Float above

Sea of fog

Suffer in

Emotional bog

Helpless child

Full of fears

Has no hope

Shedded tears

Always thought

It’d never end

Broken spirit

Unable to mend

Persona non grata

Called a liar

Labeled weak

Psychic misfire

Trust no one

Wasted breath

Stuck performing

This living death

Anger consumes

Pent up hatred

Start to realize

Nothing is sacred

Mental scars

Never healed

Time passes

Pain concealed

Growing old

Full of anxiety

Try to fit

Within society

Everything you can imagine... is real.

Everything you can possibly perceive,

Can be real.

Let's draw back for a moment.

Away from the escape.

Think for a moment,

Think long and clear.

When you know something to be true,

You can only form a hypothesis and deduce.

When you know something to be possible,

You might spread out your probe to find all edges.

Wrinkle the paper of your map here,

Fold and crease edges, until you can grasp

The way that life has a way of making real all its unrealized potentials.

Horrors.

Beauties.

All in the wake of your mind.

For what the mind perceives, it can make very real.

For monsters live in more than dreams,

but just cannot shed their human skins.

For people who smile prettily,

There might be no soul within.

Take a moment,

And understand the fear.

That the personification of fictitious beasts,

only makes you believe them to be less real.

Oh, that twinkle in his eye.

That's when you knew Uncle Roy was busting to tell you a groaner of a joke. The instant you finished talking, he would put down his cigar, stroke the stubble on his cheeks, and say, "That reminds me of the time..." And he would tell you an anecdote from his day, ending with a corny punchline and a deep-down guffaw (his) and a snort (his also).

Uncle Roy was larger than life to this kid. Even when he wasn't around, he came to mind when I heard a trite joke.

But as I grew older, I saw Uncle Roy and his family less and less. I had my own family and told my own crummy jokes, but without his signature ending. That part stayed with me, but the rest of his image had faded from memory.

When Uncle Roy passed, I went to his funeral and briefly recalled those stubbled cheeks, the stogie, the punchlines, the laughing at his own jokes. But when I left the sendoff, the faint red light from his cigar ceased to glow. And soon, every shard of Uncle Roy was gone.

Even the snort.

A lady walks down the street with a little girl in tow. She looks at her daughter’s face as it morphs into that of a wolf. Frightened, she lets go of her hand. “What’s wrong, Mummy?”, says the girl. “It’s okay, dear. We just need to get you home soon”, says the lady. They hurry along. The girl runs ahead, then her legs turn into flippers. Her mummy picks her up and shrouds her with her coat.Even then she knows it’s too late. The metamorphosis has taken root earlier than expected. A beam of light shot right through her daughter’s chest into the heavens. Frantically, she ducked into the foliage. She tried to shield her from the rays, nearly smothering her girl in the process. She could feel her body lift underneath her. She was losing her grip on her torso. Screaming hysterically, she dug her heels in but there was no traction. Now it was just her arms she held onto. “Don’t worry, Mummy. I will be back soon” said the girl as droplets of gold ran down her face. As her fingers slipped away, she watched her girl float off towards the sun. “What will you be?”she whispered.

when I see you run headfirst

into the wind

arms behind you like a cape

beaming from ear to ear

paying no mind

to where your feet go

I witness purest glee

a happy learner

willing to fall

for the thrill

whether its recorded or not

measured not by likes

but by heart rate spikes

when you trip over

we have a little cry

for you to turn around

and charge again

no one’s keeping score

The clocks tick an unsettling sound as I stare at the plastered white hospital walls. There is an overwhelming scent of lemon disinfectant that's making my nose curl and everyone around me anxiously awaits for their news. Some are sleeping, some are crying, and some dismiss themselves calmly so that they can scream down the hall in peace. No matter the reason, no matter our story, something in all of our lives led us to this hospital waiting room, someone or something happened to shift our entire universe as we know it and suddenly here, we all are sitting here not speaking a worked verbally but sharing millions through our eyes and actions.

It's crazy right, how so many people enter waiting rooms every single day, for themselves or for the ones they love. These rooms hold secrets centuries deep, sorrows nobody could begin to understand and so much love you could bathe in it.

Lives are born here; lives end here too.

I feel my nerves twitch causing my brain to spiral once more, I have been here for 10 hours and still haven't heard a word about my mother, if she is okay, if the surgery is working, and if she will get better. I watch as strangers lose the loves of their lives, I watch as stranger's welcome new members into their family and I watch as people enter the hospital only to never leave it again.

There are dozens of doctors talking with everyone around me, assuring them their loved ones are okay, telling them that some didn't make it past the procedures and letting others know that they are able to go see their loved ones soon; and for 10 hours I haven't heard anything, no updates about my mother at all and every time I ask the front desk, they assure me I'll hear details soon and that I should go sit back down and try reading a magazine.

I grab a small paper cup from the water fountain dispenser and fill it half full as I watch the local news channel talking about our 7-day weather forecast; it's supposed to be 60 and sunny, my mother's favorite kind of weather. I think back to my childhood, all the endless summer days outside in the sun with my mother, running around, screaming with joy and filling up my energy on endless popsicles and pints of ice-cream. I remember the time I turned the hose on her and she yelped at the cold waters impact and how she chased me around the yard and held me in her arms, forcing me to feel the coolness of the water.

"Delilah?" A male doctor says catching my attention and bringing me back to reality.

"Yes?" I ask as worry fills my eyes

"The surgery went well; your mother is doing fine; would you like to go see her now?"

I nod my head, so happy to say anything else as I follow the doctor out of the waiting room, and towards the big brown doors that will soon lead me straight to my beloved mother, my best friend and my entire world.

