I did it.

I finally did it.

I killed the bastard, using the same hunting knife he had used on me many times before. My only regret is his wife found me with his blood-emptied body and called the cops.

Now I am running for my life; a life I finally got back. I'll be damned if anyone will ever put me in a cage again.

My lungs are on fire as I harshly inhale the humid morning air, the fresh air almost makes me queasy, I am so accustomed to the rotting musk from the basement, that my body doesn't know how to handle the clean air. The muscles in my legs are protesting, but I push my body, running as fast as I can down the stirring street.

The town I haven't seen in... well I have no idea how long... blurs past me. I want to stop and see if the small cafe my mother used to bring me to every Friday before hockey practice is still there. The buttery chocolate croissant is damn near melting in my mouth from the thought. My stomach lets out a roar and I curse under my breath; when was the last time that bastard fed me? The days I spent in the cage blurred together with no window in sight, and my captor didn't bother to ensure I maintained a healthy diet. I can’t stop, not for nostalgia, not for anything.

The sirens are getting louder. Shop owners begin stumbling onto the sidewalk to see what could be causing such a disturbance in their quaint little town. A wave of desperation comes crashing into me, like a sickly chill, the feeling of premature agony.

I need an escape.

As if I manifested it, a red door appears on the side of a crumbling brick building. I have lived in this town my entire young adult life, and I know before the kidnapping, that door hadn't existed. A large sign on the building's front, "condemned", draws my eyes. The door is out of place. But I don't have the time to stop and ponder its existence as tires screech on the pavement at the curve of the road only a few meters away.

I am panting like a dog in heat. I know my gelatinous leg muscles will give out if I dare try to run again, so I do what any sane person would do in my situation... I yank open the red door, surprised to find it unlocked and slam it behind me.

I move to the side, ducking under a window I know, sure as hell, wasn't there a minute ago.

I hold my breath as the sirens race past me, the police oblivious to my escape. Once it quiets outside, and the only sound is my heart thundering inside my chest, I dare peek out the window. The street is filled with nosey onlookers, but nothing more. I have graced the townspeople with something new to gossip about for weeks.

I let out a deep breath, the window fogging around my lips. I decide to turn away from the window, if someone spots me looking all ominous and creepy they may call the cops back.

The area around me is dark, darker than normal dark if that’s even possible. It's as if the shadows are alive as they morph their onyx forms around the three men staring at me.

Oh shit.

Three beady red eyes meet mine. A look of shock is all I can make out on their faces before the shadows swallow their faces, leaving the metal table they are gathered around visible. Another man is strapped to the table with cuffs around his ankles and wrists, his golden skin is marred with gouges and blood dripping into crimson pools on the cement floor beneath him. Six sets of latex-gloved hands hold instruments of doom above the man, whose impossibly purple eyes meet mine.

What in the actual fuck.

I clear my throat, reaching behind me, feeling the wall for the door so I can escape, but the cold rigid stone bricks are all I can feel. I turn my head in a flash, weary about facing away from the horror-movie-worth-scene in front of me.

The door is gone. The window is gone. There is nothing but a solid wall without any indication of how I got here.

“You are not going anywhere,” a gravelly voice comes from one of the men.

I whip my head back in their direction. The shadows are lining them like a demonic aura, their faces clearer, and their Cheshire-worthy smirks have my gut sinking low in my stomach.

Jail.

Jail is looking much better than this.

Meagan Verstraten.

It was just a piece of land to some but it was lost now to me to us. Generations worked it going back to my Great Great Grandfather.

My grandfather was given the parcel of land by his father, rocky volcanic stone intermixed with black soil not fit for plowing only sheep.

Patrick McAlister started it all coming from Ireland in the 1830s to grab land, to grow fruit trees of apple originally that were plowed under in WW2 to grow potatoes for the war effort and grew them ever after.

Sons died in that war, some never came back, some never had to go like my Grandfather who stayed at home working the family farm with draught horse and plough until the advent of the tractor.

My Grandfather was raised by an aboriginal wet nurse, suckling at her teat, a true Australian son of this promised land.

He sang Danny Boy the great Irish refrain with an angels voice and was a man of the land that he came from. Times change as they always do, and all the Great Uncles and my Grandfather are dead now.

The land sold to a city person with a wallet so large to afford the million dollar price tag it had on it when we sold it, the bank taking a large sum. What was the land to me? It was a wedge tails eagles nest one hundred feet up a mountain ash gum tree, it was watching the eagles fly back every year to raise chicks.

It was the underground river cutting through the land to come up on the corner down below with water so pure it was sweet to the taste.

