A place where I share my literary passion!
Semi-Finalist in the University of New Orleans Publishing Laboratory!
Donnelius Conqaide is powerful. With strength so wildly overwhelming he is near invincible, he can virtually be considered a god. But all that changes after a single fantastical mishap, which sends him spiraling through space-time to the strange, unfamiliar world of Earth.
Read MoreEverything I see reminds me of you,
From the grass’ green to the sky’s blue.
Even as I walk over to visit, you still take up my mind,
Your beauty, your elegance, it’s all so refined.
I want to wholly accept the infatuation,
And yet my heart still tightens with frustration.
I see your beaming face in a toddler’s grin,
Chocolate dripping down their chubby chin.
I see your chiding laugh in the reflection of my change,
Your eyes in the pennies and nickels, it’s strange.
As I receive from the florist the bouquet of flowers,
I smell your fragrance, a scent I could take in for hours.
As I head down the street towards where you wait,
I can only remember the day of our wondrous first date.
Placing the flowers on your grave, I just yearn to know,
Where is all my wasted love supposed to now go?
There seems to lie a certain charm in war,
Beauty in the soaring bullets you hear.
Elation in charging up with a roar,
A distinct joy in the enemy’s fear.
Why else does man carry on fighting,
Drawn into it like a magnet’s firm pull?
The god of war has to be delighting,
As our bodies are scattered with lead full.
Yet I cannot spot that grisly allure,
Even after countless years of combat.
Mangled bodies buried in a sewer,
I somehow don’t find the appeal in that.
The only answer fills me with distress:
Ares’ flame is not something I possess.
We first began compiling our bucket list during the summer of seventh grade. The news of Copper’s incurable cancer had hit me like a freight train, but you always had the stronger mental fortitude, already dashing around the apartment looking for ways to cheer me up while I sniffled on the apartment floor. Copper circled us all the while, wagging his fluffy little tail unbeknownst to the whole situation.
“Hey, you know dogs are supposed to live for ten years?” I whispered, my voice hoarse and wavering. “Copper’s only two years old, but he’s already…”
“In that case,” you had stated firmly, “we’ll just have to create enough memories in his remaining days to last him a full lifetime’s worth.”
Read MoreI placed my arms onto the warm sphere, feeling the rays of setting sun slowly warming my bare skin. To my left and right, many more identical rocky balls lined the edge of the plaza, forming a perfect circle. The laughs of my friends resounded from behind me, as they partook in an activity that only faintly reached my ears. Just a moment ago I was laughing and playing along with them, but it felt like the atmosphere had changed, though I couldn’t exactly place why. There wasn’t anything in particular that drew me to that plaza. But my body had moved before my mind had figured out a reason, and I found myself using up my precious free time to lie on a warm ball of rock. I didn’t mind it, for some reason.
Read MoreA flash of light signals a new checkpoint,
Pixels passing across a vibrant goal.
The console gripped between ten weary joints,
Story dragging you down the rabbit hole.
The night outside swirls like a pitch-black ink,
Though that world you knew prior is no more.
Seeing only woods of monsters who wink,
Fatal battles against dragons who roar.
But the colorful world is ripped from sight,
The suddenly fractured illusion fades.
Inky gloom floods in and quenches all light,
Ending the vivid campaign of charades.
And yet in darkness there is one savior;
Autosave rescues careless behavior.
No crown of gleaming metal, no fence of sturdy brass.
Instead, my home, my place to grow, is nestled in the sidewalk grass.
I sport no vibrant colors in spring, nor am I large in size,
I hear those other flowers laugh at me, wishing for my demise.
I admit that sometimes life feels tough,
With my meager petals of white.
No red, no blue, no pink, no gold,
Nothing but a monochrome spite.
But when autumn comes, when skies are clouded,
When the air begins to spread its frosty chill.
Those glamorous plants wilt, one by one,
While I endure with my resolute will.
I need no fancy fertilizer to support my leaves,
Nor constant water to act as a meal.
I just continue to grow, beside my brothers and sisters,
There’s beauty in insignificance, I feel.
I stand by the highway wall,
Contemplating ivy.
It stretches along the rocky surface,
Like the grasping tendrils of a deep-sea squid.
For what reason do you stretch, I wonder?
Leaves unfurling like the sails on a verdant viking ship,
Snaking across the tides of stone.
Expansion like the conquest of Alexander the Great,
Conquering centimeters of unclaimed land.
Then the vines thin out in the uncharted,
Falling away piece by piece.
What awaits you at the end of that wall, ivy?
What will you do, once your extension reaches a void?
But, that’s not how it looks to you, is it?
Your mighty warriors surge on, day after day.
To your generals of green, sustained through the rays of sunlight,
Your two-dimensional world is still ripe for the picking.
You expand your leafy empire larger and further,
Because in your eyes, there is no end in sight.
Warm skies turn to grey,
Neighbors succumb to the cold.
When will my time come?
The little girl squatted above the metal drain cover, squinting through the half-rusted bars into the murky darkness. Amongst the festering brown-green sludge and almost alien-looking tendrils of sinewy weeds, a light shined up at her like a glimmering beacon. You see, this girl had dropped her quarter down the drain, and she wanted to get it back.
She held no emotional attachment to the quarter, mind you. Nor was it a particularly rare coin, worth just as much as any other quarter you would find lying around. But she had tossed it around in her chubby little hands as she strolled down the sidewalk, and as it had inevitably leapt from her grasp and clattered down the asphalt into the drain, she had made up her mind to get it back. Children at that young age seem to have a habit of stubbornly clinging to their task, even if the time they end up spending is wildly disproportionate to what stands to be gained.
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