they broke from their miraculous chains

and became orange from blue, the new

smell of citrus and basil was infectious and

it choked me with such care, so tender

as it wrapped around replacing their chains

with an unfamiliar forced encumberment. I

lie on the ground ponderously, making love

to the small things in life while chasing after

the big ones. The smell lingers and passes me

gracefully as I acknowledge it.

Coming around the bend of the trail, I realize the path we used to take to get there has almost dissapeared. I wonder if any kids go there these days? Gosh, it was almost as much a home for us as our actual houses back then. Picking my way through the trees and bushes, I ponder just how many hours we spent there. Hundreds, I'm sure. We went there frequently not only as innocent kids, but as teens to get up to no good. Even a couple times in recent years mostly for the nostalgia of it.

Yep, just the same as ever. The stones are mossier than they used to be, and there's more foliage in general, but boy it hasn't changed much. A time capsule from the past. Jeez, all the stories we used to come up with here, they were never ending. One day we might be mages, druids, or necromancers calling on the powers of the various magics or forces we employed in our fights against our enemies. Another time we were stone giants, here trying to free our kin from their imprisonment by the evil warlock Sighast the Enslaver. We managed to break his spell, free our bretheren, and give him a whooping like the birds and squirrels around here had never seen.

Or we'd just come and hang out. Countless hours of Pokemon cards or playing Game Boy. I still feel bad that we were young and careless, tossing our old batteries as far as we could just to hear them whipping through the leaves. At least we never accidentally hit a sparrow or something. Of course, there were the other, less intrusive activities too. Races around the circle, or plain old leapfrogging the stones. I still remember the time it started to rain, and I slipped as I went over one of them. I bashed my butt so hard on it I couldn't sit the whole rest of the day! You laughed so hard, but you actually had the grace at age 8 to pretend to fall as well, just so I'd feel better.

Then, of course, there were the immeasurable hours spent sullying this sacred place of our childhood with smoke, drink, and all manner of "mind expansion expeditions," as we used to call them. Those days we bothered the wildlife blasting everything from Cypress Hill to Pink Floyd, covering conversation topics from the meaning of existense to Kayla Howell's great boobs. Hah, real intellectuals. You know what though? I'd do a lot to be able to sit down and have another one of those stupid interactions again. Even more to be able to one day bring our own kids here, like we said we would. Instead, I'm bringing this picture of us to hang on a tree, cause that's as close as we'll ever get now. They spread your ashes in a beautiful place, but it'll never have the magic of this one. Its helping me heal already. Rest in peace.

Life strolls the oceans of time

watery gunshot clouds reflected

in snapshots of motionless being

bursting with energy from womb

hard times come a knockin’

cracks of understanding erode

dusty pocketfuls of the past

receptacles holding insipid memories

the color of red earthen clay

molded by hands, shattered by age

hard times come a knockin’

rain in soul whispers drips from trees

pitting serenity of peace in grains of sand

unsettled flakes of cold freezing dreams

a thousand thoughts swirling around me

immersed in my struggling troubled soul

hard times come a knockin’

showers awaken steep cliffs of passion

intoxication of moonlight touches my brow

white roses stand up and sing in choruses

vestiges of sin move over to make room

for shadowed hands sharing the stars

warmth of the sun shifts and changes

reflection dulls insanity of screams

making way for encircling arms of love

life itself comes a knockin’

Look into the past

No phones No technology

Just talking face to face

No emojis to send

Just new things to speak

I wish I could say

Nothing has changed

But technology has advanced

So what else can I say

Hiding behind a screen

Using shortcuts to speak

Lol Btw and more

I want to go back in time

To laugh out loud for real

Not a text that says what I'm doing

But a smile that I can see

The things that I'm saying

Aren't funny you know

It's real and maybe one day

We will go back to laughing

The true human way

There’s nothing more challenging than learning how to write good stories with a baffling brain injury. Over a decade ago, I was involved in a car accident where I was ejected and thrown from my vehicle. My mind went blank thereafter.

Three weeks later, I woke up from the coma, not knowing where I was or what transpired the night I blacked out. I suffered from multiple broken bones and severe head trauma. The doctors explained that I endured bleeding on my frontal lobe and a possibility of permanent brain damage that only time would determine the severity of it. I was hopeful that I’d make a full recovery, but hope had let me down once my cognitive abilities were altered making it difficult to process information as quickly as I once could.

Three years ago I picked up a pen and paper and began journaling. I wrote about past and present experiences, good and bad, I wrote about gratitude and the meaningful things in my life. I wrote about my long and short-term goals, along with my dreams. Then I wanted to do more with my writing so I began writing short pieces based on one inspiring topic and how I applied it to my everyday life. Then I wanted to write longer stories and that’s where my cognitive abilities began to challange me.

