she stood taller than most not in stature, but in spirit a friend to all but family to me keep her safe little star  

The wine glass tips, falls, and shatters! Its tinkle matching my laughter tone for tone My young fingers playfully trace the breadth of your shoulders Then like coquettes do a complete turnaround digging viciously claiming space someplace not theirs… and breaking a lacquered nail on…

2022 prompt 5 / hour 5 “you’ll understand when you’re older”   Goddammit he had finangled his way here to the study at the centre of the castle Only to find that the senior sorcerer’s favourite mirror only showed *clouds*? This could not be real?…

on my first birthday my father gifted me a hand mirror my mother kept it in my nursery and as I grew, it grew with me at five, it was hung on the wall across from my bed I saw my face as I slept…

2022 prompt 4 / hour 4 “ghosts dancing in the forest”   The piano sits now, silent He moved it out of the house long ago Couldn’t bear to have it inside Couldn’t bear to part with it either It was *hers* Took it to…

You never met your father’s grandfather but you know him through evening tales you know him in songs of him you know that he is the first generation of pride   When your father tells your history he tells you to hit your chest and…

close your eyes   imagine, one hundred  years in the future laid out in a magical novel. solitude. one patriarch  lighting a match  to see what’s left standing  after the phoenix broke her chains,  poisoning the well water,              …

I hear the children playing in the summer heat, families cooking in the kitchen, and water cooling the thirsty plants of the earth. The purest expressions of life, yet in this same space silence, outrage, and hatred flow freely. Domestic terrorist protected under the same…

A hundred years ago Humans were there a few non-humans, well.. not so much. A hundred years ago, Some humans wept but kept going the way all humans go Like all humans are going even now A hundred years later, and quite a few non-humans…

soft undergrowth pads the forest floor sunlight, blocked by trees dapples my skin warming a few inches at a time an old house sits empty untouched by human hands vines creep up and through decaying walls I have come home