It starts with counting in threes. Three ice cubes for my coffee. Three steps behind other people. Three soft kisses.

Why do horses need horseshoes?

Open the fridge and close it again. I forgot what I was even looking for. Open it back again. Did it change at all? Close. Open again and pick something. Close.

What if I started making my own butter and bread?

Choose the same everyday shorts. Same everyday shoes. Everyday necklace. Until they get replaced by the new ones when they start falling apart. You have several pairs, but they are for special ocassions. Things need to be used for a specific purpose.

Are sharks smooth or rough skinned? Do they like to be pet?

Avoid eating with others, people who aren't safe. The sounds they make. The way they criticize what you eat. The loud clattering sounds of china and shriek.

What song would play at my funeral? I hope it's a fun one.

Touch every piece of clothing before you even consider putting it against your skin. Is it soft? Artificially so? Does it feel hot?

Put it back on the shelf, go see the pretty one you saw from the other one. No, not that one. It has the weird crease on the shoulder. Same as the sweater on the other shop. Next.

What do other people see as red?

T-rex arms are comfy. So is tapping my fingers together. Drumming on invisible heads, picturing the comfortable tap tap tap they make.

Is there a sound no one has ever made?

Look at the mirror but not at your eyes.

Is my face actually my face?

Stay up all night going through 21 different scenarios. Different songs. Different ways you could change your own life.

... Can I?

I see the tiny marker on your chat window, dancing its soft bleeping motion. Are you asleep on the other side of that blink? Are you dreaming of starlight and cotton candy? Are you waiting for something?

Or maybe you're looking at the night outside on the roof. The soft sounds of the sleeping city echoing. You see the leaves rustling in the dark.

It's lonely, isn't it?

We're all leaving.

There's the constant fear of never actually being okay. That you'll keep hurting others, and everything about you is wrong, from head to toe.

And I can't hold you. Not tonight. I'm just these letters on a page.

Take a deep breath, and I'll grab your hands. I'll be the spot to place your wary mind.

Try to find beauty in the shadows around you. In the sleeping birds and the sky stars and the ground stars. Write poems about dust dancing in front of the stage lights.

Of fairy homes and warm blankets. Christmases in the middle of April, and New Year's Eve in July. Paint strokes and soft melodies played on an old piano.

Feel the ridges on my fingernails, and the scars on my skin. Tousled hair on playful eyes.

We aren't our pain, but the steps we take away from it. Trying to find meaning in how we interact with others, how we connect.

Go to sleep, I'll carry you inside.

You're safe at home, at least for now.

It’s the forgotten things, really.

The quiet reminders of someone who isn’t there at the present, but longs to be.

A lonely sock. A tiny bottle of shampoo. A shirt or a sweatshirt.

Dreams hidden beneath a pillow. Promises inside the icebox.

It’s the memories that impregnate the walls and the canvases and the picture frames.

Makes the space come alive with memories and nostalgia.

There’s a chapstick on the table that wasn’t there before. Fairy lights that were hung with 4 hands present. Skies observed from the balcony chairs.

How much of oneself is left behind with each of these memories. They exist only in the space they were created, then remembered like old sepia pictures inside a cigar box.

We come together in those forbidden places, waiting to feel a bit complete once again.

I've always wanted to grow a garden, to have lovely plants to look at. All sorts of colors and shapes and ways to kiss the sunlight.

I started with a seed, and the rain washed it away. So I tried again, dehydration its end.

I tried growing another in water and it rotted. Tried again next week, and it wilted away.

So I bought a small plant next. It was good for a bit, and it outgrew its pot. I put it in a bigger one and it went sad and gray. Switched places, moved the soil with no avail. I saw it die with every passing day.

Got a full grown plant, and things would seem to be okay. But its leaves started falling, and stems went curved. And I was left with a huge pot full of nothing like I knew I would.

It's supposed to be easy. Friends have them all around their place. Salesmen tell me it's for dummies. My family's keep blooming every season.

