WOOOOO!

Stripes, or Stories

The zebra leans over the edge of his pen. “I can tell you a story,” he says, his mane catching in the rough wood. He has already lost his left eye to a virus, eyelid stitched shut so as not to frighten the children.

I came to free him, but his appearance quells my righteous feelings and unnerves me. Of many responses, I settle for “why?”

He shakes his head. “If you need to ask, I cannot help you.”

I take a step closer. “Is it mine, or someone elses?” My bolt cutters slip from my hand, landing with a cloud of dusk. The sun takes on too bright of a quality, so that everything is outlined with a painful light.

The zebra laughs. “A better question. It is many peoples’ story.”

“And in return, you want me to free you?”

His nostrils widen and he stamps a foot, causing the patterns of light and shadow to shift painfully, dazzling my eyes. “Touch that gate and I’ll bite off your hand.”

I swallow. I want to leave, to rejoin my group, to save rabbits and dogs and cats. Sweet, safe animals that don’t talk or threaten to tell my fortune. I stoop to pick up my bolt cutters.

“This is the story,” the zebra announces, “of why she left you.”

Caught in midaction, I stumble toward the zebra, grabbing the slats of the fence and shaking them as I pull myself upright. “T-tell me! Now!”

The zebra smiles, and I realize that his toothy, wet-lipped grin is the most terrifying part of this afternoon, but I cannot even begin to imagine leaving before I hear the truth I have been wanting—needing—dreading for so long. “She left you because you could only ever find this story if it was given to you by someone else,” he says, and nothing more.

I freeze, every muscle in my body fusing to my bones, and my skin begins to itch, but I cannot move enough to scratch it. Then my body climbs the fence without my control and presses itself against the zebra’s flank. The sun is even more vivid, the heat so intense that I begin to melt.

Liquid now, I am soaked up by his pelt, my frame spreading out in a inky pool, and then—

The zebra licks his new stripe a few times, arranging the fur to lie in the same direction, and nods. Whispers buzz around his ears and he drifts to sleep, comforted. The zoo will die, but he will stay.

He will always be here.

Eclipsed

We have not seen the sun—
it went away sometime after summer,
between a lazy dusk
and a dawn that never came.

Is it wandering?
Will it return with no reaction,
slipping into a space still left
between the stars?
Will it be altered by its travel,
shaded by another galaxy’s dust,
emitting new colors
that we cannot perceive?

Or should we have said out good-byes
that long ago evening,
mourning the lengthened shadows
as the last warmth
seeped into our skin?
Is it lost, with no way to return,
or has it found another home,
other planets to hold in grateful spin?

We long to see the sun—
it went away sometime after summer.
We raise our faces to the sky,
but feel only an endless rain.

Remains

The shadow that lies
along the bottom of the bottle;
I think it is liquid
and lift it to my lips.

But the shadow lingers
on the floor;
the bottle is empty.

I must look elsewhere
to quench my thirst.

NaNoWriMo

I know I haven't posted any bits of the book yet (this is partially because it is very poorly written at the moment,) so I thought I'd add in a little word count widget thing instead. Marvel at the rising word count! Mock me on bad days! Remain completely apathetic, because this isn't as interesting as I think it is!

BEHOLD!

Hidden Spice

Her lips, flecked with ginger,
leave a burn against yours
that you will not notice until later,
touching an astonished finger
to your swollen mouth.
You lick your tongue across to taste
the flavor of Christmas
or soothing soda,
and wonder where all that fire came from.

Ivan's November

He thinks he remembers it well, but that’s the lie his brain has chosen for him, because of all the other possibilities, it’s the only one that might end up keeping him alive. Ivan is a skinny young man because he’s made the dubious choice to move away from liquor and to pills so beautiful they make his heart ache. At least, that’s why he thinks he’s crying, and his brain is either too kind or too disorientated to tell him the truth about the beautiful woman with red hair and snake tattoos that he never went to the bar. Ivan sits on the couch and shuffles a pack of cards over and over, soothed by the movement and the noise they make as they slide past each other, trying to ignore the mulberry-and-cream-colored capsule that has fallen on his shoe.

It was a pale month.

Eugenie's October

She spent most of it rushing from one store to another, trying to convince the tight-faced designers inside that they should send their rejects with her instead of throwing them away. Eugenie was a small woman with dark and a pixie chin, who both suited her name and did not deserve it. She took the clothes down to the Salvation Army where she volunteered and set them out on the slow days, always in the late morning so the hipster students would still be in school. Then she hid behind the tall register and smiled as the woman with three children clustering around her cart and one still crouching in her womb discovered a pink chiffon dress with a slightly crooked hem. Her face was still lit with happiness when she came to pay for it.

It was a good month.











(Well, look at that, something not NaNo related! Apparently churning out what I freely admit to be mostly substandard prose [with a better core than last year, but still with adverbs populating each line like craaaaazy] has led to semi-decent writing! It flew into my head out of nowhere, too.)

(Full disclosure: when I said "semi-decent," I was just trying to be good. I LOVE this. I am so pleased with it. And I really like Eugenie. And yes, I know I shouldn't talk about my stories, but yaaaaaaay! YOU [the impersonal kind] saw how little I've been writing lately. It feels so much better when I can type something creative.)

(I can't seem to shut up, can I? Anyways, this might be part of a little series, because I'm apparently not only incapable of being sensible enough NOT to do NaNoWriMo and concentrate on my classes, I feel the need to take up time writing something completely different as well. Argh to me.)

(Still want to do the series. All little bits like this, though.)

NaNoWriMo!

I was going to be sensible and NOT participated in NaNoWriMo this year (That's National Novel Writing Month to you sane people,) but I couldn't help myself. So, any writing during November will probably be centered around my attempt at those lovely 50,000 words. I participated and finished last year, so I've got high hopes for this year!

It's going to be a post-apocalyptic mystery called Menagerie (and yes, the first word is kinda cheesy, but it's accurate) and I'm really excited. For your "pleasure," here is the current synopsis. I'll probably change the title at some point, but I wanted something to save the documents under. Ahem.

Gwen Eyre lives a quiet live alone. She spends most of her time reading, playing with her pet bunny, and defending herself against the hordes of bio-engineered creatures that try to kill her every night.

Gwen lives very alone indeed, being one of only two survivors in her town. She doesn't remember anything of the time before it went wrong, and appropriated her last name from Jane Eyre, the first novel she remembers reading. But she's adapted well to the new rules of the world, and has created a reasonably normal life for herself. The only other survivor--a slightly mysterious man named Jack with slightly mysterious contacts--provides enough social contact to keep her sane.

But then Jack's brother shows up, and Gwen's life becomes a lot more complicated. . . and a lot more dangerous.