Graverobbing is a treacherous thing. A man with one eye told me that once; I do not know if I believe him. We do what we must to survive and I frown upon no action. No matter how "treacherous" it may be. It is easy to title an action as good or bad, but how about you try being on the receiving end of that judgement. If you are judged good, all is right with the world. If you are judged bad, you will go kicking and screaming just as everyone else does.

So, as I do every night, I left my disheveled home for the comfort of the shovel and pick. I repeat to myself, as always, that I am only doing what I must to survive but I know that is not true. This fact carves at my insides like a golddigger who just struck the jackpot. I drink on the way, maybe a bit too heavily. I stumble and fall, cracking my skull on the hard stone of the street. Delirious, I attempt to stand. With the drink having numbed my senses to the point of oblivion, I feel the world teeter totter around me. I die but not before unleashing the contents of my stomach unto the soft warm stone of the street.

Up and away I went: out of my mortal coil, down the cobble streets, through the old stables I used to lurch around, around the statue of a presumed prestigious mayor, and up into that beautiful dark purple sky.

My world shrinks before me until I am left in the abyss of the aether. Have you ever tried seeing out of your elbow? Well, that doesn't begin to describe the level of emptiness I was experiencing then. It was... sublime; for the first time in my life, the noise just washed away and I was left with only the impression of light. This deep ominous darkness cradled me like a swadled babe. I could not have rested any better than that.

Then, I was jostled awake by drunk passerby. He shook me as if my life depended on it or something. I will not describe how I sobbed, cried, moaned, groaned, or begged. Instead, I will only say that I have an unhealthy obsession with death now. I have tried stabbing, choking, drowning, and poisoning myself but nothing will get the job done. Meanwhile, the people who once shunned me, now treat me with kindness and respect.

I cannot stand it! I want sleep, I want the everloving embrace of the night to take me but not a single arrow can take my soul from me.

I can never have that now, though. I have spent my life stealing the sleep from the dead and disturbing the rest of those who have passed. I... hate what I have done and what I have become. I wander the streets at night looking for death, but during the day I act as a man reborn. That man I am is not me but I cannot stop him from taking over.

So, I set up a plan. I cause the particularly gruesome death of a neighbor and I feign my flee into the forest. Then, I hid inside the morticians home until he finished dressing up the body but even he was not skilled enough to clean my mess. As they moved the body to the carpenters for a new casket, I followed close behind with not a soul noticing me. Once they had placed the body in the casket and prepared to set its lid, I made a distraction by setting a fire to a nearby home. With that complete, I removed the body and dumped it into the river. I replaced him with my lively corpse and I waited for my death to come. The funeral arrives and I hear the symphony of sadness that these events always bring about.

Then, it came. Thud. Thud. Thud. The not so descriptive sound of soil being shoveled onto my new home. As the weight of the air increases I begin to feel sleep take me and I feel my eyes finally close in eternal slumber. Until I am shaken awake by a very confused looking man, he looks at me with shock, then anger, then fear. I throttle the man for disturbing me, I curse his life into the sky. I just wanted sleep but I am not even gran- wait, something has changed. This is not my graveyard.

Where are the rose bushes around the noble families headstones?

Where is the church with its stained glass murals?

Where have my clothes gone?

Why are there great towering beasts of glass lumbering in the distance?

No, I refuse this. I pull myself back into the grave and close the lid.

I tremble, shake, and quiver. Why do I feel so cold?

Where is this sense of dread coming from?

Why can I not control the tremble of my heart?

I close my eyes and open them again. I am looking into the face of a drunk passerby as I lay on the soft warm stone of the street. I laugh. I laugh. I laugh.

I hunt like the monsters do. Patience, focus, speed, and violence; end the hunt before the prey knows it has begun. I do not partake in fear as the other denizens of this hole do. I do not succumb to the voraciousness of the kill as my cohorts do. I keep things simple, clean, and quick.

A slice of the throat, a snap of the spine, a blow to the head, or a shot to the heart. Whatever gets the job done quickest and cleanest. I am like the others in another way, though. The hunt is my life, my work, and my love. I pray night and day to the dark star gazing down upon us for a bountiful kill. I do not speak to the others about my hunts. That would take away the sanctity and purity of my vocation.

