Sunday, February 2, 2025

Anew



The walls were gritty and gray, full of grime–or were they green and full of slime? Devon wasn’t certain, but there was a definite smell in the air. Urine, or algae, or maybe both. And somehow, beyond that, was the stench of abrasive cleaner with an aggressive pine scent.

“The fuck?” he asked the air, and his voice rasped and broke.

Light streaked sideways through thick square panes of glass arranged like tile high on the wall, but the panes were yellowed and browned, some caked so thick that the light was reduced to a dim glow along their margins. The room was small as a cell, and the mattress under him had a surface that seemed to move with a life of its own. Up he sat, itchy and uncomfortable.

“Shit,” he breathed, when gravity made his head swim and his limbs felt too heavy to properly move. “This is real.” His fingers raked through his hair, nails digging along his scalp, eyes stinging. Not a dream. Not a dream, and that could only mean one thing.

because covid in the emergency room wasn't bad enough 

i was assaulted

my life upended in a matter of seconds 

-

years of multiple surgeries and painstaking recovery later 

i am going to try again 

to try again

Friday, January 21, 2022

Just A Sip

It was autumn now, and the days were growing shorter, but they were still unbearably long. Dark could not come fast enough for Joshua Orel’s liking. He busied himself unnecessarily, trying to make the hours of sunlight tick away that much faster. He collected rents for his family’s properties in the morning, he audited the ledgers in which he recorded said rents, and he took it upon himself to go to the afternoon market for the next day’s meat and milk–a task normally reserved for his part-time maidservant, Margaret.

By late afternoon, Joshua’d run out of things to do. His flat was clean, his laundry done, and Maggie had left his meal evening meal warm and waiting so that he had only to remove it from the cast iron cookstove that sat to one end of the modestly sized kitchen. He sat, languished, and stared at the light pouring in past the open curtains framing the glass-inset doors that led to his tiny balcony. He tried to read, but he couldn’t focus. Over, and over again, his gaze swept to the curtains, to the doors, to the bare metal chair and table on the narrow balcony, to haze of the city sky beyond.

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Ah-ah-ah

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