It was having soil that was yours, your land, and no one elses. It was not about money, it was beyond those concepts of mortgage and loan to me.

So when people ask me where i am from I say there, even though another man owns it, even though i am like a gypsy now on the road, i am from The Patch.

Caught up in things like self narration hinged on a single screw inside a head that rattles loose-leaf novels, texts and paper clips without a job…

I'm stuck froze at the intersection

of a strong “maybe” and a weak “why the fuck not”.

My historical compulsions to maze without an entrance aimless as the pen lay cocky offering me a tiny violin in jest.

My art is a tree branch that I shake to death- like when Dali the boy beat overripe fruit into pulp to mimic the feel of a soft breast- I love in the same way- against a different need

Tripping over dead relatives who just roll their eyes at me…

They say something like “Oy! we died in these flowerless camps so you can sit nude staring at pages all day?”

The pressure is real

Yo!

And I waste some more time wondering if Boris from Tropic ever took care of the mites in his crotch- or if that little boy in the renaissance painting I saw one July was able to eat the fruit painted in feelings of his hunger, more alive than my soul at the time.

If he was ever able to feel the comfort of socks.

Or just some clean feet on his legs or fuck a canvas to sleep.. forever would be great...

Submerged in crimson paint is the absence of color, a crinkled void in the cloth escapes from my focused intention… and to the edge of the frame where I stand and shoot my gaze in my bra chewing cold pizza- aroused by the majesty of color.

The hairline crack inside the painted eyeball has an eyeball and it winks at me, a joke time’s had for me to ponder some 900 years… a fuck you to me.

My muse on a hunger strike for 39 days, I’m stuffing its choking mouth with my rage. Naked. Mosquito lands on my thigh, old lover coming for more blood. Hearing a dove outside. Laughing. Thelonious aims his greased fingers at me from inside a box spat at by god- I raise my brow and curl my lip, ears red hot pushing windowed sunlight through my veins moving to frequencies I can barely capture onto a page.

I used to burst at the seams. My tears ran hot, like blood dripping down an open cut. I sang a song that made me feel at home, and foreign in my own skin, all at once.

I am strong, I repeated to myself. I have values I'd like to uphold. Covid hit, I was yelled at inside a Whole Foods for not following security guidelines. I touched a "dirty basket" and was ostracized. I felt unsafe. I wore an N-95, was made fun of by a conservative guy. Such was life.

The song I sang isn't important. It isn't important for a lot of reasons. The first being: isn't music just an extension of our psyches? Shouldn't it all be celebrated, and not told to follow the rules like a society in ruins?

You touched a dirty basket, said security. Judgement day looks a lot like 2020.

The song made me smile. I am strong, I repeated to myself. I have values I'd like to uphold. I made it through, to the modern day. And I have only luck - and maybe a vaccine - to thank.

The song made me resilient. It reminded me of Taylor Swift - please don't stop reading this. I wanted to feel whole, to be well, to have a mind that didn't rattle like loose glass in a window.

The song made me notice life, in its entirety. It was like a grammatically correct essay, a gun with all its bullets, a lake with swans and full of secret meaning, ecstasy.

It was a way out in a broken environment, a healing touch, a prophecy. Should I keep going? Or is music heard only when it's listened to, and not merely described by a poor writer?

I still feel warm and fuzzy when listening to it. I press my fingers to my temples, bless the feeling, put the "dirty" behind me.

60 milligrams of numbness and 0 measures of wisdom and common decency. That's what the Creator, or whoever fucked me over as a child, seems to have intended for me. It's not greatness of soul, or passion, don't call it passion. It's a chaotic life, full of tension and hiding.

These splits tear me in two. Half-people. Half-women, half-pills, half-truths, 60 milligrams of numbness cruising through my bloodstream. And just a moment ago I felt something, only a moment ago. And that feeling is slow to return.

When I want to go back to live inside a womb. Or to stop crying next to you. Everything drains into the black hole from which all the contradictions began. When I love you, I say it, with all the mannerisms I've acquired over the years. Don't judge me harshly, I'm just a little obsessive right now. And lost. I'm a lost child, even though I'm no longer a child, maybe a bad child. Because there's no such reality as a good child. There's only a child who feels good. And I've been feeling like shit for a long time.

60 milligrams and one huge pit in the soul. And mental gashes that psychiatrists write post-doctorates about.

Today I cried again like a person who lost his God. And human image. my eyes burn and I look at my world through a glass pane filled with tears from recent nights. Yesterday I saw you looking at me, and I caught the pity. How I revealed to you that I cum the strongest only after hearing you scream in the room that I'm not sick. "You're not sick baby, you're not sick!". All this problematic genetic baggage is now in your belly.