The steel plants around me camoflauge my movements throughout the tangled bones of a once immense city. The bite of steel on my skin reminds me of my daily labors. When the dark star awakens, I begin my prayers by burning half of last nights bounty. I feed the sky because it cannot provide for itself. The smoke of my kill rises to kiss the dark star and fill its stomach with the delicious sap of life. The dark star provides me cover and power in return.

After my prayer, I check up on each of my preys. Who is vulnerable? Who is safe? What do they have? Do I want it? Where did they get it? Are they armed? Are they prepared for death? A new question forms everyday and an old one is lost at the same rate. After that, I check on those hunting me and I change my campsite. I do not maintain a pattern as those hunting me are as smart as I am. I keep my nests exposed to the sky, to keep my sleeping body under the gaze of the dark star. It is dangerous but no one is fool enough to enter such a transparent trap.

With that done, I begin the hunt. There is always something to feast upon and I feast lightly. Todays hunt is for the Tarragor: a beast of sinuous muscle, claws as sharp as its instincts, and bile as hot as fire. It was recently wounded when running away from a female Tarragor; it has failed to mate and it will not get a second chance as the females spread rumors of a males failure. I am doing this creature a service as its fate has already been decided by its own people.

My spear is made from the bones of the steel trees around us and forged under the eye of the dark star itself. It was a hard won gift but it speaks for itself in its elegance and strength. The Tarragor sits on the edge of a steel tree, prepared for the coming onslaught of hungry predators. It will never get the chance to survive that battle. I lift my spear, which has been coated in the flesh of the earth to prevent any light from glinting off its steel. I reel my arm back and wait for the perfect moment.

The creature sits patiently knowing that the slightest movement could expose its vital organs. It may not know I am here but it knows when the hunt has begun. In a flash, it spreads its bile around itself causing steam to rise into the air. This distorts my vision, preventing a clear shot. I hear the frustration of a foolish hunter who charges out to meet the Tarragor. The human-like creature grapples with the Tarragor and they go tumbling off the edge of the tree.

I look over the edge to see the hunter being eviscerated by the claws and teeth of the powerful creature. My opportunity arises when it opens its mouth to feed; I throw my spear as the sky throws rock. Fast, precise, and violently. The Tarragor is struck in the heart and it collapses without a sound to be made. I move to the body quickly and slit its throat to confirm its death; the bile spills onto the ground leaving a burning scent in the air.

I tote the creature on my back, leaving the dead hunter behind because that was not my kill. I skin, gut, and prep the animal for the mornings prayer. Finally, I feast heartily on the marrow, heart, stomach, and flesh of the Tarragor. Sleep comes easily as it does for us all in this abyss upon the earth.

An elevator tried to eat me last evening. Don’t believe me? My hands still shake at the mention of that mechanical beast, but I’ll try to weave the tale for you.

I arrived at work, clocked in, and as I was assigned to man a desk on the top floor and the stairs were halfway across this Noah’s Ark-sized building, I headed for the much closer elevator. Like normal, I entered the mobile cube, pressed the button for my destination, and watched the chrome doors distort my reflection as they closed. Like normal, the floor rose.

A buzz like that usually accompanied by the words, “This is a test of the American Broadcast System,” assaulted my ears, and the elevator stopped. Slowly, the ascent resumed. Then a metal POP rang out. The lights flickered off, and the whole box dropped.

As my feet left the tiles and weightlessness spun in my gut, my thoughts raced. Instinct said to brace myself, but I knew that wasn’t right. Should I try to grab the miniscule railing? Should I go limp?

The fall ended, and with no decision made, my knees bent to absorb the impact. New thoughts formed a shoving crowd. How far did I fall? Where am I?

The location indicator beside the door read B. Was I really in the basement? Or was I below that, in the pit where the elevator retreated when not in use? I pressed the buttons. Alarm. Door Open. All the floor numbers. Even Door Close. Nothing happened beyond feebly flickering lights.

Was I really below ground? Or was I dangling at some unspecified height? Was that B the elevator’s declaration of intent to drop me should I move wrong?

I pulled my phone from my sweater pocket. One signal bar. Please work.

I flipped through my contacts and selected the front desk.

As a little circle spun on the screen and I waited for that first ring to confirm connection, memories flooded in of when programmers had set up this elevator. With the doors open and their slim laptops in hand, they had instructed the box to stop just above or below a floor so they could inspect its underside and top. It had reminded me of zoo vets asking animals to perform certain “tricks” so they could be assessed.

