I know a quiet girl so shy, Head down, she rarely speaks. She fears the world around her— Anxiety's technique. ♡♡♡ Her salty tears shroud bright blue eyes, But no one sees her cry. The corner is her friend for now; She prays pain says, “Goodbye.” ♡♡♡ No hope in sight, her eyes snap shut; She dreams a little dream. Creating worlds where she'll belong— A rainbow-colored scheme. ♡♡♡ She'll dance on clouds and find her voice;...

I walk alone by crystal stream, Beneath a canopy of green, In hopes that I can find a place, To gaze up at the sky and dream. Can my heart find solace there Within the realm of Nature fair, Where Peace is found in such sweet space, So far from any human care. For in my heart a shadow lies, And in my soul, my true self cries. For without Love, all hope is lost, And our sad soul within us dies. Can even Nature bring back Li...

It was just another New Year’s Eve for Melody. Her thirteenth one to be exact and completely unremarkable. Her mother stuffed her into a dress two sizes too small, accompanied by the furrowed brows of disapproval and invasive pokes and prods over her tummy. “Have you been stealing chocolate from the candy jar again?” The accusation stung quick and sharp. Trying not to furrow her brows in anger in response, Melody sucked i...

It was between him and her, and her and her, and like always I was caught in between, a bottle of bourbon trapped between my thighs while I nursed the glass—the alcohol burned fresh paths down my throat, drawing parallels with the scars that ran down my arms. This was the way things would always be and the clock constantly ticked at the back of my mind, because this was it—this was my last chance. "I love you." To my whis...

The old man sat at the table, watching the couples dance. He stared into his glass of Schnapps. The taste did nothing for him. Nothing did anything for him anymore. He wasn’t sure why he’d come. The lecturers and professors got younger every year. He felt they only invited him because they knew he had nowhere else to go. He doubted they’d even notice if he slipped away before the bells rang out. He wondered if many of the...

We all make poor life choices. Mine just happens to be pizza. You’d think working at the nostalgia-laden Wally World would be a dream come true. Maybe for kid me, with all the arcade games that spat out tickets like confetti, ball pits, and colorful characters straight from a children’s book, it was. I used to wrap myself up in tickets like a mummy when I won big, then walk proudly down the soda-stained carpet like royalt...

Her yelling annoyed me. It always did. Helicopter moms. Can’t live with them. Dad certainly couldn’t. But until I finished university, I couldn’t live without. Her house. Her rules. Mom’s nagging, she claimed, was always in everyone's best interest. Dad begged to differ. Reason one hundred and fifty-six for their separation, he’d say. I’m sure that number was significantly higher. But every time I asked, he’d spew a few r...

Present day Ron – the closest thing I had to a friend in school – had disappeared. That's not all. It was much worse than the simple disappearance of one boy. Much worse, trust me. What's left of their families still seek answers, but they won't find any – only I know what really happened. A pity no one believes me. Oh … wait. Shame on me for jumping ahead. I've been somewhat stressed, you see. The events of my childhood...

This numerology thing is cool, but thematically unrelated, but I lead with it anyway. If you add the first twenty even numbers, starting with two and ending with forty, the sum of those twenty numbers equals four hundred and twenty. Go ahead. Try it. Or not. Whatever.If the Waldos knew that sparking up after school would have inspired an annual world-wide celebration of smoking weed at 4:20, which coincidentally occurs on...

“Boy oh boy, it’s a hot one,” my wife exclaimed as she gave the sweating pitcher one last swirl before pouring each of us a glass. Exhausted and relieved, I sipped my iced tea while slowly rocking in the hammock of our screened porch. I savored my reward while my dog and I watched the movers close the back of their truck before driving away. Knuckles then curled up beneath me and fell asleep. This was me honoring our agre...

My grandmother tried to kill me in my crib when I was two months old. She’s dead now. Did I kill her? I don’t know. It’s not a simple question, and there are no simple answers. All I remember is being covered in blood, her blood, as I lay in my crib. # I never met my father. He was a passing fancy, my mother told me. Someone to keep her loneliness at bay. I never met him, but I’ve seen him, swimming in my underwater dream...

March 1995 — Kenya A Fateful Decision I’d been in Africa for nine weeks; two very eventful months. In that relatively short time, I’d already undergone a multitude of emotions, enjoying some incredible highlights and experiencing a range of unfortunate escapades. I’d started in Kenya, flying out to Nairobi on a one-way ticket with a vague plan, a guidebook, and not much else. It wasn’t my first time backpacking in the dev...

Charlotte Hale hated that she had to gather wild berries. It wasn’t that gathering wild berries was hard. It was that gathering them was not hard and at sixteen, she felt like it was demeaning. Her eight-year-old stepbrother, Albert, was perfectly capable of the task. So she could not, for the life of her, understand why she had to be the one to gather stupid frickin’ wild berries. “I need them for the salad, Char,” her m...

Ten years. Yes, almost exactly. Biking to school I, all big-mouthed and cocky, sped past her on my racing bike, grasping at her jet-black plait. Me, away laughing. At fifteen, a tinge of jealousy when she held hands with Norman? I would vehemently deny that. Then those birthday parties. All joking and kissing games. Our first kiss was at one of those parties. Just a game, wasn’t it? Suddenly, for me, it wasn’t. Infatuatio...

It was Thursday, early morning in mid-July, opening day of the Lake Arrowhead county fair. Dana MacMurchy sprang from her bed with an enthusiasm equivalent to that of a child on Christmas morning. She was up and dressed so quickly one might have thought she had actually slept in her clothes. Braiding her hair was going to take too long, so her tousled chestnut locks were pulled into a ponytail. She then pulled it through...