the globe

Aside from the obvious virtue of this story, it reminds me of Orson Scott Card’s Enchantment + I like the part about the cherry branches.

from visible thought

Artha shivers. Is this the place? There is the pond, lined with stone just as they told her, and the cherry branches reaching out, just so. But the portal is overgrown; a thick carpet of dead leaves covers the tile, and vines twine through the open ceiling.

She carries the globe tucked beneath her shirt, rounding her belly like she carries a child. If only it were a child, and not this cold, white thing, this thing that has already claimed hundreds of lives. She dares not show its face to the world. Even in the shroud of morning fog, something would see. Some pair of eyes, whether ant or bird or human, would gaze at the globe and then frost over, still and sightless.

Artha pushes aside the heavy vines. Yellowed grape leaves fall to the floor, and the wooden frame of the building creaks. She wants to scream, to cry out to those who built this place to come take the white thing from her, but her voice catches in her throat. It has been too long since she last tasted water or food, since she last spoke to another person.

She clears the leaves from the center of the floor, exposing a circle made from slivers of white tile. In the center, sits a shallow metal bowl. Its edges are caked with rust and dirt, but Artha can see her reflection in the very bottom. White. Her hair, hands, eyes, and even her lips. She whimpers with fear, and lets the globe drop.

Thrum! The whole world shakes. Leaves twist up from their decayed piles on the floor and spiral up, up and out, slapping Artha’s arms and face. Voices come and go in the vortex of wind. Artha hears her name, hears her memories, and hears the globe. She sees nothing but white.

Later they will speak of her with awe and regret. They will build her a statue and clean the muck from the pond and rip away the vines. They will tell their children how Archa carried the plague from the world and destroyed it here, in this place where the cherry branches reach out just so.

wanderlust

I’m a sucker for stealthily-but-not-really-stealthily romantic writing… and references to the sea. Whatever, here it is.

from bury your fucking secrets

his name was wanderlust
he told me a story of the ocean
and a girl with shells in her hair
he whispered into my ear
and held me as i shivered.

his hair was choppy,
deep sea blue
and he wore black pearls in his ears.
as he protected me from the chill of the ocean breeze
a warmth grew between us
and a kiss he offered to me.

the brackish taste of his lips
though normally deterrent
entranced me
for he was not a normal boy.
his name was wanderlust.

not to sully: twenty and certain

This is so beautiful on so many levels that I won’t say anything else for fear of ruining it.

from nevergirl

The last time I slept underneath the stars, I remember, I was in love. The moon looked like it had been spun out of stories and silver; and the sky was so clear I felt I could look up, fall into it, and slip unnoticed among the stars. I was young, and happy, and in love, and my world at that moment whirled around the big blue sky above me and the boy I was writing love letters to. Even now, all I have to do is close my eyes and I’d be there again, twenty years old and so certain in my happiness I’m sure my face glowed like the stars above me.

stories about love or something like it

O and C went to college together. Since then he’s always been one of those maybes… the ones that haven’t quite gotten away… the ones that unknowingly rent space in her heart every now and then, only rarely giving a hint of a desire to buy.

Today, he’s has to drop something off at his uncle’s and she’s tagging along. They run into some of O’s friends. While O chats with them, C gets a call from J. O is jealous, though she’s really not in the position to be.

—

M broke up with her boyfriend, who happened to be cheating on her. She was afraid that all her relationships will end this way, that there’s no hope of her finding love that will last, because all her other relationships had ended in betrayal.

She’s since realized that all her exes have had so much baggage, and no clue what they really wanted. It’s still tough going but she’s trying to stay positive.

—

L is feeling dry. He doesn’t know where this relationship is going. He’s always believed that this kind of thing is simply a challenge to keep the fire burning, but now he isn’t not so sure.

They have a talk. Things are back in perspective. There’s a lot of work left to do, but now he’s motivated.

—

C really likes this girl. They live on different continents, but they’ve known each other from when they called the same place home.

Valentine’s is coming up and he wants to send her flowers. He has the plan in place to get her address from her sister. It’s all very exciting.

—

N and G are really close. She likes him a lot, but he has a girlfriend. To make matters worse, there’s another girl that they work with who seems to be putting the moves on G.

N finds it hard to confide in women because she feels they don’t get her like her guy friends do. G is her present confidant and though she treasures their friendship as it is, she really wants more.

because it needs to be written

He was born out of wedlock, but his parents were in love with so much conviction that everything that was “wrong” about their relationship: that they were too young, that his father was younger than his mother, that they didn’t know each other all that well… none of that kept them from getting married.

It wasn’t with quite as much conviction a few years later when his mom emerged as the dominant half of the couple. His dad would be the childish one, who didn’t take many things seriously, and it frustrated and angered his mom. And so she would scream and yell and because he was his father’s son, he got screamed and yelled at too.

It was probably not either one’s fault. They just didn’t fit together as well as they thought, and maybe they didn’t think it was an option to admit it.

Ten or eleven years old, his dad leaves. He’d found someone new. His mom is shattered, but she struggles to keep him fed and clothed and clean. Still, she’s impatient and frustrated and still she screams and yells.

She may have found some peace as a single parent. Maybe she realized that she didn’t need to scream and yell.

It was almost four years that it had been just the two of them, when she died suddenly.

It was a matter of great deliberation for his maternal relatives as to where he would be brought up… with them or with his dad. He agreed that his mom would not want him to live with his dad because his paternal relatives had a tendency to spoil him, but he said that it couldn’t happen because she’d taught him well.

So now he lives with his paternal grandparents. His dad visits every so often. He hardly ever goes to see his mother’s family. When he does, he is distant and seems to be itching to go home. He seems to have changed in the short span of time he’s lived away from them.

On the day they were to bury his mother’s ashes, he asked to reschedule on account of a rehearsal for some school presentation. It was discovered the following week, that there was no such rehearsal.

At a casual dinner out, in honor of a close family friend, when all but two were done eating, he announced that he’d asked to be picked up by his grandfather. His grandfather was to drive about an hour from the area where he lives, pick him up at the restaurant and drive the hour back to the same area, where he was to play video games with an uncle.

—

They’re afraid he’s too old to learn.

You’re never too old to learn and you’re never too old to find a willingness to learn.

If only he knew to look. If only I knew how to tell him.

Help.