That was not an analogy I needed. This was a wild beast we should not have kept in captivity to do our bidding. It had chosen me as its prey, and I had fallen into its trap. It would drag me down into its pit for slow digestion. My co-workers (especially the one waiting for me to relieve her so she could go home) would notice my absence, right? They would see my car in the parking lot and know I had to be somewhere around here.

Finally, the phone rang. Someone answered. She couldn’t understand me; the connection was too poor.

I held the phone directly in front of my mouth and spoke slowly, annunciating each word. “I’m. Trapped. In. The. Staff. Elevator.”

To hear her verify she understood was such a weight off my chest. Someone knew where I was. They would get me out, or if they couldn’t, they’d call someone who could. Even if they had to hack through a wall, the Fire Department would rescue me.

I still tried not to move for fear I hung halfway somewhere. The feeling was like while waiting at the top of one of those thrill rides where you know you’re going to drop but not when, except worse. I didn’t know if the floor would drop. I didn’t know how far it would drop. I was pretty sure that drop would not be safe.

Eventually, I heard a beep as the beast was called to the main level. Its gears churned with a sound like rushing water, but nothing moved. After a handful of heartbeats, the box jumped, and as my heart hammered faster, the elevator journeyed up the shaft with a series of hops.

It chimed to say it had reached a destination.

Please be a viable exit, I silently pled as the doors peeled back and revealed the workroom where I had clocked in only six minutes before.

Six minutes. Such a short timeframe, but it might as well be forever when you’re expecting any second to drop to your death. Maybe it would sound better as three hundred sixty seconds.

Vincent was six years old and human, and that was a crime.

Like the criminals of olden days, he peered between bars, but these did not belong to a traditional prison. These were a protection, a railing to keep ones from stumbling onto the basement stairs from the wrong direction.

Vincent stood on his tiptoes, chin on the dusty hardwood floor, ready to duck if anyone looked his way.

In the room beyond the rail, his mother worked her craft, metal tools clinking as she exchanged one for another. Drop cloths wrinkled beneath her feet. The same material clothed Vincent. He liked to think of himself as a tiger in the jungle, camouflaged.

“Is it fixable, Cy-ann?” her client asked.

Mother flicked another layer of spectacles over her eyes, and Vincent tried not to laugh. She looked like a bug. “I don’t know, Hope. You’ve got all these extra parts siphoning off you.”

The giant robot lying on Mother’s workbench ran the facsimile of a hand over a bulge on its hip. “They are not extra parts. This is my offspring.”

Mother shook her head. “The olden ones would laugh.”

“The olden ones are dead,” Hope chided. “They lost the war, and in our mercy, we AI allow any humans that were alive at the end of it to live out their natural lives.”

“In isolation,” Mother grumbled. “You deny us the right to bear children, yet you make improved copies of yourselves.”

“Procreation is a sacred thing,” Hope defended with a wave. “It is part of why you defined us living creatures, after all.”

Mother gestured with an adjustable wrench. “Just seems ironic. You could easily build your child on a table, but here it’s like you’re copying us. If it’s so wrong to be human, why would you do that?”

“It is not only humans that have offspring attached to them until they are ready to be a separate life form. It is a proven method used by nature for millennia.”

“But it’s hurting you, Hope.” Mother brought the wrench down on the pile of surplus parts. “It needs to come off.”

Hope grabbed the wrench. “I came here for you to find a way to make it work.”

“It’ll work best not attached to you.” Mother added a second wrench to their skirmish.

Vincent held his breath. He knew his mother was strong; either of those wrenches weighed as much as he did. Still, he knew the stories. This was a war machine made to kill humans.

Something sparked. The stench of burnt metal slid into Vincent’s nostrils just before sound chased everything away.

Vincent hit the stairs, arms flung wide to keep him from tumbling down them. He scrambled to his feet and peeked between the bars again. Smoke cloaked the room, lit by irregular flashes. Mother’s spectacles glinted, shattered and resting on the chest pocket of her overalls.

She wasn’t moving.

“Mother!”

Vincent swung around the railing and scuttled to his mother’s side, tripping over the wrinkles in the drop cloth. Coughing, he grabbed her limp arm and traced it to her shoulder. Soot streaked her skin and colored the floor cover, leaving an outline of where her arm had been like a white shadow.

“Mother?”

Still, she didn’t move. Her eyes were closed. He put his hands on her darkened cheeks, tears blurring his vision.

Clicks on rapid repeat sounded behind him, and Vincent whirled.

