On the first day I know I saw him, I woke up early in the morning for work. I got out of my bed and folded the sheets at the edge. It is more important than most people realize to make your bed every day. Then, the first task of the day is done. The day is started with accomplishment from real work, even if it is only a small effort. It gives you the right mindset of organization and productivity.
Next, I showered. I used the best soaps and shampoo I can get. Personal presentation is always important. Even if it seems no one notices, your cleanliness will affect how people treat you, and can be the first obstacle to success.
I shaved with
I put a bullet in her head, but she keeps coming back to my front door. That's my fault.
But what isn't my fault, what I will never accept as my fault, are the things she leaves on the doorstep for me to find after she staggers back into the lake. They're photographs and diaries, addresses and phone numbers.
It's always something horrible--the first photograph was of four men in hoods surrounding a little girl on a plinth in a large stone room. They had cut her vertically along the belly, and her face was distorted. Another time I decided to go to an address; it was in Pittsburgh, a long way from my home. All it was, was an abandoned projec
My parents had always said I have an overactive imagination. I hope that my imagination is only acting up again. My parents would probably laugh at me right now, a twenty year-old still scared of what lurks in the closet? I heard the scratching noises coming from across the room where my closet is at. I covered my head under my pillows and tried to stay still. I was very afraid that something might be in my closet. I thought about how my parents would check the closet to prove that nothing sinister was in there. I would have normally just ignored the noises, but tonight it just would't stop. It quieted down for a moment, until I heard the qui
He had a habit of catching things.
Usually, good things. A basketball, or a cat falling from a tree, or his baby sister, one memorable time, as she fell out of her crib.
It was instinct to him, second nature. He didn't need to think about it—his hands acted independently from the rest of him, completely on their own accord, risk and volition. His hands, to him, were unbearably selfish. They thought very little of consequence. Didn’t they care about the potential pain? Did it matter to them that what they caught might. . . hurt? He was still rather young the first time he caught a knife that had fallen off the kitchen counter.
i.
i have a theory
that the size
of the universe
is measured in
negative numbers:
so small that it
looped over
became big again
thus we are all
collapsing
into ourselves
and each other
brilliant clusters
entwined with
the void
and our expanses
are startled
and crossed
when we touch
and the universe
isn't enough
every nebula or
space where
a star was re-
placed with
something
that wasn't nothing
or a nothing
becoming something
ii.
lately the hole
in my chest
is growing,
so i will observe
the vacuum
and wait for
infinity recurring
a bleak space imploding
chemicals corroding
stark ribs contracting
volatile, reacting
is this a refr
''Punchlines'' -- Chapter 1 by Abbi-Normal, literature
Literature
''Punchlines'' -- Chapter 1
"I'm here to take you to The Other Side," the chicken said, cocking its head toward the thin strip of road.
The man looked around himself, then blankly ahead at the road for a moment. It looked newly paved, and mirages shimmered in the desert heat just above the hot blacktop of the highway, which disappeared out of sight in both directions. To either side of it, the parched clay ground baked in the sun like a kiln. There was nothing all around, but this terracotta desert that peeled and cracked like a bad sunburn, and the road. And the chicken.
"Is this a joke?" the man said.
"No," said the chicken, "This
Remember that time we sat on the bench together, waiting for the bus? You were quiet, like you always were, and I thought nothing of it. But then you turned to me, an unreadable look in your eyes, and you asked me what I liked most about life. I just stared at you, unsure how to answer. You seemed to take my silence as something bad.
“Never mind,” You mumbled. “It was a stupid question.”
“No, no.” I hurried to assure you. “I was just thinking. What I like best about life would probably be all the little moments that happen that end up meaning so much and all the people you meet along the way.”
i.
i was six years old the night my mother crept into my room, spread a second quilt on top of me, and began to quietly brush the hair of my barbies. she laid down on the cold wooden floor, one ear down - as if she could hear the small specks of dust moving across the downstairs hardwood.
"we're moving to waterford," she said, staring fondly at my lovingly-kept pocahontas doll. i hadn't seen her swipe it, and she played with the silky ends of the doll's purple-sewn hair in silence.
"i don't want to go," i told her, bleary-eyed and whining, "who wants to live in a place named after water? don't they have anything exciting to name it after?"
i wrote my first suicide letter in 10th grade.
they told me it didn't count if you felt like dying
unless you had it down on paper
like a vetoed birth certificate.
i've rewritten it enough times since
to realize i could never leave with a proper goodbye.
goodbye is too heavy a word for paper to hold
and i was never brave enough for the kind of courage it takes to tell them
why.
why they weren't enough to keep me here.
but i'm finally learning a different kind of bravery-
the kind it takes to
stay.
stay.
i learned to wear death
like rope burn my junior year
my senior year we became friends
but i finally stopped cutting the insides of wrist
Every week is the same. Nothing changes,
Nothing is gained, and they are filled with pain
Of loss and hopelessness that they cannot
Escape. No asylum for them to seek,
Only tyrannical silence to keep
Their eyes focused on unfair addiction,
Already claiming lives too young, futures
That hadn’t yet begun; their smiles, admired
And sincere, spread sorrow like wildfire here.
No words are spoken. Tears begin to flow
Among the woeful, staring down gravestones
That now belong to friends with no safe home.
Every week is the same. Nothing changes,
Nothing is gained, and there is no clean vein
Available, brain stains permanently
Unerasable.