Most writer’s have encounters with writer’s block to some extent. Some find strategies to overcome this perplexing problem. Then there’s me, struggling for hours at a time to formulate an idea and/or finding the correct words and descriptions to make the story flow. Oftentimes, I’ll jump to a different piece of unfinished work and switch it up and still, I’m stuck in the same adverse boat trying to develop ideas; not knowing what to write, where to start or keep the words flowing and it’s frustrating. That’s when the negative thoughts of ‘not being good enough’ enter my mind and that I’ll never have a fighting chance at becoming an established writer. Most individuals who are inflicted by these problems end up putting the pen down for good. I’m not most individuals. I put my blood, my sweat, and my tears into this art because I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything.

The key to success is practice, practice, and more practice. I want to believe that I got this and just because I have an impairment doesn’t mean I’m exempt from succeeding at something I want to do to better myself. All in good time I suppose. A limitless sky comes with endless possibilities.

There is this, Chinese saying, 急得像热锅上的蚂蚁which means panicking just like an ant on a frying pan. This makes me think of this story...

Frizzy, the ant and her good friend, Mindy, were stuck in the frying pan of a Chef. Apparently, Mindy and Frizzy were weeded out for cooking.

So when this happened, Frizzy panicked. “What are we going to do?” Frizzy screamed to Mindy, who was unconscious. Before Frizzy blacked out, he desperately climbed up the frying pan but to no avail. Try imagining you trying to get out of a fire while dragging your refridgerator along with you. Hopeless. But Frizzy wanted to get out so desperately, with a useless thing that was precious. In the end, Frizzy was saved, by an assistant of the chef.

So the thing that happened next was that Frizzy became conscious. I don't know how, but he just did. This assistant had 'saved' him, by discarding him into a rubbish can. So, Frizzy tried to move his six-legged body down, and began his adventure to save himself. Luckily, some other ants were in the same kitchen and saved Frizzy from injuring himself more.

Frizzy went to the 'clinic'. He soon recovered and never ever wanted to land in a frying pan again.

The detective set his too-large briefcase down on the metal table across from Dylan, wrinkling his nose at the smell. Dylan slid his shoe back and forth through the puddle of grease accumulating on the concrete floor.

"So Mr. Smith," said the detective, pulling a notepad from the giant briefcase, "your official statement—your official legal statement—is that they tried to...fry you."

"Yes," said Dylan. A box fan buzzed somewhere in the bowels of the station, but otherwise, it was silent.

Dylan regarded his elbow, where the pink, raw skin was exposed beneath a giant burnt hole in his sweatshirt.

"You said that, due to an Internet rumor about human temperature converting..." he referenced his notes, pushing his glasses up his nose, "converting flesh into....diamonds? That they tried to fry you? To turn you into...diamond?"

They had, in fact. Grabbed him from the fast-food station, pulled him into the alley, dumped the grease-trap contents over half of his struggling body, and almost got him onto what he'd assumed was an industrial sheet-printer, before he'd kicked his way out and ended up here at the police station, smoking and covered in oil.

"Well," began the officer, removing a large object from the case as Dylan's jaw went slack, "just because it's on the Internet doesn't make it false, does it?" He leveled the flamethrower at Dylan.

I saw a circle of stones in the forest.

I stopped, putting out my arm to stop my companion as well. While I stared at the forest floor, she danced around my arm.

"Stop that," I told her sternly.

Cordelia stopped, the tips of her pointed shoes a near inch from the circle of stones. Her skirts swished with movement, as if they wanted her to continue forward.

"Do not step into the circle," I warned her.

Her dark eyes peered at me from beneath her veil. "And why would that be, Mr. Blackburn?"

I rolled my eyes and tapped my fingers on my cane. "Cordelia," I chastised lightly. She never did abide by my instructions, one of which was that there was no need to address me as 'Mr.', for I found formalities quite tiresome.

I stared deeply into the circle of stones, pondering the meaning of their appearance here, of all places. Bird calls echoed from deeper in the trees.

"The time, Miss Green?" I said abruptly, noting that the forest had gone quite silent.

Cordelia sighed and took her timepiece out of her skirt pocket. With one gloved hand she lifted her veil, and with the other rose the timepiece to her eyes. "Just a hair past eleven, sir," she said, tapping the face.

I stood motionless save for the tightening of my lips and the slightest crease of my brow. "Indeed, indeed. Strange, isn't it?" I adjusted my top hat and looked over at my companion then, the smallest of smiles on my face.

Cordelia raised a brow in return, then swept her eyes to the stone circle. "So it is what I believe it to be?" I did not miss the gleam in her eye.

I chuckled then, and lifted my cane. "Yes, Miss Green. A conjuring circle."