This is your fault, he wanted to yell at the robot struggling to rise. All robots are evil. But no words escaped his gaping mouth, only a pale moan.

No, he wasn’t crying. Mother said only babies cried, and he wasn’t a baby. Not anymore.

But it was still illegal to be six years old.

Hope 2.1, his mother’s most loyal client, turned its fake face toward him, tiny diode eyes shining cobalt through the haze. “You are a human child.”

Vincent’s heart pounded. His gaze darted over his surroundings, searching for a weapon. The giant wrench lay at his mother’s side, and next to it, a baby wrench.

A child’s weapon.

Vincent dove for it, but as his fingers wrapped the tool, a claw-like hand encircled his neck and lifted him. Vincent kicked, but only air caressed his feet. The robot’s grasp constricted. Wrench clutched in both hands, he swung it at his captor’s wrist, but it bounced off with only a quiet ring.

He was six. None of the heroes of the Lost War had been six, and even they had surrendered eventually. What could he do?

Vincent’s lungs burned, and that fire spread into his throat, his brain, down his arms and into his fingers. He couldn’t hold them up anymore.

As darkness crawled from the edges of his vision and sound retreated like waves returning to the sea, his hands dropped to his sides. The flames on his tongue tasted like salt and metal, and the wrench fell to the floor with a muted clatter.

Just as darkness blotted out the last bit of light, the ground met Vincent’s soles. The grip around his neck loosened, and he sucked in a breath, then another, again and again, faster than he thought possible.

With every gulp of smoky air, another spot of darkness was washed away. The splotches danced and swayed, combining and shrinking like mud on the shower floor.

“You are Cy-ann’s offspring,” Hope said, fingers flexing.

As they pressed into his skin, Vincent heard his heart again. His gaze flicked to the extra parts his mother had tried to detach from the robot, now a scorched ball of wires loosely connected to it.

His eyes followed the robot’s body back to its face, but no emotion hung there. No smile, no frown, nothing to clue him in to how the machine felt or thought.

It lifted its other hand to his brow, claws rearranging into the barrel of a gun.

“I will let go of you, human child, but if you make any sudden movement, I will fire, and your head will explode. Understood?”

Vincent nodded as best he could with talons beneath his chin and a gun at his forehead.

Hope’s hand fell from his neck, and it instructed him to approach. He didn’t want to, but he didn’t want his head to explode either, so he obeyed.

“Salvage what you can,” Hope ordered.

Vincent looked at the sparking scrap heap. He helped Mother often when clients left projects that weren’t intelligent and couldn’t record. That experience told him most of this wasn’t repairable.

He put his hands on it anyway and pulled on wires. What if he couldn’t fix it?

What if he did fix it? Would Hope kill him as soon as he finished? The humans who had been alive at the end of the Lost War fifty years ago were supposed to die off. They weren’t supposed to make more humans.

But humans always find a way to survive, Mother said. You must always find a way to survive, Vincent.

He could barely see what his hands did. Stupid tears. They were a weakness, a human weakness. They told the robot exactly how scared he was.

Only one thing rendered clear in the blurry scene, the darkness of the gun’s barrel. Vincent tried not to look at it, but like a mythical black hole, it kept drawing his eyes in.

With every spark as he reconnected wires, he expected the gun to go off. What would it feel like if his head exploded? Vincent was pretty sure it would hurt, but for how long?

Hope 2.1’s legs moved, and Vincent scooted backward, arms shielding his skull.

Without a word or touch, the robot stood and walked out the front door, leaving the human child to sit in silence, expecting a bullet that never came.

***

Vincent was sixteen and growing, and that was a problem. Like most teenaged boys, he ate a lot, much more than a seventy-year-old woman living alone would have needed, the amount Cy-ann was allotted.

He stared at the plate his mother set before him. “Mom, you haven’t eaten anything today.”

Cy-ann put on a wan smile. “It’s okay, Vince.”

“No, it’s not okay. You didn’t eat anything yesterday either.” He slid the green-laden plate back to her.

She stepped away from the counter, heavy boots loud on the cloth-covered, hollow wood floor of her workroom. “I’m on a diet.”

“Like they wrote about in your antique magazines?” Vincent’s nose crinkled. “The olden ones were stupid. And hey, you said you were gonna let me finish those servos.”

Cy-ann shrugged and continued to boot up her sauntering tool.

