Voices

I can hear her. I can hear her screaming. I can hear her crying. I can hear her begging. She needs me, I think. Or maybe she needs somebody else. But she needs somebody, I know that. I can hear her. She needs help.

I can hear her, but I don’t know where she is. Her voice is too faint, too far away. It’s like a feather on the wind – how do I follow something I can’t find? I think I should start at the beginning…where did I first hear her?

It was yesterday, I heard her yesterday. Yesterday was Tuesday, it was very cold. I could see my breath, it was like smoke. No, it was smoke, I was smoking. What was I smoking? Was it still cold? I can’t remember. I heard her yesterday.

Yesterday, it was cold. I was wearing a coat, it was white, I was warm. So was it cold? So cold I couldn’t move, but I was warm. I can’t remember. She was there yesterday. Not there, but I could hear her. She must have been close. She’s following me, I can still hear her. Her voice is broken glass.

I think I know my own voice.

Habits

It's the compounding of noises that could drive you insane. Dronings of white noise, catching only a smidgen. Nature... only.. respond.... apathia. Whirring like a symphony, up and down, up and down. Like cicadas, or a siren. Like a jet ski engine, bucking, kicking, dulling the mind. And the clicking, incessant clicking. The bubbling of a coffee maker but not so pleasant--sputtering, spitting, forceful. It's more of a gnashing, mastication, Morse code. Looking gets you nowhere. Tainted white on almost clear. Flashes of pink on either side. Enamel on keratin. Some people twirl their hair, locks curling around slender fingers. At least that's silent. Not like bees or mosquitoes or flies. Always around, always unwanted. That's what it is, you know--unwanted. It could drive you insane. It could make you kill someone.

Burnt Blackened Grounds

Black coffee in a chipped mug. Bitter as the fall air. Like you in the end. It’s cold like your hand the last time I held it. Espresso—brown then black in an instant. This creation in duo little glasses; he lets it die. Burnt course grounds in the bottom of a cup. Gritty. Dirt—brown under the sun; black in this rain. Chestnut hair—a sea of it knotted and gnarled—saturated and dark. Brides in midnight gossamer veils.

White roses on wrought iron. I watch them wilt, wither, turn brown. I want them to blacken and burn. Burn like leaves on a cloudy Sunday. Burn away into ashes. White cylinders burn between my fingers one after another. Grime under broken bitten nails. Ash floats away—pummeled to pavement by tiny drops. Gray sidewalk darkened with water. Dirty-limp leaves clogging the gutter, and rain water pools. I want to be small, to sink in obsidian gutter ponds. No brown in my mug without cream. No black either now that dregs scratch down my throat.

Black soles raise me, carry me over the threshold, lead me to a barrier between me and the murderer. Fingers on the edge of cold stone, dark like volcanic rock. Never fell from the sky, cooling from red to black. Dense. Pulverizing anything in its landing zone. Coffee black. No room for cream. Dregs of the pot in the chipped mug. Cold metal on bare thighs. Oceans of people milling with black vinyl shields don’t know they’re already wet. They’re already water. Briny like the sea and circling the drain. Just like you in those last days. Like this coffee will when I leave it unconsumed.

I close my eyes and there I find black.

How Does Flying Work?

I rode on that nonexistent liquid that you see when outside and looking into quiet water. Well, you see its reflection- actually, you see a reflection of what’s on the other side of the see-through. No one ever actually sees this stuff. But somehow, that thinness makes complete black look like light blue. That’s why they call it “light” blue, because it float; it acts like fog, which is definitely wetter than the anti-viscous stuff I rode on. And like fog, the closer you get, the more it just seems to disappear. You can see it ahead of you, and after a while, it’s all the sudden behind you, but you swear you never passed through any of it; you still haven’t reached the stuff in front of you. At that point, it’s all around you but never near. Never close enough to touch-

How am I supposed to ride on what water reflects if I can’t see it and only barely feel it, anyway! And by barely, I mean only when it comes down in cones or when water can no longer be held up and so falls in a circular motion that some lamebrain decided to call “tropical” until it hits land. How’s that supposed to work? I can only feel it when it can cause damage? I can only see this stuff, this non-liquid (and most certainly non-solid), when it has potential to hurt me? And then, you still don’t see it, just the dirt it kicks up and the water that’s too heavy to ride like me and so falls.

I’m not sure any of that is worth it... I still don’t even understand how I can ride and water can’t. I mean, I love to ride, but next time I may keep my feet planted.

The Wall

Silence. The city dies into a murmur, a whimper. Names stare out at people, light grey or pink or yellow depending on the time of day. Men stare through the names, stare at the passersby. Children touch and draw back, surprised by the cold stone, surprised by the stares. Silence, and the names still looking, hundreds of markers for one dark stone.

Offerings are given to the names, left in memoriam, left with a murmur, a whimper. They are dark, the names are—dark and majestic and beautiful and horrifying. Shadows move in them, blurry, as if seen through tears. The names stare out at their friends, family, fans, feeling nothing, only staring.

Generations pass before the names, staring into them and wondering. They pass or remain in silence.

Red Mountains

It is broken in half, creating an imperfect split with two fleshy mountains rising high into the clouds: roughly two feet high. These peaks create borderlands between a concrete desert and a grassland jungle, whilst being split into by the red sea, and flanked to the south.

Everything is pleasantly situated, only three feet west of a grand fortress of dirt, led by companies of six legged myrmidons climbing down from their parapets and high walls to ford and to discover this new grand formation high above the world.

The mountains’ coloration remains a solid brown from the western side, but the eastern side reveals their secret; the shining red half, each red slope facing one another. A brave traveler could make it to the top and stare down at the gorge separating the two peaks, watching the red rivers flow into the deep bloody sea.

The real majesty of the red side were the caverns and pathways which led to grand secrets and great perils. Fliers would travel to the freshest caves, to lay down their children and wait for the caves to die away. True adventurers could travel in deep, discovering hidden pockets of digested food among acid laced tunnels.

Circumventing these formations leads to the discovery of more alien geometries. Long, leg branches to see across the perilous desert (with rubbery death traps flying faster than the speed of comprehension) and a giant face staring at any travelers approaching from the north. The face remains solemn, with an eternal grimace of pain and knowledge, bequeathing itself upon anyone who dares to face this behemoth.

It is upon this place that viewers can be encased in its natural beauty, and understand the lessons of life and death.

Light amidst Darkness

The brightness emanating from the stars threatens to swallow the darkness of space. The space is endless. It is filled with countless stars, which fill the space overlooking Space Station Fifty-Nine. The Station swims in an ocean of stars, light, and darkness. Endlessly, light hits the station like waves. The stars are bright, a beacon of inspiration in the darkness. Artificial light illuminates the inside of the station, and at night it seeps under doors into dark rooms. Light and dark are in constant battle. As the humans look into the abyss of space, they see stars grow dark, long after death. Next to this, they see the birth of stars, which emits a light so powerful that it is blinding. With no atmosphere in between the humans and raw creation, everything is visible.