sunset didn’t touch anymore. A cold rush of air carved through the coastline she reposed on, erasing her footprints.

Her heart stopped.

Yes, of course you were. The siren said to no one, her voice wavering for the first time. Of course you were. Tears dropped easier now, and she was certain no sea ever felt so warm, and so foreign to her as this one.

How to Kill a Crooked Ward

Though nothing can haunt a crooked ward, her neck often cracks and turns rapidly as if she fears something coming. As if eyes leech onto her rigid and bark-like back, and their hunger for her image alarms her, or the echoes left of her fallen mind. Nothing can hurt a corrupted spirit, but perhaps the past. She fears not a hunter, but a walking memory, pulling her back to her former self. How wicked a deed to dredge a dead woman's mind back to her rotting body, to convince her only to die.

Eyebrows thin as wire and lips black and dotted with white latex highlights; Lottie was unmistakable.

She kept her hair short to her ears and curled like cat tails, determined to spend one of her nine lives dying fast and young. Fur cheap and puffed up over her head, she strutted down fourth avenue like fire dripped from her heels. Her eyes were naturally half shut and her neck was as thick as a wrist; she had a way of easing people into spilling all their darkest secrets to her. I was not among them. As a friend of Lottie, she switched off her siren like personality for me, to spare me I think. Maybe she felt comfortable enough to drop the act, or like I was too lowly for her to bother dawning a mask for. Either way she got me into the best dinner spots and didn’t let me spend a dime on anything. I had to appreciate her for that.

-a Friend of Lottie’s

There is no wound so healed that the body does not remember its shape.