Paper Cranes

And when the bomb exploded,
I wonder if all the cranes flew out:
a huge migratory flock gliding out of the sunrise,
white and orange flames browning
the edges of their paper feet.

I am afraid of showing emotion.

Written in the voive of a male. Written after a prompted free-write. Title suggestions?

I am afraid of showing emotion


The church bells ring and I enter with a stench of flowers in my nose. I sit on the wooden pew, with nothing to cushion my warm body from the cold it gives me. I am wearing my “nice clothes” which consist of a suit bought for my sisters wedding that now hits well above the wrists and shoes that were purchased for a minor court appearance a few years earlier. Friends surround me, or familiar faces at the least. I like to believe they are friends, but there really is no debating it. I have no evidence. Friends are people I invite over for drinks, or go out to dinner with on Saturday nights, or play cards with Fridays after work. I don’t know these people outside of everyday.
But I am not an outsider, my true friend is staring at me from the pulpit, her face multiplied and enlarged all over the room through pixels and ink. But today is the day that I need the face to be in flesh and bone, to be warmed with life. I feel cold. I am exhausted from not crying, no letting the tears come out to hydrate the barren land I feel within. It seems as though all my tears are locked in the casket before me, where she now lays along with the happiness and smiles that were once provided by her. I can’t get them out; I can’t get her out. They are banging inside the casket loudly, my love and hate and tears and smiles are trapped in there with her, soon to be buried in the fresh plot that waits at the graveyard. I don’t want to be buried half dead, and I don’t want to keep living half dead. I want to come out of that casket, but I don’t want to leave her.

Why I Write

Why I Write
By Hope VandenAkker

I write to read:
When my car windows are frosted in the morning, I write peace so I can bring it with me everywhere I go. It stays with me until the sun needs to take it back.

I keep the happiness of warm skies and crisp grass tickling the skin of my summer bare feet tattooed on my pages, and folded for the future. The ink becomes artwork, and the black curves of a cursive a dance of which I am a timeless audience.

I write to read the person I was yesterday
last year
when I was five.
An accurate documentation of life characterized by innocent perspectives, unmet goals, and major life events. Hopefully I will follow the upward trend of my progression.

I write to remember names, faces, places, and dates. As each day slips out of present, it consequently falls out of my mind, luckily caught by my pen so paper can save it forever. It’s value is priceless; the preservation of my paper life cannot be traded for printed papers of any sort. (In God we trust. In God, I hope)

I write to read. I read to remember. I remember to relive. I relive by writing.

I write to create a material extension of my mind. The brain simply cannot keep it all. My journal is my mental backpack, a home to hold the things my body cannot.

My writing has no meaning, but it means everything. It is the only access my conscience has to physical reality. Writing keeps me anchored. I sometimes fear I may permanently drift off into an inescapable and incomprehensible daydream. But to think with the pen is much safer; it keeps me here and provides evidence of my existence and past selves.

But despite the years and thoughts and events and perspectives that have gone through me, I am still writing to simple wonder why I write.

Fallen

A wounded women soaks into the trail.
It is fall and I can see her blood
in all the leaves and berries.
It’s her time of the year,
the season’s flowing into exhaustion.
Mother’s nurturing uterus is being cleansed
after heavy harvest;
it empties to the soil.
She drips to the ground
With all the leaves and berries.

Hello!

Hello creative writers!! I am posting because I forgot about it and I want to get a quick post in before it slips my mind again. This post is to inform you about more posts in the near future...stay tuned.

Seventeen

Seventeen
By Hope

He walks into the store and he sees her,
settled comfortably in aisle seventeen.
Although she is tucked in between
the rows of soda and candy bars,
her body is evidence that those cravings
never touched her.
It is her boney frame
that is the object of his desire,
peeking out of the corners of her clothing.
She is feminine and raw.
Posed uncomfortably,
her eyes stare for his attention.

Her hip is loosely held with red nails,
red nails that match the red lips,
red lips that scandal and gossip
dance in and out of.

He just knows she is perfect for him.

He wants her red nails
to be placed on his red heart.
He wants his hands to grab her hips,
he wants to see her body expressed
without the burden of clothing.
He wants her so bad,
his perfect magazine,
found in aisle seventeen.