InklingArt

The boy with horns whispered, and told me he was Spring. I have circles under my eyes, holding the midnight dreams I've never claimed. They're brimming with a thousand memories I'll never have and sometimes their ashes are left behind in the folds of the books I use instead of pillows. Sometimes, they collect, heavy, in the creases of my eyelids. The boy with horns whispered, and told me he was Spring. I grew up along with everyone else (but then again, nobody really did). We're here together, same years in our bones, but some of us are so much older than others, and sometimes I miss being the young girl. I wonder if she's trapped in my ci

The sound of Tuesday on your teeth is clean and cold, Like the sound of ice, snapping in the morning sun. I want to wake up at four A.M. on a winter's Tuesday And spend an hour listening To the pulsing silence of the house Before they wake up. I would walk out onto my old white porch With a cup a tea and honey— Like they do in the films— And watch the snowfall. I doubt it would be nearly as fulfilling as they make it seem, but I want to try anyways, because it's a Tuesday, and because someone once told me that it's beautiful to be excited about the miracle of human consciousness, and because I would like to be a po

Somewhere between that faraway town and a memory, The fingertips of air tapped the rustling leaves, And the sun held my face in his palms, Beckoning me to listen; listen, child, To the mellifluous breath of the shifting honey-suckle branches, To the secret lean of the water-color bark hiding the birch trees, To the stir of the dry dust dreaming in the cobblestone. Whispers of pollen, like little, yellow birds, rustle in anticipation, And the dark grass, those small ancestors, prickled, As if recovering from the weight of travelers. On the dock, the creaking platforms stir absently, Waiting for the other end of the frayed dock ties

The man with skin like book-leather once told me that the way we hear the sea should be ten times more beautiful than the way we hear our lover's voice. It's magical, he said, teeming with life and never without a forgiving nature, for the sea remembers all in its depths—but never their story. The sea, said the man with white scars fighting the contours of his hands, is another world, separate from our own, roped down and strangled to this Earth by the forces of gravity. It's a bitter place—a raging, gasping, strangled place. I once heard the blind man with too much salt water in his blue eyes say that the sea is a feeling: only t

Yesterday, her house of prayers broke, so fragile, so delicately fabricated by knuckled hands laden with the burden of too many tasks. She should have seen it coming, really. Their words were filled empty with indie scratching through the old speakers in the absence of connection and understanding, and their platonic endearments had long since hesitated on his thin lips, catching in his short breaths where a feeling was caught between teeth—like salmon tangled in the net of a fisherman dyed the color of the sun.

 "Take the prisoner to Neutralization Room Q209," the sergeant major ordered. "You'll find the disgusting thing in the fifth holding cell. They need it—the prisoner—within twenty minutes. Don't be late. They're on a tight schedule." His thin lips moved mechanically. "Yes, sir." I wondered aloud, "There seem to be more Neutralizations than usual, these days." "There's a lot of gruesome crime going on out there, sergeant. This country has seen days where the people ran loose like feral animals and were let to plan the machinations that threaten the very foundations of this country. The citizens must be tamed. We are making the count

Your mother lied to you. That's the truth. I'm sorry; I really am. I may not know you very well, and I don't know if we'll ever come to have that relationship between a father and his son, though it's probably too late for that now. It was only when you were a full two years old that she told me about you. She sent me the smallest picture of you sitting outside with your puppy. You had the brightest little smile on your face. I know you don't feel like you ever had a real father, and I'm sorry that I was never there in your life. I won't blame your mother. I know she had the best intentions when she forbid me from seeing you. But she lied t

At the right time, his fingers will turn to leaves, Vertebrae to supple stem. A fraudulent appearance those wrinkled hands give, When a Nile lives inside. He has climbed pyramids: Giza, and Khufu, and Maslow, But he's done now- done searching. The Pharos gave him sun and eyelids like cupped hands So he could reach mountains far higher than pyramids. After Ra's noon, his knuckles will turn to stones, Veins to arid faults.

I drew a black line snaking from the tip of my ring finger, across my palm, to the spot where my blue supple vein meets the crease in my wrist. I drew it to remind me of my mortality, and the impossibility of my need to be indestructible. All people acknowledge that "life is hard" and that our desire to acquire adamantine strength of mind will never be fulfilled. Explain to me then, my friend, my stranger, why I need this impossibility. Explain to me why every action I make and every transient thought I catch must be contorted until it is somehow beneficial to my being. Explain to me why I must try to be as powerful as God and know His thoug

Can we step through time and hope she learns that 1. She is her own, and 2. She is, sincerely, only hers. She finds it funny. She can read and re-read your words until the repetition of it all drains the colors of her lips, and scrapes the gerunds and infinitives from her teeth, but unlike her own, your words are always beautiful.