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The green dress is stuffed in the back of my closet,
A sign of femininity long ignored. The twine holding the bag together is fraying. The tag is smudged but I know what it says: For graduation. Love, Mom. The green dress laughed at me then. It still does now. A witch’s cackle, a voice painfully familiar. A girl your size? Lipstick on a pig. Every attempt at dressing up was ridiculed. Every nice outfit was replaced by jeans and a tee shirt. The same ones I wore to my graduation party. Black jeans, black shirt, black socks, and dirty Converse. Camouflage to blend into the shadows. To disappear from sight. A man without limbs
grapples with negativity to function properly. She is not just my mother. The voracious nooks and crannies of this house have been nudging me: who will tend to us, now? whose smile will warm us up? Sari
Ya know what? A long, long time ago, before animals and trees were made, when the world was new, God and the devil had a big showdown. There was shouting and fighting, sometimes with swords and guns, and maybe lasers, and they kept on till God finally chased the devil out. And Mama says for a long while after the world was mostly good. But the devil wasn’t gone for real, just hiding in a million zillion places, mostly in people like robbers, or even nursery teachers, or grocery store ladies. Even the sweetest person could have him hiding in there with no one knowing, till he would slither out and do some evil, just to be a show off. Like maybe he’d say a very mean thing, or cut a girl’s face with a knife or drown a little baby in the bathtub. And God would get so so mad saying why didn’t I just kill that devil a long time ago when I had the chance? Then one day He got the idea to make Glorious Day and burn the whole world up with flaming fire so the devil could be killed for real. Reverend says not to be scared of the flaming fire coming ‘cause Mama and Mila and me are Rightly Righteous people that’s so filled up with God there’s no room for the devil to hide inside, and on Glorious Day we’ll all fly up to heaven. Only the ones that stay down here will get the skin burnt off their bones. But just to be sure, we’re gonna live in Profanity now, where every kind of devilishness is turned around to fool him. 1.
Jess’s house was like a private hospital, clinically white and antiseptic; germfree and sanitised beyond sanity. Kate felt like a dung beetle intruding upon a basket of fresh linen. She hadn’t blitzed her own pad in nearly a month, whereas Jess cleaned her place top to bottom twice a day, religiously. Kate had instructions to leave her shoes in the porch; the first of many house rules. But at least she wasn’t obliged to remove all articles and don a hazmat suit. She proceeded into the foyer of Jess’s pearly white Persimmon home. Shimmering mirrors reflected her bedraggled presence (it’d rained on the way over), and dust-free ornaments shone with a silvery lustre. Images of relatives consecrated Jess’s magnolia walls. Everywhere she turned, yet another face grinned at her. It felt like she was being watched. “In here, Kate,” a voice called from the dining room. Jess’s husband, Chris. “We’re just plating up.” Beyond the dense cloud of smoke and fire, above the wreckage of modern construction,
at the edge of the highest peak of the twin hills, stood a lone figure, covered in soot and sweat. She’d spotted the figure some time ago. Sharon was running, running in all directions, desperately trying to rescue someone, anyone really, from the burning buildings around them, giving up only when the walls caved in and the ceilings tumbled, destroying any chance of survival. She took a deep breath. It was pointless. Everyone had died, and she had known that- of course, she had- the logistics of the situation called for it. They expected it; and it wasn’t as though any of these people were good people. In the end, they were criminals - the worst of the worst, but she’d been tasked with saving someone. And yet, just like always, she’d failed. Sharon wondered if they’d only let her go because they knew she’d fail. Still, it hurt. It hurt that none of the victims would ever experience the breath of fresh air as they ran down the hiking trails, through the patches of forests all the way up to the lake where they’d jump into the cold, yet intoxicatingly calm waters of- Persevering under pressure
Releasing that untapped goddess within me I finally feel unburdened, unblemished, alive I have no tears of society's expectations of me I tell myself, let your dreams bloom Through sheer radiating resilience And courageous compassion I will experience burgeoning bliss... what’s lost will be lost in one heart but an
unblocked gateway in another worry nothing over adrenaline, the cause was greater than you experience the lesson and growth and never reduce the memory of time shared possession is no longer heard in the outcome that rests in another’s hands you’ve gained a future without and vision of life without realize and remember that your turn will soon be discovered For 6 months last year
I stopped wearing a bra. After 11 years of wearing a bra almost every single day, I starting pulling my shirts and dresses over a completely bare upper half: No lifting, uncomfortable straps. For 6 months I did this. Some context? I was in a state of perpetual stress, and wanted to test a theory: That wildness was a quality that I could inject into a personality that was otherwise over-analytic and list-obsessed. My spirit was searching. Vibrations of your voice were
felt from my gestation, creating the first song between us. The smile in your eyes greets me, as I lay on your chest and inhaled your scent an echo of our first note. You share stories of relatives known only through memories. At the age of three, you got into some moonshine and ran through the yard, stick in hand and mind in flight. My sister's beauty lies in a reserved comfort,
and no one in my family stands for her humour, the one place where she encourages no sibling rivalry, as the chunk of us bear the mark of a god on our faces; We are cacti, imprisoning joy in our ragged cheeks, and never the angels of good cheer to a dreary family. My sister never begins each day without pulling strings, with which she creates sunrise within our hearts; Even while disaster steadily knocks on our doors, She reels out peals and rolls of raucous laughter and sunset hides in the forest of its birth. |