A blob, it's been called Melvin. It's been calling itself the only one around, of its kind that it deems perhaps the only. It doesn't seem lonely, and if it is then heavily ignoring to state that as a factor in its approaches. But you can't criticise it too much, for it is soft and seems ashamed of its softness. Much like a misspelled word or an unfinished short story, it's just waiting to get erased, corrected, forgotten. And so

I come full circle now

Having rounded the bases of the diamond

At times, skewed trapezoidal

Still, I made it home

I began singular, a mere point

But I traveled a line

Until I changed direction at a right angle

And celebrated my life lying wholly but flat

I rose above the Cartesian plane

Assuming altitude

And I saw the mistakes I made

From on high where depth is appreciated

Then I wanted it to last

From time to time, moment to moment

The temporal dimension offered continuum

I was happy

I ready for the next transition

And anticipate the next supersedence

When time runs out here and now

But I look to even higher realms

It is an easy call. In my family, I am the one who would be banned from Thanksgiving dinner. With a wife, daughter and two college aged grand-daughters what chance do I have, being a politically incorrect, patriotic, conservative leaning, straight, white, southern male who refuses to help cook the derned bird? (Although I will clean up after, single-handed if necessary.)

But to their dismay I am right there every year, beer in hand in front of the ballgame, as far away as is possible from the kitchen and it’s matriarchal man-bashing.

Because hell, someone has to pay for it all.

It is an easy call. In my family, I am the one who would be banned from Thanksgiving dinner. With a wife, daughter and two college aged grand-daughters what chance do I have, being a politically incorrect, patriotic, conservative leaning, straight, white, southern male who refuses to help cook the derned bird? (Although I will clean up after, single-handed if necessary.)

But to their dismay I am right there every year, beer in hand in front of the ballgame, as far away as is possible from the kitchen and it’s matriarchal man-bashing.

Because hell, someone has to pay for it all.

You know what they say about idle hands. Devil’s best friend, and all that. My hands are never idle, constantly occupied, twitching with some imagined duty. The devil has no place within my fingers, no hellfire comes from my nails as I strip them down so near to the bone. Teeth gnawing at the strips of loose skin that hang listless from my hands, enamel grinding together in tandem with every tick and tock of the clock.

I do not allow myself to rest, to sink into that sloth that invites sin. As long as I keep moving, keep twisting and untwisting my fingers as if wringing out a damp cloth until it becomes as dry as bones worn down by the desert sands of time, I will stay safe, protected from the darkness within my skull. Tearing at the skin around my nails, picking at the flesh of my lips, anything to escape the sinful thoughts that plague me, the devil that has taken residence within my ribcage and waits, sly and oh so patient for any shred of inactivity to prey upon.

I’m in my room, knuckles white around the leather bound Bible, gold leaf lettering on thick brown covers, thin pages so easily torn by careless fingers. I do not tear it. Each sheet is lifted and set down with a close precision, creases smoothed out and pages never dog-eared. It is knowledge and power wrapped in synthetic skin, a testament to the longevity of faith. It is holy, innocent, beautiful, precious. All the things that I am not. I’m staring at it, trying not to notice the shadow upon my wall, a girl’s figure that hovers in the corner of my eye, tempting me to look. Forcing the hairs on my neck to stand at attention, the darkness that causes my eyes to drift, ever so slightly, to her. To the delicate curve of her body, the slight part of her lips, the wisp in her hair that I want to smooth down with my fingers. Her name is Emily Baker. A good name, a holy name. The kind of name that makes preachers smile and nod, think to themselves her parents must be so proud. Not a name like mine, a name that makes teachers cluck their tongues and passerby turn their heads away in shame. For once I want someone to look at me, to smile the way that they smile at Emily. To look at me the way I look at Emily.

But I cannot look, cannot allow myself to be tempted, cannot allow myself to disobey everything my parents taught me. Cannot cave to the vile desires that lurk within me, Lucifer rattling his chains, constant noise in my head.

The girl’s shadow is gone; she was never here. Never here. She is a mere personification of my ultimate sin, a mere projection of my guilty conscience.