But I wanted to hear that lie from you. Because from your mouth it still sounds credible to me. And you have a big heart that contains within it everything a man longs for. But yesterday we talked and I felt it packing its bags. I wonder if it saddens me, it does. But I'm not angry, I'm realistic - with this borderline and treacherous madness, no one knows how to cope.

The hugs from you were more beautiful than all the biggest words I wrote about you. And the dreams about you briefly brought back a sense of humanity to me.

Thank you.

there's a memory, buried deep

somewhere. i'm not sure where.

in the memory (as fractured)

(as it is), i've been

left behind in the

dark. i am terrified of the

dark. i won't be caught

dead in the dark. whoever has

left me behind

in this memory

knows that. i know that

they know. and, yet, the

only thing going through

my head in this

memory--aside from the panic

tearing at my skin and the

suffocating (other) feeling that

is swallowing me whole and

has me choking back tears and

holding a hand over my mouth

to keep quiet--are the words from

the person who's left me

behind: "don't be dramatic,

it's just the dark--it's childish and

stupid of you to be

so afraid of this." i have been

left behind as a

lesson, of some sort. i

do not know how long i'm stuck,

alone, in the dark, but i know

i get out, at some point, breathless

and searching for the arms of

the authority who decided

i needed the lesson. their arms

are not welcoming. their arms are not open for me. they ask me,

"now, was that so bad?" and in this

memory, i know that if i say

that, yes, it was that bad, i may get

put back in the dark again.

so i shake my head

in the memory and i

close off my expression and i

separate from myself for who-

knows how long. the memory has

many duplicates, adjusted over

time and different in each but

somehow still the same--the

same fears and hurts and the

same type of words and the

same sort of separation from

myself afterwards. i am still

afraid of the dark.

It coils

like a chill

roly-poly or

unabashed centipede

getting going...

And I, i like

fixing things,

for the human race

our close breath

rattled di,

the cross hairs,

and safety shells

the long run

of all historic

to-do's

undone

it's quite a list

in wind writ,

and as a fixer upper

myself...

I'm working on it

03.28.2024

Spring is coming... challenge @Plexiglassfruit

Hope your Tuesday is running along just fine. A few things here. One, we're getting a lot of new writers on the site, which is ruling. We want to let them know that our house, in the middle of our street, is still and likely always going to be going through improvements. Small crew keeping it weather-safe, and the wheel of progress can be slow, but it is sure.

Any and all questions are best sent to info@theprose.com where one of us will either answer or find an answer.

Two, our banned book Challenge is really getting us going. It was slow to burn, but now, when it sparks, it rages. Loving the pieces in that one.

Here's that link. https://www.theprose.com/challenge/14416

Three, we've undergone some changes with the YouTube channel, after a lengthy decision over the weekend, as we thought it best to make it more of a radio show, because how many thousands of YouTube channels are there with hosts and talking heads? Answer: So many we decided it kind of dimmed us to add another, especially with a year straight of a loner turned, "YouTube guy," who was actually awkward and uncomfortable being in frame, and came across almost opposite his personality, which was fun for some smirking team members, but pure Hell otherwise. Haha!

We hope you like the new format. We love it. And it opens a few doors: Listen while driving, cleaning your place, bathing your dog... And the show can be longer in an easier way. Or shorter in an easier way; easier being the visuals not distracting from or influencing the work being featured. We are, after all, writers and readers. And two of the writers in the video today, following a legend's poem, both bring their respective and distinctive beauty to you. Here's the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W2B6vkKIC0

And...

As always...

Thank you for being here.

-The Prose. team

I refuse

the burger

with fries,

comfort

soul food

advertised

to fulfill

shortcomings

in communion

I refuse too

the cream

in the coffee

the iced cake

stickiness

to mend our

broken ways

gathered

here today

I refuse

woe is me

holding in

my stomach

I refuse

famished

on our diet

of smoked sin

& unfiltered

water...

Seconds..?

Thank you,

I have plenty

01.23.2024

Sin-Eater challenge @AJAY9979

i found the tapes

and i watched her die

and now i cant relax

i cant sleep at night

it's my job

the chief put me on

and i still agreed

and i still feel wrong

the way she was tied up

gagged and bound

i felt i was in that room

just standing around

we shouldve helped her

but we were too late

were we the reason

that was her fate?

that man was evil

and yes, he's put away

but could we have prevented this?

kept her safe?

question after question

with no answers to be found

and now Jessica Leyson

lies 6 feet in the ground