o n some days I watch you rise and rage with a new year firework fervour– untamed and glorious, pulling the years together with a snap of your fingers. but some days you are languid, stretching like the summer dusting of freckles along your forearms, the slumberous strands of hair shuttering your sky-eyes from the morning light. on these days, I think the earth spins slower and the birds sing a little quieter. on these days, I look at you and I think: sundrop.

telephones and cortisone by forestmeetwildfire, literature

Literature

telephones and cortisone

Puerto Rico is still asleep while we starfish aimlessly in the sea - We are like lost men seeking shelter in a place where the sweating sun is forever at high noon, ceiling fans turning slowly and dewy drops on upper lips. I am the skinny girl in an indie movie who lounges around in her underwear, a cigarette dangling limper than dirty hair. A phone rings somewhere. I am grasping at a dream like I am drowning and watching the surface float away, falling so deep into sleep that the stars seem to sing.

fabled life by jungle-slang, literature

Literature

fabled life

i. she talks through her wrinkles, 'i have no desire for food', she says. i take her plate to the kitchen noticing how the beetroot shavings bled into the skin of the chicken and brown rice. it was blood, skin, and bone, and the rice was a million starlike cells floating between. this reminds me of my anatomy textbook: we've been learning what's beneath our skin, we learned that all cells divide. some cells often don't stop dividing. other cells divide and stop when they should... but not my grandmother's. starlike, they explode, they shatter, they consume they divide. ii. i want to be mad at my grandmother's cells, but what would that do? i

the mechanisms of ocean waves by sylveda, literature

Literature

the mechanisms of ocean waves

When I was little, I loved sea foam. Running forward to the shore, I would watch waves lap up at my feet and then recede, dragging the sand under my feet back with it. Sea foam would fringe the edges of these silky waves like lace, and I would grab at it, cup it in my hands. I would remember the origins of Aphrodite (born of sea foam, risen out of the ocean as the most beautiful goddess of all), and I would cradle it, hold it close to me, as if I could absorb it into my being. By the time I brought the sea foam up to my face, it had leaked through my fingers, dissolved. Leaning down, I would cup it again and again and again, gathering fra

When Stars Collapse by HugQueen, literature

Literature

When Stars Collapse

This is how you bespeckled my bones with bewilderment: you kissed hushed heart whispers and slumbering secrets into my fingertips. You infused awe into my joints, causing me to ask how snowflakes got their shape and how long would it take to get from the Sun to Capella. You taught me that energy is neither created or destroyed; stars do not die. Eyes washed with emerald sorrows you told me that they evolve, they change into something entirely different, or not so different. I now know we are made of the same particles as someone or something else. We began someplace together. We're made of so much more than "star-stuff", we are made of each

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