Beauty in Insignificance (Daisy)

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.

No End in Sight (Ivy)

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.

The Everyday Occurrences of a Stranded God

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.

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Beyond Recovery

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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Purple

He had seen her in the flower shop, and had been captivated. Immediately, his reason for being in the flower shop no longer mattered to him, nor did the vibrant flowers clutched in his hand. All he knew in that moment was that he needed to approach her.

A perfect stranger, with a slightly tilted sunhat and curly locks of brown hair. She was dressed inconspicuously, and yet had such an aura around her than people would still be compelled to look. The soft fragrance of her perfume, paired with her exquisite appearance, turned that aura incredibly sweet. So sweet, actually, that it was almost sickening. Like the dangerous allure surrounding an exotic carnivorous plant, a suffocatingly alluring purple fog. And she had captured yet another stray bug into her trap.

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