TheChesherCat

Roots ripped out of dark earth Loam starved of sunlight’s kiss Crumbling away into parched fragments Tendrils exposed, raw nerves still reaching out and aching for sweet water, and nourishing strength, and lifelightbreathcomfortlove. Emptiness only hurts after substance Quiet following the echo Phantom limbs, we learn to stop loving; it takes months of reaching out and tipping, falling Spider silk is strong as steel To tear the web, it must have been stretched and p u l l e d apart; parallel lines will never intersect I keep lists of loss and sort my flavors of heartbreak.

I send Blue Dress to class today, because Red went yesterday and if she has to hear Donnie pronounce denizen wrong one more time, she will explode right there into crimson flames. Blue spent the day at home on my bed, reading The Namesake and filling a whole page in my journal with musings about identity. She's too much in her head sometimes. A little forced socialization will be good for her. She's my Blue Dress, but that's only how I think of her -- today she's wearing a block-print t-shirt I made in art last year and my favorite pair of dark jeans. The part that makes her Blue Dress is where she smiles at the crossing guard and asks how h

The pounding of the drums matches Jay’s heartbeat for a single moment. But then he looks up, and Logan's lips are tracing words he can't hear over the music. He knows the conversation is just to have something to say, but he pulls his headphones off his ears anyway, and the moment of synchronicity is lost. "Sorry, what did you say?" Logan rolls his eyes. "Dude, I can hear your music from here." You can't, Jay thinks. Not really. Or at least, what Logan hears is only the echoes of sound waves that have strayed from their journey. Not the same as the music at all. It seems important, somehow, that Logan isn’t hearing what he is.

The place is a hard-baked plain with a single river flowing across it. I am alone, but I am undeniably, inexplicably connected to the earth. I know that I don't need you anymore; I've found a way to fill the hole you tore in me. And I sit here by the river for the first time and it's so familiar. I know I've been here a thousand times before. My back is to the broken branch, my eyes are tracing the fissures in the dirt and cracked ground. The only water around was the river, but now I fill the drought here with salty water of my own. The tears are falling but I feel no sadness, only the quiet heat of this place and the emptiness in the silen

They will begin by locking eyes They will end by telling lies They will notice at the start They will talk of giving hearts They will fade as time goes on They will cry that love is gone They will stare with wounded eyes They will end by telling lies

Age: 15 years, 10 months June wakes to a house full of somebody else's sadness. He nestles into his comforter, burying his face in its warmth and letting its cloudy softness dull his senses, just for a minute. He's woken the same way he has for a month now: next door, his sister May is crying. The walls are thin enough he can hear fragments of tear-stained whispers, but thick enough he can't hear what words she is saying. He doesn't need to. The name on his sister's tongue sits like a stone in June's heart. A name can be so heavy, when the person it belonged to is gone. But next to that weight is something flickering, other words that burn in

 "I've been wanting to say this for a while, I just..." Tom and I hover in the spiky, negative-space silence that comes after barbed words. True feelings coming out all slant-wise when hurt tips your world sideways. "Say it." My chest is heavy but my words are light. They slip out like nothing at all, lighter than the breath that bears them. Tom swallows, and even from my place at his desk I can see his knuckles are white, bunched around a fistful of his comforter. "I need a little bit of space." The tips of my fingers are numb. I've lost a lot of words into the air, and there's no getting them back. "What does that mean?" "We just hang

Ash blinks as he enters the coffee shop, warmth blooming around him. Moody jazz plays from the corners of the shop, offering a bittersweet welcome to accompany the jingle of the bells on the door. If Ash smiled more often, he might smile now, but instead he approaches the counter. The girl behind it has a shiny strip of a nametag that says Lynn, and she gives him an equally shiny grin. “Good morning, Ash. First customer of the day.” Ash nods, because this is not unusual, and unbuttons his coat, letting it hang loosely from his narrow shoulders. He looks up at the drinks menu, but that too is just a habit. “Could I have th