Sometimes
I want a quiet life
other times
I want to go
a little bit
fucking Gatsby.
-Atticus Poetry
Let’s go a little bit Gatsby today:-) visiting Key West for the second time in my life. Wish me fun❤️
Sometimes
I want a quiet life
other times
I want to go
a little bit
fucking Gatsby.
-Atticus Poetry
Let’s go a little bit Gatsby today:-) visiting Key West for the second time in my life. Wish me fun❤️
golden moon rising
catch this moment forever
it’s already gone
my friends and I write haikus every night. Here’s mine, driving home from a beautiful day at the beach and watching the full moon rise.
Sorry I’m so late – I spent a well needed day at the beach:)
May I write words more naked than flesh, stronger than bone, more resilient than sinew, sensitive than nerve.
May I write words more naked than flesh, stronger than bone, more resilient than sinew, sensitive than nerve.
It’s what writers and visual artists are trained to do: In the midst of a flood, consider the color of the water.
From “When Writing Fiction Hurts the People You Love” Abigaiil DeWitt on translating real life trauma into fiction
#wednesdayPROSE
Brianna Fay
Published in “THE UNDERGROUND” literary journal
Winner of the Minerva Campbell Literary Contest
“Broken angels bleed immortal art.”
-Richard Matthews
I used to collect coffee mugs that I would store in my cabinet. Each of them had the name of an artist or author I loved and when everybody came to my flat to work or read a book I would give them their own coffee mug. Van Gogh usually sat by the window; he liked to watch the city instead of the television. Da Vinci liked to eat all of my chocolate when she thought I wasn’t watching. It inspired them and I still hope it inspires you because you were Picasso and I was Virginia Woolf.
You would sip from the homemade coffee mug with your name on it and stare at the canvas like you weren’t sure what was underneath—but there was something and that’s all that mattered. You’d stare for hours, seated on my kitchen floor while I typed away at my table.
Eventually you would get up, the painting not even stated yet, and take the coffee mug from my tender lips (maybe take a sip because you knew that I like hot chocolate in place of the bitter taste of the coffee bean) and kiss me until my knees were weak.
Just like that you would start the painting; like I was your muse. I loved being your muse.
But you were mine too and the thing about that is that it was so much harder for me. A painting is a painting. It’s over once done but I can’t stop writing about you. You’re everywhere.
It’s said that if you take a writer’s heart that you’ll live forever. Honey, you could have just smashed those paintings of me but they built skyscrapers of the stories I told about you.
When you left, your mug was put away. I was still Virginia Woolf, Nate was still Van Gogh and Cecile was still Da Vinci but none of that mattered anymore because when you left me behind you left the soul of Picasso gathering dust in my cabinet.
I know that you always told me that I thought like a mad woman. You don’t have to tell me twice that I sound like one now.
Our friends still come over to work every Thursday. They still read at my place on Saturdays and they still stay for dinner on Monday. We still meet for coffee every morning before work but it’s not the same. It’s not the same for them and it’s not the same for me.
Picasso is missing. What is the world without him? But I must remind myself that the world is not missing this artist—we are. I am. The world may continue with its mayhem and I may open my cabinet and wonder if I should wash that coffee mug. It’s been two weeks since anybody’s used it.
I don’t even miss you. I miss your smell and the taste of coffee in your mouth when you kissed me. I miss the way your hands caressed me at late hours. I miss the way you painted my face so that I looked beautiful.
I miss Picasso, not you.
Virginia Woolf and Picasso were only born a year apart from one another. I’m telling you all of this because she died nearly thirty years before him but I still find myself hoping that she lives ten times as long.
It’s like every time I open my cabinet to grab a mug for a friend and I see the one that used to be yours, I know that it just will never be true. I’ll simply live vicariously through you. Through my muse and through my work.
Broken angels, after all, bleed immortal art and I’ve always wanted Virginia Woolf to live forever.
Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel like I should be doing something else.
And in case it’s possible to forget–remember the world does not need your book. The world will go on just fine without it. There are plenty of wonderful novels, poems, stories, essays for many lifetimes of extraordinary reading, and so write out of necessity, out of personal privation, because you, and perhaps only you, need to read those words.
-Dinaw Mengestu
Short stories are tiny windows into other worlds and other minds and other dreams. They are journeys you can make to the far side of the universe and still be back in time for dinner.”
Neil Gaiman
California, USA
I’m Afraid
Of spiders with fingers that linger
Of creepy clowns with crooked frowns
Of frightful heights without the safety of plentiful light
Of a shark running rampant through an aquatic park
I’m afraid
Of ugly babies that give me the heebie jeebies
Of mounting due dates because I started school late
Of new faces that come with unfamiliar places
Of not talking to that pretty girl because when I see her my mind starts to whirl
I’m afraid
Of not having the conviction to better my financial restrictions
Of saying something offensive because I don’t want to be insensitive
Of speaking out of turn because sometimes I don’t understand what I should learn
Of my insecurities disallowing me to be the best version of me that I can be
I’m afraid
Of terrorism and generally most other “isms” too
Of fire because it burnt mine and my family’s homes
Of natural catastrophes destructive enough to bring society to its knees
Of a struggling economy and the growing dichotomy between those who should fix it
I’m afraid
Of telling my grandmother that I don’t believe in God because I know she’ll stop loving me