Guilt, what is guilt? Is it the frantic beating of a heart, the dry patch on the tongue, the picking of skin, the fear of idle hands? Is it the shadow on the wall that looks a little too much like her, or the magnified voice of Father Harry every Sunday, the itch of your stiff dress as you sit, hot and uncomfortable, in the cold wooden pew?

Idle hands are the devil’s best friend, and for that if nothing else I will never allow my hands to be idle, throwing myself into every task, tapping mindless rhythms on the school desks, picking at my skin, fists clenching and unclenching, hair pulled out one thread at a time, hands smoothing down the pages of my pocket Bible as I read and reread the lines, a futile attempt to convince myself of my own innocence. If I read them, maybe I’ll believe that they are true. Maybe I will find answers in old quotations, reprieve in these pages of history. Maybe there will be solace in the movement of my hands, the desperate movement of my eyes raking across the page. Maybe if I reread it again I’ll find what it is I’m missing, the secret to normalcy, to quelling the cruel desires that flood my heart. All that matters is that I keep reading.

Because if I allow myself to slow, if my hands cease for even a moment, then my thoughts will move to her, the curve of her body, the peace in her smile, the tenderness in her words. She is holy and good and beautiful, and I’m just the girl who sits in the back pew in a futile attempt to escape my shame. She and I are too different.

And, in all the ways that matter, too much the same.

Who will hear the childrens cry

Who will care for their hearts sigh

Who feels the pain of bombs destroying their play

Who looks upon the theft of their childhood display

Who will hold their hand from the fear of wars sounds

Who will keep them in air screams of missiles profound

Who will wipe the tears off their faces streak

Who will comfort their souls from warring freaks

Who will calm the childrens fear of todays horrors

Who will console them from evil sorrows

Who will bring them back to innocence space

Who will help these little ones future trace

Will you explain the injustice of losing their loved ones

Will you raise a voice for their weeping sons

Will you consider the trauma echoed in their voice

Will you sob at their broken hearts moist

Will you wash their clothes splattered in blood

Will you carry their souls tearing flood

Will you give them hope to pursue life

Will you extend mercy for their strife

Who will shout out for the childrens suffering

Will you, will you stand for their broken mutterings

Terror, horror, sorrow, orphans, warfares torment

At the feet and play of the childrens doorstep.

Salwa Samra © 2023

All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without permission is prohibited.

I am not going to write for a while.

I waited a couple of weeks to actually type that sentence because I did not yet know if I was on a brief vacation hiatus or a Guns n Roses Chinese Democracy is coming soon! hiatus. Having no sense of a timeline, no desire to draw a timeline even in sand, it is time for me to say it. Writing has ceased to bring me joy. I have been writing for the wrong reasons, and I need time away to love it again.

At this time last year, I had great expectations for my writing. A literary journal of note had longlisted one of my short stories for a prize. An author of greater note had praised my work. I had finished my novel and gotten an agent to represent the novel, which was sent to acquisition editors at whichever publishing houses you’re likely name without googling.

You can probably guess this, but neither that short story (nor a couple others since) nor the novel have garnered any offers. My agent and I have parted. A small press has requested a partial manuscript of the novel, and there are a couple other presses I will query, but the odds do not look like they did twelve months ago. In other words, I’ve been on a losing streak, which should not matter. I’d like for it not to matter. When I began writing a novel, I did not have an expectation that it would get published; I mostly wanted to see if I could write a novel. I think I was prepared for failure and a return to the drawing board, but I was not prepared for almost.

I started thinking of my writing in terms of a nascent career, which is to say, I lost sight of why I wrote to begin with.

Two weeks ago, I had a plan to draft chapter 13 of novel number two. I entered my favorite local coffee shop, but seeing bodies occupying every table, I lost my will to write. I mentally listed the different locations where I could write, the playlists or the beverages or the reading that might ready me to write—and I realized that if I had to try so desperately hard to make myself want to write, I was doing it all wrong. Thus began my hiatus of undetermined length.