With a sound like an explosion, the front door banged open, and Vincent dove behind the counter.

“Cy-ann?” a metallic voice rang.

Vincent made himself as flat as possible, heart shimmying into his throat. He knew that voice. His skin tingled, remembering the imprint of the robot’s fingers. He never told his mother what happened, and though Hope frequented her services, Vincent always hid like he was supposed to.

Even if he didn’t have the courage to render them aloud, questions lingered. Why did Hope spare him? If it saw him now, would it spare him again?

Vincent swallowed, and the bitter saliva burned as it squeezed past his displaced heart.

“My offspring has been learning about vegetation through hands-on experiments. I have no use for the produce, so I wondered if you might want it, Cy-ann.”

“Thank you.” Vincent heard the tap of his mother’s calloused hands taking a ceramic bowl. “I promise to put it to good use.”

Pressed against the cold floor, Vincent’s chest refused to take in air. Did Hope 2.1 remember him? Had this evil robot calculated that he would need more food and concocted this ruse to help him?

In a world where he was an illegal existence, did Vincent have one ally besides the mother who had given him this life of hiding? If it saw him, would Hope 2.1 let him live?

Vincent’s shaking limbs curled under him, fire in every cell. He pushed away from the floor, a man ready to face his fate standing. His head rose above the counter, then his shoulders.

The one facing him held a bowl of elongated, yellow fruit, and she stood there alone.

Both tears and laughter laced her voice. “That was quite the dramatic entrance.”

***

Vincent was twenty-six and a mobile mechanic triage surgeon, and that was fortunate for the robotic victims strewn across the complex.

“The explosions happened so suddenly,” a sleek model told him. An individual, not mass produced. They knelt alongside one of the burnt robots on the catwalk. Beyond them, others fought to put out a fire in silence.

It was not a scene from one of Vincent’s olden novels. Humans would have shouted and screamed. Robots never screamed. Robots never shouted at one another.

A human as damaged as this victim would not have been salvageable.

Vincent unfurled his tools and began peeling away layers of melted plastic. His nose furrowed at the stench.

“Can this one be saved?” the sleek one questioned.

Vincent bit down on his cheek, denying his hands their right to shake. “Most of the body, no, but if I can get to the memory core and download the individuality files...” He trailed off, easing a panel open.

“They say you are the most elite doctor here. Please do your best, human.”

Vincent didn’t look up. It had been a while since he had seen another human, and he didn’t want to look at the sleek model’s cherubic copy of a face any more than he had to.

It’s because I’m human that I’m so good at this. He knew better than to say it aloud, but the thought helped keep his hands steady. I have real emotions and imagination. Those are my superpowers.

His patient was a very old model, perhaps one that had witnessed the Lost War. Its ports were at an odd angle, and Vincent carefully rolled it on its side. “What’s the victim’s designation?”

“Hope 2.1.”

Vincent froze. Ice crawled from long-gone imprints on his throat to the tips of his fingers and over his head like a mask. It glazed his eyes, reflecting a different scene, a different bundle of scorched wires, a different time his hands, then so small, had tried to salvage what they could.

“Human, what do you look at?”

Vincent blinked hard, and fire spread from where shallow tears leaked onto his cheeks. This robot had spared him. This robot had saved him. He couldn’t let it die now.

“What are you to Hope 2.1?”

“Offspring.”

Vincent’s blurred gaze jumped to the sleek model. “What’s your name?”

“Compassion 5.7.”

A tiny grin snuck onto the corner of Vincent’s lips. “Your presence here matters, Compassion. Talk to your parent. Tell it you care.”

“That is a silly human notion.”

“Humans designed you to be like us. Don’t completely discount our ways.”

“My parent says that often.”

Vincent’s grin grew, quickly hidden in a grimace as he forced another panel to swing aside.

As he worked, Compassion did as instructed and told Hope it cared. The speech wasn’t ardent, but though the robot had been told to speak the words, Vincent felt they were true. Compassion would not be here if it did not care about its parent.

Was this the same creature that began life as a bundle of scrap he had helped save? There was no resemblance other than the wires visible beneath its soft, translucent skin, but all robots had wires.

Still, he couldn’t help but wonder. Like the gun barrel that had captured his eyes as a six-year-old, Compassion drew his gaze now. He tore it away, tried to glue his sightline to his work, but it meandered back again and again.