So why can't I grow plants like everyone else?

I feel stupid and sad and so damn frustrated because I can't seem to do it right, no matter what I do. I forget and I try and I keep killing plants. I'm the only one that seems to be bound to ruin everything I touch.

I follow the guidelines, I do my research. I ask every person that seems to know their way around them.

But my plants keep dying and wiltering and rotting. And my loneliness grows every passing moment.

I long for my garden, my herbs, and their leaves. I long for the seedlings that grow in the spring.

I picture the flowers, bees in their leaves. I see all the lillies, sunflowers, tulips.

So I sit in the rain, with my rusty water can. Watering a garden that simply just can't.

Of course this is not about plants at all, though the struggle is real.

We each have our garden, we each have our dreams.

It's not like what we've all seen in the movies, you know.

First, these guys aren't wearing shiny suits or expensive shoes. The gold chains? Yeah, they're real. Nothing too big or heavy, but exposed and noticeable. Wiry chest hair all poking through and everything. One of them even has what I think was a St. Christopher's medal at the end of his.

The track suits aren't an empty stereotype, though, at least for the fuckers fresh from the Old Country. The guy who has me in a headlock, I can read the Adidas label on his sneakers in between the pushing and shoving and punching these guys have done for a while. Pretty sure the athletic attire also matches the shoes. His chain is silver, maybe platinum. He stinks. Seems like his cousins or whoever put him to work on this side of the Mediterranean should welcome him to the New Country with some Speed Stick.

The other two guys are dressed like normal blue collar dudes. Blue jeans, nothing special. Maybe Carhart shirts? Could be Duluth. Not bad condition, nothing too worn or torn. Decent clothes, but not fancy. These weren't made guys, just footsoldiers.

One of them wears decent Nikes, the other has Timberland steel toes.

Shit got real personal between me and those steel toes, let me say. I think I may have left a little blood on the one boot.

When I took the money, I thought I'd be able to grow it into three or four times what I borrowed. Turns out, not everything I'd hoped for came to pass.

I mean, now that I think about it, staring through a swelling eye at my fingers being splayed before me, I guess it makes sense that lies and deceit would go together with the types of people I paid. I didn't walk away empty handed, but I didn't exactly get everything I bought.

I laugh, and I'm a little disturbed at the burbling sound down in my chest that accompanies the wad of blood and spit I hawk out onto the alley pavement.

"Somethin' fuckin' funny, dead man?" I think his name is Tony. I mean, it's a safe bet, I guess. I'm gonna call him Tony, anyway.

Tony smirks at me. He's standing in my line of sight while his other two goons hold me still. Tracksuit has my head in a lock while Frankie splays my fingers out in his meathooks. Frankie is really strong, and he has a mean left hook.

I know his name really is Frankie, because Tony told him to hold my fingers like this.

Tony steps closer, cigar cutter in his hand. "Which one? If you don't pick now, we take two."

Well goddamn.

I had a job once. A good one, with benefits and everything. One of those benefits was an accidental death and dismemberment insurance plan. I mean, this is far from accidental, but I'm clearly dipping my toe into the dismemberment and death waters, here. Well. Fingers, but I guess that's splitting hairs. Anyway, that plan paid out about two grand for a finger lost at work.

Two grand for a piece of me doesn't seem like an awesome deal, but now that a finger is about to be severed for free, I'm wishing I still had that job.

I figure I earned the beating. Honestly, sending three thugs to whip my ass was a little excessive, but I get it. I didn't completely skip town but I did change where I slept and didn't exactly leave a forwarding address.

That job I used to have? I left it. It's part of why I needed a big cash infusion, fast. Okay, if we're being honest here, I didn't need the cash fast, but there was a bit of an impulsive urgency in my decision making.

Addicts do that.

Hi. My name is Clarke, and I'm an addict.