The thing is, by any reasonable measure, I have attained my goals as a writer. When I joined Prose four years ago and wrote for the first time in years, my dream was to get a piece of my writing accepted for publication. After a whole lot of work and a whole lot of encouragement from my fellow Prosers, some still here and some departed, I gave it a shot—and I succeeded. I succeeded several times over, not with any big name mags, but with half a dozen short stories and nearly as many poems. Thanks to the fluke that is the alphabet, my contributor’s bio has appeared on the same page as a former Poet Laureate of the United States.

If you’re a longtime Prose user, you might remember a Random House/Prose essay contest that George Saunders judged. When he selected my essay, and I sent him 25 pages of that thus-far unwanted novel as the prize, I hoped I might get a paragraph response with some general thoughts and maybe a piece of encouragement. Instead, I received three full pages of enthusiastic notes. At the top of his email, the man who wrote Lincoln in the Bardo told me, “You’re a wonderful writer. Your prose is crisp and fast and convincing.” I will never forget how it felt to read those words.

I will feel that way about my writing again. I will love writing again. I once wrote in a Prose challenge that creative writing “feeds not only on my technical skills or logical analysis, but on my capability to express to someone else how I think and feel, with the center squarely on the ‘I,’” and that fiction is “an output of the core, internal self.” I will find that self again. I have written 28,000 words of that second novel, and I will finish it. Two weeks into my hiatus, I can say that and believe it, which is progress.

You will probably see me less for a while. I am not disappearing; I’ll pop in to read some posts now and again. If I get any good news about my submissions still floating out there in the ether, I’ll let you know in a post of my own. I’m not yet ready for next steps, but somehow, someday, that first novel of mine will see the light of day. Sooner than that, I’ll write something. I’ll probably post it here. I might feel an irresistible itch and resume writing this weekend; I might not write for a year, or longer. I do not know when it will be because I will not rush and I will not write until I can do so with joy and for its own sake, but I will write.

Keep writing, friends.

Ryan

Is that a Sax I hear?

Backed by drums,

clicking in time

with eternity?

Can’t be.

Not with a piano part

that sounds like

children’s play.

Too chaotic.

& painful.

Is love like that?

Some love, I guess.

Love with pain?

With panic?

Pressing on my chest?

Insane!

I take a breath

so deep

(gulping)

that I can't swallow.

Stare

into a sky so blue

(blinking)

that I go blind.

Painful love.

Panicked love.

Love …

Supreme.

Copyright 2023

I can almost imagine it's autumn.

It's after lunch time and I'm sitting

in the back of my last college lecture of the day.

A lifeless blue chair that has an arm

wrapped around in the form of a desk

is the only thing separating me from the

cold concrete wall. There's a window right

behind me but the blinds are closed.

If I close my eyes,

I can imagine it's autumn

with the leaves falling to the ground behind me.

A train horn sounds in the distance--

the same train that went right past my

childhood home. I wonder when the

last time I jumped in a leaf pile was or

dragged the massive blue tarp to the burn pile.

I wonder when the last time I ran

through my backyard was. I wonder

when the last time I ate a chocolate chip

Eggo waffle was. I can't do things anymore--

they remind me of you.

I can almost imagine it's autumn.

But autumn will never be the same

as it was when you were here.

I can almost imagine it's autumn.

It's after lunch time and I'm sitting

in the back of my last college lecture of the day.

A lifeless blue chair that has an arm

wrapped around in the form of a desk

is the only thing separating me from the

cold concrete wall. There's a window right

behind me but the blinds are closed.

If I close my eyes,

I can imagine it's autumn

with the leaves falling to the ground behind me.

A train horn sounds in the distance--

the same train that went right past my

childhood home. I wonder when the

last time I jumped in a leaf pile was or

dragged the massive blue tarp to the burn pile.

I wonder when the last time I ran

through my backyard was. I wonder

when the last time I ate a chocolate chip

Eggo waffle was. I can't do things anymore--

they remind me of you.

I can almost imagine it's autumn.

But autumn will never be the same

as it was when you were here.