Gallery
Literature
Duets in Strange Places
He broke up with me on a Sunday, the night before I read A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I absorbed Shakespeare like a flower in red dye, and Epictetus like a prescription pill—the one to give me the shallowness of love and the other to warn me of its danger. Classes had always been an escape, but now everything was muddled, mushed together, and grey.
The only time my thoughts settled was when I climbed the mountain. It was still winter, so in my snow boots and thrift store jacket, I’d walk up the small ravine carved by a spring creek. I’d discover frozen water caught mid-jump off rocks, or sit on the rope swing and read, or track deer prints through the short, ancient piñon trees dotting the mountainside. Though there were signs of other people, I never felt so alone as when I was in the mountains, and powerful, as if my feet were discovering something new with every step. One became the perfect number.
And then I met Leon.
Spring came the way it always does—unexpectedly and a
All
186 deviations
Literature
A Confused Adult ft. Descartes
You see, it was easier before
Bodies were seen, not
Heard.
It was easier when our
Stick limbs and small
Hands were faeries, when
Dreams were more real than
Reality, when we could be
Dragon trainers and princesses and witches and
To be something meant to be something
In our heads.
It was easier before bodies
Were, at all, really,
Before we grew taller and
Wider and out and around and
Before our bodies were
Seen, not
A placeholder for
A mind.
It was easier when being a mind
Meant being an imagination;
It was easier when we didn’t have to
Read books just to feel
Like ourselves
Again which really meant
To be no one at all
Because deep down isn’t that
Who we all are?
It was easier before
Strangers made us
Afraid of our own bodies,
Reminded us that
We are our skin.
It was easier before
Middle school jokes and
Prods and late bloomers and
It was easier before
Everything was about
Being.
Seen.
It was easier when being a mind
Was being at all.
But we live in the after.
And so we
Featured
16 deviations
One Question
3 deviations
Visual Art
44 deviations
Literature
Duets in Strange Places
He broke up with me on a Sunday, the night before I read A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I absorbed Shakespeare like a flower in red dye, and Epictetus like a prescription pill—the one to give me the shallowness of love and the other to warn me of its danger. Classes had always been an escape, but now everything was muddled, mushed together, and grey.
The only time my thoughts settled was when I climbed the mountain. It was still winter, so in my snow boots and thrift store jacket, I’d walk up the small ravine carved by a spring creek. I’d discover frozen water caught mid-jump off rocks, or sit on the rope swing and read, or track deer prints through the short, ancient piñon trees dotting the mountainside. Though there were signs of other people, I never felt so alone as when I was in the mountains, and powerful, as if my feet were discovering something new with every step. One became the perfect number.
And then I met Leon.
Spring came the way it always does—unexpectedly and a
Literature
33 deviations
Literature
Poppies
Each petal was the size of a quarter. An orange bordering on yellow. They caught shadow and light like fabric, folding and shifting in the California breeze.
A girl crouched eye-level, barely visible over the tops of the flowers. She plucked a seedpod and smiled when it popped and little black seeds leapt to the ground. She reached to pick the flower too but stopped. She watched it shiver under her breath. A pause. And then she turned around and bounded back through the field, which was really no field but the neighbor’s side yard, and really she should not have been there at all, but it was so orange and bright, and it was such a nice summer day, and the sky was bright blue.
She climbed onto the old, rusty car that had been there as long as she knew—a forever of around three years—and over it, into the dark little corner. The poppies didn’t reach there, just hardy old weeds that had also grown into the car. She burrowed, feeling like a cat, maybe, and sang to herself
Prose
11 deviations
Literature
Everyday Monadology
“I don’t know how to make characters cry,” Leiah said. She was perched on a seat at the dining table, knee pulled up to her chin. A notepad sat in her hand, pencil pressed to her lips.
“Don’t you just write, ‘so-and-so-cried,’ and they do it? Isn’t that the nice part about writing?”
Leiah smiled, set the notebook down, and uncurled herself. “You, sir, know nothing about writing.”
Abdul walked over, sitting in the seat next to her.
“I don’t,” he said. “So explain it to me. Why can’t your characters cry?”
“Ugghhhh.” Leiah stretched. “Crying is complicated. I don’t always understand why I cry, or even more, why I don’t. Sometimes I’ll read something and discover tears dripping down my face and wonder, where the hell did those come from? And other times, something horrible will have happened, and there’s no tears, and I wonder, where the hell did they go?”
“You really start crying without knowing why sometimes?”
“I guess. I can normally figure it out if I listen to myself. But
Scraps
87 deviations