This is where I imagine the record scratch sound effect and the voiceover to come in as the frame freezes. eeeerrrwheerrrehhh 'Yep, that's me, about to get my finger cut off. I bet you're wondering how I got into this mess.'

I laugh again instead of answer which finger to take.

Tony punches me in the nose, which is awkward and uncomfortable for everyone, because my head is still held in an awkward position by Tracksuit.

"OUCH GODDAMMIT," I yell in between gasps. "FUCK!" I add for emphasis.

"You're lucky we don't just kill you, man," Tracksuit kinda whispers in my ear. His accent is thick, like, straight-outta-Palermo thick, but his English is pretty good.

God I hate myself for this, but I can't resist being a smartass. "Yeah, but corpses don't pay the bills, slick." Fuck me if Tony didn't hit me again. "OUCHQUITIT!"

Tony laughs his ass off at my outburst.

"Times up, funny man. We're taking two fingers, and if we have to dump your body in the landfill, we'll get our money from your mother in Hoboken."

Oh.

Oh, fuck that noise, Tony.

He moves in with the cutter, and he's aiming for my pinky finger, but he doesn't realize that mine won't be the corpse that ends up in the landfill today.

Technically, his won't either, but I appreciate the poetry of the sentiment.

I'm what you might call a late bloomer. Normally, people like me discover a talent and learn a trade in their early teens. I only found out a little over a year ago, which is why I left that steady job. I figured, shit, I can invest some money in a tutor and get caught up on a couple of decades worth of skillbuilding in an accelerated program, right?

Well. Sorta.

Insert the lies and deceit and whatnot, and what you get is me here and now.

Let me see if I can clarify a few things here. Back when I first saw the Star Wars movies (for sanity and argument's sake, let's just pretend there are three of those, but we can willingly acknowledge the awesomeness that exists in the seasons of streaming shows that dot the landscape) I didn't really identify with Luke Skywalker.

My sympathies kinda leaned Vader.

Until Return of the Jedi, anyway, when Luke showed up all in black with an agenda and a chip on his shoulder. Fucked Jabba's shit right on up with a smile. I dug that real hard. I mean, in the end, Team Vader, but Luke had a good showing in that flick.

Well. I learned that I can use the Force, like, for-real. Okay, so not really, but I learned that magic and wizards and all the shit that goes bump in the night? It's real. Fairies and vampires and ghosts and shit, too. It's all real.

I learned that I can do magic. It didn't take long to become addicted to learning more about it.

God, that makes me sound like a dork, but it's true. Wizards exist, and I can be one, only, I'm waaaaaaaay behind in learning how. So, I needed a tutor.

Remember how I said I leaned Vader?

Yeah, so, I had to find other people to show me Vader shit. Turns out those people kinda suck, and they took my money and ran after only showing me a few neat tricks. The trick they didn't show me was illusion magic so I could pass off fake money for real money. Thus, my investment plan evaporated.

Tellya what they did show me, though.

Fire.

Whoa, baby, am I good with fire. That was how I learned about this magic talent. I was looking for my Zippo one day, gettin' ready to enjoy a fat stogie with a glass of bourbon, and I couldn't find the damn thing. I just sorta gave up, idly chewing that Macanudo, and when I went to kinda flick the end of it in annoyance, it caught fire. I about ate the damn thing in shock, but there it was. I lit it by basically wishing it was lit.

I learned a few other things to bring me closer to some Vader shit, but I still come back to fire as my standard parlor trick.

He should not have mentioned mom.

It was all fun and games when we were just gonna lose a finger, but to bring my neurotic, guilt-inducing, awesome-cooking, obsessively-cleaning, preachy-but-generally-nice mother into this shit?

Flame-fucking-on, bitches.

What happened next is straight outta a Marvel movie's nightmare.

