a conversation with Uncle Sam by successwithhonor, literature
Literature
a conversation with Uncle Sam
Would you rather it be us or them?
I say next question please
as if to loosen the noose my tongue has become
and You say speaking of, all good things come with a price
and I try my hardest not to disagree.
Faith is the ultimate form of patriotism
so I stand up a little taller
as military jets fly overhead and baptize
the sky with their presence.
You say the best defense is a good offense.
But what about the bombs?
The fat boys and little men we scatter
&
I don't know if I'll ever tell my children about you.
(I don't know if I'll even have descendants.)
A family was never on my to-do list,
until you came along.
You made me wonder if I wanted kids, just so I could say to them
"You know, the day your dad and I met…"
because I thought we could last forever,
and I'm still not sure if we have.
Our friendship endures, even as I fall asleep
picturing her arms around you,
and I wonder if you'll ever come back to me
but spend every day noticing the reasons I'm glad you left
and hoping you'll return.
Never intending to fall in
To the girl teaching herself to fly,
a hospital bird with soot in her lungs
and patchwork wings,
Starling,
you only fly for a little while.
If you want to stop hurting,
learn to drift in the silence of the dark
between night and day.
We're all made from broken parts:
bird seed, letters addressed to no one,
things found in old coats,
brittle things like love.
Glass bottomed birds,
we used to make butterfly hands,
until moths swarmed into our throats,
moon-spun moths,
like dancing butterflies; still
we choked on dusty wings.
Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs,
the same smoke that you'll inhale.
Let go, little bird -
stella:
your smile is
so rare as to be
a tsunami - it
crashes into
my chest
furiously,
leaving
devastation in its
wake
but it is a
cold kind of
beautiful. the kind
that only resurrects
itself once
in a lifetime; your
soul is stone,
perfectly
sculpted but
you have become
a grave to your
own joy.
I
Time is a human construct ably abetted by the sky, the stars. We looked at the sky and decided to delineate day and night, to make them into two halves, when in fact they were just fine whole.
Prehistory – our prehistory – we were overwhelmed by the sky. Cave paintings and inscriptions are a myriad of hypothetical disasters, stars falling, bursting, chelating. For we saw the Milky Way in all its wonder, all white dust, blue light and rosy curls, a solid mass hanging heavy in the sky.
II
A girl has prehistory as well. Before she is born, before she is even the star twinkling in her mother’s eye, her parents meet. They f
Sometimes You Don't Have to Change the World by C-A-Harland, literature
Literature
Sometimes You Don't Have to Change the World
Ares is not what I imagined her to be. The great man of myth, muscular and imposing, shining in his armour with crested helmet and mighty spear does not stand before me. Instead I face a young woman, hardly more than a girl. She is soft and delicate with eyes so large they will soak up the world, and skin like spun glass that glitters in the darkness. A warm glow radiates from within her, not quite visible, but strong enough for me to feel the heat on my face.
The sound of traffic wafts up to us from the street far below. Heavy clouds block out the night sky, reflecting back the poisonous orange of streetlamps and office blocks. The rooftop
Eira, now that I live in a country without Summer by Gay-Mountain, literature
Literature
Eira, now that I live in a country without Summer
And you are gone.
And the people here
would not recognise you.
You, who simply stood up from the winter ground
and existed.
You, who lived too long
in the countryside
of your body.
One night, you loved me
and your mouth burst like a fruit,
too soon, too soon.
You are gone, but still
deliver the same madness to me
that Spring brings for flowers.
I think about where
you put away your sadness:
a country of snow.
I want to lie down
there, like an animal.
I could live for days
beneath your frozen body
of water.
windbound,
we were caught and cornered,
keelsons crushed
underneath the weight
of rocks and hard places
and hurricanes
that tore us all but
apart -
in this and every maelstrom
we were just waiting
to crumble,
holding hands like they were
lifelines
and locking palms in prayer ;
we knew an introduction
to the edge of our little world was
inevitable,
and said our goodbyes
every time the ocean's belly
swelled with Neptune's angry squall,
our mouths filled with salt and
all the breathlessness that came
with keeping a weather eye
on that horizon.
you were the light of my life -
every smile a star
and every star a sentinel,
keepi
In forty-seven minutes I will be twenty-one years old and my throat is tight with this notion
that every passing moment is a boat taking me further from the boy on the side of the road.
I am terrified of the swelling tide of time, the ripples I will create,
the creases that will be etched into my face
without the laughter lines I know he would have left and
one day someone will ask me how many siblings I have and I will hesitate
because he will be so distant and I can feel it coming.
I never intended to swim without him, but
I am drowning under the weight of pocket-stone-people,
the ones I love who he has never met and won't ever meet
and it