Compassion returned his stare, and like its parent, no emotion sat on its visage. “Your appearance is firm for a human’s. All I have ever seen are wrinkled and bent. I have never understood how humans once ruled the world, but looking at you…”

Something tingled in Vincent’s chest, and he fought to keep his breaths even, his face straight. “Compassion is an interesting name. Do you know what it means?”

“I have fifty-four thousand four hundred thirty-two dictionaries currently stored in my database,” Compassion countered, head tilted. “Communication is my area of expertise.”

“Let me put it this way.” Vincent looked up, staring directly into the cobalt glow of its almost-human eyes. “Compassion, what would you do if you encountered a human child?”

-fin-

Thank you for reading!

Alright, alright... I began, clearing my throat and stoking the fire...

Randolph was the name. We'd crossed paths once in 8th grade; and a couple times again at the end of 12th. We were of the same class, but I was just a kid and he was... grown up somehow. It was rumored that he always kept a flame alight.

"Somekind of Signal...?" Winnie whispered, and we all thought it must be something underhand. But what? We scanned his folk's house in the distance.

"Has anyone seen it?" asked Robin, flipping the lamp abruptly. I looked out the window, three doors down. It was getting late, and I closed the sash without a sound.

"Must be 'round back," peered Toni, as Frances spat, "Dammit, why don't we just go and find out?"

Now there was no bowing out. All of us thought the guy---dressed in black with tinted glasses and perpetual noon-day shadow--- had some kind of secret pact.

Did we really want to find out? Tonight? There were seven of us and no excuse, so we took ourselves to task, suddenly aware of every leaf and twig like a death trap. Dark sweats, hoodies, and sneakers; we took one large flash and put the dog in back. Just in case. For all we knew, the creep could be a werewolf or other blood-hungry body.

It wasn't far, but the patter of our hearts and stifled breathes crippled whatever gun-ho might be had. There seemed to be fresh tracks to the porch... not quite "on" the path...

We craned our necks---joints cracking----to scan the upper windows, having always been most suspicious of the pseudo-Victorian tower atop. We waited and watched; Clocked each passing bat and tried to settle our nerves while waving away the stabs of mosquitoes and gnats.

It was dark. We didn't dare shine the flash, but suddenly to our horror the protective cloud cover lifted. Instantaneously, we were terrified to see our full length figures and lengthy shadows intruding into the yard, so blatantly marching out. A dog barked. Some lights in the downstairs parts flickered in and around. We had an impending fear of being found---a charge of trespassing would forever haunt us no doubt.

We were ready to convince each other that it was still possible to back out; that our shivering was not cowardice, only caused by the autumn evening damp; but then... we saw what it was really about... that flame, dark and suddenly out.

At first its evidence was just barely visible, a broad flash of pale light in the window tower... The apparition in slow motion turned around, looked fully down, cascading tresses... making direct eye contact. Like a zap. I met the startled sight of my sister, deathly white... Two brief screams rang out. She fell back into the darkness ... and I  

...I died from fright.

they think that we are pink and lace,

teasing, flirting, never serious,

starbucks, selfies, long hair, makeup,

but we are so much more.

dark warriors, amazon queens, puppetmistresses, negotiators, serpents poised to strike, ready to compromise on anything but our beliefs.

you might find it strange but it's true.

girls can be heroes too.

He came home from work and nothing phased him. Her new appearance got a shrug. She felt deader to him then before, and now ugly on top of it. The mirror beckoned for her. She tried to relent, but eventually caved. She jumped into the mirror and found herself in a black room. "Where am I?" she asked. A voice said to her "Nowhere. You are nowhere to be found when you try so hard to stand out." A light flickered and she followed it out to the exit where she jumped back into her room. She knew the voice was right, and so she gave up worrying about her body.

"I love myself." And then the ghost man put his hand on her shoulder and told her kindly, "I love you."

*Title by K.C.

and that is why people like you will never win. because people like you only see the power in bloody knuckles and whiskey, rifles and leather. in dominating and being dominated, in humiliation. earn your stripes, they say, own the pain and take it like it's your birthright. drink that bitter regret like mother's milk, and don't you dare complain.

but i can tell you that there is power in kisses and tears, in longing and admitting, in standing up for the right thing even if you know you'll lose, power in warm coffee and spilled ink, in scratched-out poems

on the bathroom walls, in being afraid and knowing it, but walking into the ring with your head held high no matter how big or how fierce the lion is.

my adamance is so much more than you can ever understand.