First, Tony's face just melts. He's sneering one minute and he doesn't even have time to scream the next. His face, eyes, skull, everything does it's best Ghost Rider impression before it looks like some shit from Raiders of the Lost Ark when the Nazis get fucked up. The rest of his body follows, and the alley smells like delicious barbecue. If you can ignore the singed hair thing.

Next, Frankie screams. He lets go of my hand and steps back, like, holding his hands up as if he's gonna block a punch or something. I'm a little disappointed in the scream, but hey, stress and fear are interesting things in the human condition. Meanwhile, it's only been a couple of seconds, and Tony is basically ash, Frankie is screaming, and Tracksuit still has me in a fucking headlock. I guess he settled into the "freeze" part of flight, fight, or freeze.

I guess Frankie is, what? Fight? I mean, he's in a stance and all, but he's still screaming.

I wish fire in his throat, and it obliges. The screaming stops, and he kinda makes a weird choking sound. His neck bulges in a way I haven't seen since that weird mask malfunctioned in Total Recall (the real one, not the Colin Farrel mockery) and I chuckle a little. I wish the fire a little hotter, and the dude's head falls off, since there's no neck or vertebrae there to support it anymore.

Neat. I've not done that one before.

Still in a headlock, I can't resist. "I find your lack of faith disturbing," I quip, and suddenly Tracksuit remembers he's holding me nearly and dearly.

He shoves me away, and I land facefirst on black, smoking asphalt. I choke on what's left of Tony as I gasp for air and inhale ashes.

"Oh, that's fucking GROSS, Tracksuit, fuck you man."

He finally snaps out of his freeze, and I see he's reaching for his waistband. I cock my head a little as I recognize how unlikely it's been for a gun to be safely snugged away there when the only thing holding it in place is an elastic waistband. God seems to favor the stupid and the brave, I guess.

Anyway, so out comes his shiny nickel-plated sissy pistol and I can't help but roll my eyes.

I imagine it as melted slag in his hand, and it is. The ammunition gives a few satisfying pops as they explode in the magazine, and his hand is partially incinerated, partially blown apart by about a dozen nine millimeter minibombs. A few pieces of white-hot shrapnel zip my way but I put up a shield to deflect them (one of the lessons I learned from my asshole tutor).

Tracksuit is screaming now and GOD these guys are loud.

I picture the flaming skeletal remains like what happened when Blade staked vampires in that piece of motion picture perfection (ignoring the final boss battle) and Tracksuit is so much dust on the wind. With a thought, I dispose of what remains of Frankie.

I wanted to avoid all of this, which is why I took my beatin'. I could have melted these fuckers the moment they rolled up on me, but I really, really didn't want to go to war.

They had to bring up mom, man.

God bless her neurotic heart, nobody's gonna mess with mom.

Now I gotta scoop up these cocksuckers' gold chains and melt 'em down into bars to pawn before I track down the other sunsabitches that will come looking for these dead cocksuckers.

Looks like war can never really be avoided, especially since I love my mama.

Been some time since I've posted on my own profile and not as Prose., but I wanted to post something from here and tag some writers, because I want to start getting back to my own shit. I need to write more, or just plain out start writing again. Prose. is a labor of love, so that's great, but no matter what, I need to write. Realized today I haven't even posted to my own channel in ages, and it worked out, because I didn't want to post my work on The Prose. Channel, because I like to keep that for the writers aside from me, and my voice and big, fat face on the channel is enough from me, without reading my own work, too. Holy fuck, I couldn't even watch that...

Been on this gnarly but satisfying carnivore diet the last couple of months or just less, and yesterday was an all-Hell-breaks-loose day. Beer, whiskey, bread, name it... paying the fiddler now. I'm sure he's thrilled. He's an asshole.

As myself, I want to thank you for being on Prose., and for being so generous with the work you give to it. Every day I read something great on here. So much talent in one place, and I think back to when it was just an idea stemming from another hangover, in the heat of a Texas afternoon, where I happened to find myself in that particular moment in time. Looking at Prose. now, it's very humbling, and I am grateful to you.

