She makes a wish on the seeds when she blows them, and she calls it “the afterlife of a dandelion." She does not know it, but my daughter has created a vision for me, the afterlife I want to be. I have told those who love me to stop my watch when it’s on my wrist in the coffin because it’s a monstrous image: the ticking motion of time mocking my inert form. It’s what I dread of death, my futile stillness in a universe that bends and shapes and whirrs around my body. Better to be burned and scattered to the winds or waves, that in being somewhere I might be anywhere, and those who remember me still might stand wherever they stand and make a wish as I blow by.

I hold multitudes of ideas

with paper hands,

each a spectral amalgam dyed in

the fleeting, busy shades of life:

innocence, experience,

my weary-youthful brand an

artisanally awkward blend of both...

Ideas,

waiting for pendulum pens to realize,

and gift relative permanence to their

scattered echoes.

Ideas,

like an evanescent sand,

searching to find the small of

the hourglass and

make a grand(ly clumsy) escape.

To soar away with the color of

ideas; to taste the night beyond

self-wrought bars of radio silence,

white-noise-dipped thought.

For now...

Ideas rest dormant in the depths of

smooth hands.

And I’m here...

Waiting with

trapped breath, for age to

perch at trembling fingertips

and vein its way through my

gasping system.

I wasn’t re—

And then...

Waiting for neglected ideas

to be tapped;

and to spill carelessly-awry from

the fissures of my core.

Years softly evaporate.

Ideas rest restlessly,

electrically shiftless,

erratically dead.

The neglect decays all it touches,

and what once danced on

an irregular smile and painted a child’s

powdery laughter collapses on itself

and tumbles, resigned, into a black hole.

Ideas rest dormant in the depths of

cold hands.

Now unable to be realized.

#fiction

paint me black

paint me brown

brush me up

while they brush me down

paint a smile

no, wait, paint a frown

canvas me around

give me a voice without making a sound

paint me black

paint me brown

paint me in lack

then paint me in a crown

paint me over every crack

paint me on the ground

it’s where my color has bled

it’s where my fists pound

paint me until you win a plaque

paint me, astound

paint me

paint me

until it’s you

and ain’t me

paint me

paint me

damn it, paint me

ever oh so vividly

yeah, make them see

oh won’t you paint me

and set me free?

Some people can't wait to go to bed at night, to rest from the punishing day; some people dread going to sleep, afraid of the nightmares they might suffer. As for me, it's not so binary. I'm a little different.

See, when I go to sleep, I enter a world that's entirely under my control. I'm one of the rare few that retains metacognition while dreaming. With a brush of my hand, I create galaxies of stars overhead that glow with fluorescent magnificence. A thought is all it takes to raise mountains from the ground, build cities, craft a romance. My mind becomes master over a realm that has no boundaries, knows no limits. I build a universe every night, watch it grow, watch it flourish—I'm free to escape the tyranny of reality.

You'd think I'd look forward to this, which in one sense you're right. But each morning I wake up, and the colors of my imagination disappear into nothing more than an ethereal memory, destined to fall victim to the reaper known as time. The only way I can save my creations, to keep them from dissolving away, is to capture them with words—though, even language is a crude tool at best.

This is why I constantly strive to perfect my craft, to better ensnare the elusive worlds inside my head.

This is why I am an author.

This is why I write.

Maybe eternity is not an abstract thing that happens up in heaven, or even a universe that continues forever. Maybe it’s a loop of time and space. Life starts with the big bang, ends with and implosion, then rewinds.

young to old from go humans and Animals

birth to Death

reverse in again live We

bang big the to back get we Until

And everything moves forward, again.

Back

and forth

For eternity.

Toothpaste is kinda stupid.

I’m not saying stop brushing your teeth, I’m merely suggesting to watch out before putting something into your mouth.

Most people focus on the active ingredient on the label, which is fluoride. To avoid the conspiracy debates this post doesn’t care about the active ingredient, so we’re leaving this right here and moving on to the inactive ingredients:

Glycerin - this is a pretty common ingredient that acts as a preservative for many foods while giving toothpaste its “paste” texture

Propylene Glycol - the same glycol in your antifreeze, this keeps the toothpaste from drying out in the tube not your mouth

Saccharin - fake sugar; supposedly doesn’t cause cavities though which is good because

Hydrated Silica - yup, those annoying DO NOT EAT pellets in microscopic size provide an abrasive to scrub the teeth (this used to be chalk) leaving tiny unseen gouges where bacteria can easily hide so they add

Formaldehyde-Releasing Preservatives - not formaldehyde itself, just chemicals that release the same thing under different names, but in quantities that aren’t even required to be listed on the label

Dyes - what else did you assume “whitening” was?

Studies have shown you can brush your teeth with water just fine; brushing should focus on dusting off plaque, not whitening, bleaching, or freshening up your teeth.

This concludes the vindicated five-year-old me’s tirade on why toothpaste is stupid.

The van is overturned, wheels pointed skyward, like a great, disemboweled carcass laid out for the vultures. The great metal skin, crushed and bent, reveals struts of ribs and shattered-glass eyes.

I watch as they pull him out.

The wheels of the van are motionless and still now, the creaking silent.

Silent and still as my father.

Red, white and blue shards of glass on the pavement flicker in synchrony with the red, white and blue lights beside us.

The same colors they will bury him under.

I watch as the crumpled vehicle is hoisted onto a tow truck, to be carted to its final destination. Abandoned in a graveyard for other demolished cars and trucks and vans, it will be left to decay alone.

I wonder if there is an alternate resting place for him.

every right claimed

was wrenched from

fingers clutched

to breasts

that would

deny the inalienable

to those

deemed

unworthy;

every freedom held

was seized

by desperate

blood-soaked

hands

reaching

for an ideal

intrinsic

not

granted;

every breath taken

without fear

with

head held high

with lips

that smile

and eyes

that need not

avert

was a breath

born on a scream

a whisper

or a gasp;

so many battles fought

with guns or words

so much blood spilled

in fields or on paper

so many ephemeral victories

so many hearts broken

so many arms

made empty

so many lives

forsaken

so many times

we see the light

only to find ourselves

once again

hurled into darkness.