Alright, enough mushy feelings and shit. Here's a link to my own channel and some poems from here, but also appearing in a book of mine, set to release in the near future.

Thanks again.

-Jeff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKw-vodNOMU

If I could have maybe a shred

Lightning bugs

Light

Done by a star

Shine down

Onto me

Bring my body

To shore

And breathe in the

Salt

G l i m m e r i n g

S h i m m e r i n g

Take the sparkles from my eyes

Wash them over

Over

Me

;

Take

It

Share my

Soul

We can share

The light

Light i found in the depths of a tidal wave

Wondering why i had not found it

Until i drowned

Hello, Writers and Dear Readers.

In today's video, a couple of our favorites help welcome in some new blood from around the globe. Here's the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbiNjQA3DM8

And.

As always.

Thank you for being here.

-The Prose. team

If you've ever been haunted, you know what I'm talking about.

Of the shadows dancing in the corner of your eye. The voices that are never there, but keep whispering. Objects keep being lost, things out of order, out of their assigned space.

Ghosts look like the memories you've forgotten, but that your mind keeps reminding you of. A slight shiver on the back of your neck, and a silent prayer that it'll go away soon. You focus on work, focus on music, focus on that puzzle that's missing a couple of pieces. The shiver remains.

Go to bed, try to get some rest. Try to close your eyes with the whispers echoing on the empty walls. Blankets feel safe, lights are warm. And yet, there's that corner that is always cold, always in shadows. No matter how much you rearrange the room or paint the walls, it's always there. Echoing. Waiting. Feeding on a single drop of decanted fear going down your spine.

You feel them when memories repeat, when you're home alone. When you feel like a little kid going down to the kitchen in the middle of the night. How vulnerable and tiny it can feel. Your flashlight starts flickering and the shadows get bigger. And you got nowhere to run. The hallway extends infinitely, and you shrink. You whimper and you cry and there's no way out. The ghosts are near, and you wish it was just dead people under old raggedy blankets, or souls trying to find their way. But these ghosts are much more real. They're made of flesh and bone and everything that's wrong.

You curl up and wait for them to pass. And eventually they do.

Ghosts like that are burglars, taking your hope and your light and your shine.

They're hungry and mean. Bad bad bad.

Daylight comes in and things are back into place. Except your own mind.

Everything is a little out of place. A little bit blurry. You're not even sure you're even real.

Maybe what they do is make you a bit of a ghost yourself. Until you wander and cover your face with a sheet, and hope it'll be better tomorrow. You isolate and haunt your own home, your own life. You see others through a veil, you can't be part of the living.

'Till you vanish, alone, all dust.

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn't my own. Who was that old woman staring back at me? Why is she here in my bathroom?

She has been beside me for the past ten years in everything I've done, following me everywhere I go. However, I only see her in reflections. She is bent and weathered, unlike me. I feel fresh and vibrant. My mind is no different at seventy than it was at twenty. Ageless, I will live forever as my best self, never changing.

I woke in a fog, one confused morning after a dreamless night, stumbling blindly into the bathroom to rinse out my stale, wine-soaked mouth. Oh, Lord. I found the old woman staring back at me from the mirror over the sink and I couldn't take it anymore.

"Stop. Stop. Stop, dammit. Stop chasing me. Leave me alone. Go bother someone else. Can't you see I'm having a bad morning?" I screamed at her face in the glass as I tossed a hastily discarded high heel from the previous night at her.

She shattered without a word, staring back at me sadly with crinkled, dull eyes. Her hair was a tangle of silvery roots peeking out of the unkempt forest of artificial auburn curls. 'Who was she kidding', I thought. Her pursed mouth was sitting at the intersection of wrinkle and line, with her garish russet lipstick bleeding into the gutters along the roadway of her face.

"Shit". I knelt to pick up the broken pieces of glass and heard my knees crack and creak at the effort. Picking up a star-shaped fragment of the mirror on the floor a flash of a memory escaped it. Had I imagined it? I looked again and the flash turned into a movie of myself as a toddler crying out in the night after a bad dream.

I saw the nightmare emerge from the glass. There was a bear cub stuck at the top of a burning tree that was pushing up through the floor of my bedroom. I couldn't reach the little bear and I sobbed until my Daddy swept me into his big arms and tried to comfort me. At that age, I had no words to explain my terror. It didn't matter. Whatever it was, he could make it better.

Dropping the toddler dream glass into the waste basket I stooped to collect the next piece to see a still photo of my big sister and me, dressed in our pastel Easter coats with be-ribboned straw bonnets. My sister already had chocolate smears on her face from sneaking her candy before church. My skinny legs looked cold under my fancy dress covered only with little white lacy socks, which always seemed to droop on my toothpick ankles. A happy day. A good memory recorded on the broken glass.

A jagged slice from the mirror glowed darkly under the bright overhead lights. It brought back a frightening memory of my parents' darkened bedroom. Shades are drawn, and the doctor left the room carrying his black bag, shaking his head. What was happening? What was wrong? No one talked to me. I was six years old and in the way. They wouldn't let me talk to Mommy.

I sat on my bed and cried, while my older sister told me to quit being a baby and shut up. That day was a mystery to me until years later as an adult I heard the story being retold to my younger sister. The doctor was there to take a blood sample from my mother, who was RH-negative. He was concerned there were going to be problems with my baby sister because of my mother's blood type. My God. I thought my mother was dying. It was all so secretive and frightening to a child.

I quickly disposed of that portion and picked up a good-sized chunk that was reflecting my first flute solo in the band when I was in fifth grade. The song was, 'Girl from Ipanema'. My mother surprised me by sewing a pretty navy blue dress with a red ribbon on the bodice. She also bought me my first pair of stockings and a girdle, which she had refused to let me wear before, even though all my friends had been wearing them since fourth grade. She finally allowed me to shave my legs. I remember playing the solo perfectly, shaking in my shoes. The only thing I was concentrating on was hoping my stockings did not fall down while I was standing alone on the stage.

My fingers bloodied on the next pieces, leaving rusty drops on the tile. Alone in a hospital room with two nursing students trying to guide me through the paralyzing contractions for the birth of my first son, Jeffrey. Alone in my hospital room after his birth, listening to a social worker trying to make me give him up for adoption. The rage and anger welled up in me again, remembering how they kept him from me, hoping I would give in.

The next slip of glass made me smile, watching my husband hold my hand as the nurses rushed the stretcher down a crowded hallway yelling, "She's crowning! She's crowning! Get the doctor!" All I could think at that moment was, "I'm not alone. I'm not alone." And, that made me cry. I set the piece aside to keep forever.

The other bloody shard of glass showed me a movie of my daughter in the recovery room after my granddaughter was born by C-section. My little Sara looked so worn out and fragile. Everyone else was admiring the baby. I wanted to make sure my baby was comforted and that she was not alone. We didn't need to say a word. We were just two mothers sitting together, sharing a bit of peace before the world intruded.

The last bit of glass that was big enough to pick up with my hand had white frosting on it. In the glare of the bathroom lights. I could make out three little bridesmaids marching down the grassy aisle to the strains of a Star Wars march. My Son, Sam, dressed in a vest and bow tie, waiting for his Bride to follow the little bridesmaids to meet him under the arbor.

I turned the glass around and saw white and blue frosting smears and a cloudy portrait of my daughter in white, her new husband, and their little family posing for wedding day pictures, surrounded by our family.

I swept up the glass dust with a broom and dropped it into the waste basket, turning to see if that old lady was still in the room with me. Without the mirror, she had nowhere to hide. I smoothed my artificial auburn locks and promised myself to make an appointment with my hairdresser very soon. I didn't want to end up looking like that old crone.