I glance back once more to all the other strangers in the waiting room, and without saying a word I give them a look telling them everything will work out okay and that everything will be alright.

theres another guy

hes loud and obnoxious

hes annoying, but hes self aware at least

he has no filter and is honestly a little dumb

i don't mind

he kind of reminds me of myself

my friends tell me that if i was a guy i would be him

ill never admit to liking him

ever

its obvious but ill never say it out loud

everyone says he's too much of a joke

too short

too ugly

too much of a class clown

i don't see it

he's got a bad record with girls; no one ever likes him back

he's got a brother that they all swoon for though

but he puts himself out there and seems really sweet

part of the reason i like him

but he'll never like me back

i know his type

it's not me

if i was a guy id be like him, but if he was a girl he wouldn't be like me at all

he's an odd one

i hated him

i mean i've always thought he was cute

but so fucking irritating

he's just too friendly, too confident

it freaked me out

he offers to go through classwork with anyone or make witty (read: idiotic) comments on t-shirts

shows you memes that aren't really funny but has him dying

sleeps through half his classes, and doesn't hide it very well at that

he asks for the pull tabs off your soda

says he's gonna make them into bracelets and sell them

i doubt he's ever tried

he plays poker at lunch

that boy is so obvious

his tells are really obvious but no one ever calls him out

he overcompensates way too much on every bluff

im surprised he's not in debt

he asks people he barely knows to arm wrestle him

he offers advice he is not qualified to give in the slightest

he slurs all his words together when he's talking but his eyes sparkle when he delivers a punchline

honestly i wish i was a little more like him

but i feel bad

he gets excluded sometimes

i wonder if he knows

even by kids he thinks are his friends

he's just not invited

not out of malice, they just kind of forget about him or decide its not his scene

i mean he was my freshman year gym class partner

all my then-friends would pair together

leaving me alone

so alone

i wonder if he was like that too

i mean neither of us could throw a baseball to save our lives but he actually tried

at the time i thought it was so sad

but i guess i respect it now

he puts so much of himself into everything

he just seems so genuine

how does he have so much trust?

i don't know if i actually like him or if i just admire him

i mean he's attractive but i don't know if i see him like that

i think its more a sense of being drawn to someone

he's a lot of what i wish i could be

parts of me i keep hidden

i'll never tell anyone

Looking out from a foxhole where days before had stood a lush forest replete with life, there was now little more than a ghostly perdition of limbless, skeletal trunks; some at uprooted angles, but most of them completely down, their naked limbs littering the mud, doomed to be slowly sucked down from this current smoldering hell to the next.

So of course PFC Capson Cooper is afraid. Actually, “fear” is a weak word for his present condition. His body is so wracked that it no longer quivers, there is no strength left to shake it. His mass is a noodle. He is little more than a worm lying prone in the cold mud, staring out the fifty yards ahead to the next foxhole where he can see the helmeted heads of Jackson and Landreaux protruding up from the mire, though he cannot see their faces. The wily vets are still alive then, somehow. For the life of him Capson cannot understand why they chose to remain in a position so far advanced of the rest of the battalion. That last barrage had been the heaviest, and had lasted the longest. In fact, each succeeding round seemed more intense than the last. Whether or not the shellings actually were gathering intensity was of little matter to young Capson Cooper. It satisfied him quite enough just to feel that it was so.

Yet even as he distinguished the helmeted heads of the veterans Cooper heard the distant boom foretelling yet another incoming round of .88’s; the far-away blasts immediately followed by a banshee-like screeching of angry missiles. A flitting shadow lifted Cooper’s eyes heavenward to where a flock of tenebrous bombers drifted above as slowly, ominously, and unimpeded as crows on a crosswind against a somewhat lighter shade of dark, though duly somber sky. His unit was being pummeled to death in this place with nary an enemy soldier seen, nor a return shot fired.

Like the footfalls of an approaching giant the bombs landed in succession, distant at first, but each one closer than the last… boom, boom, BOOM, as the gunners “walked” their bombs in on their targets, testing their ranges. PFC Capson found himself shaking again, his body so racked from it that the shakes had become physically painful down to his very bones.

Jackson and Landreaux were legends in this unit, the only ones left of the “first wave” of troopers, the “old men” of the bunch. The pair had dug their foxhole on day one of the deployment, and from it they could not be convinced to retreat even one step, no matter the pleadings of their officers as the rest of the unit scattered back, away from the enemy artillery. Yet somehow the pair continued to survive, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, while those around them ceased to. Capson could not help but wonder how they managed it. “How were they doing? What were they thinking? What were they feeling out there all by themselves? Were the two men really that different than he was that their nerves could be unaffected by the almost continual bombings?” Yet at the pinnacle of the onslaught the two helmets were unmistakably still there, unmoving, peeking up from the mud as though the men wearing them were already dead… and perhaps they were? could that be the secret to their bravery?

Either way, whether dead or alive, Capson Cooper was drawn to know. But there was only one way to have his questions answered, and that way laid through fifty yards of exploding hell.

War had proven to be nothing like Cooper ’s expectations. The conclusion had struck him quickly that he was not a brave man, despite the fantasies of heroism which had lullabied him to sleep back home. War is a shit show, he’d learned; a chaotic debacle in which no one knew where to go, or what to do, or when to do it. No one, that is, but those guys like Jackson and Landreaux. They seemed to know how to survive instinctually. Those guys had the answers to the quiz. They would get through when no one else could. But how?

Afraid to die, and desperate to know if there was any avoiding it, Cooper Capson determined to find out. So in the middle of the bombardment he leapt up onto his noodle knees and he ran, his almost fanatical “will to live” rushing Cooper like the hero that he wasn’t directly into the maelstrom.

Too afraid to slow himself, Cooper dove into the foxhole at full speed, his lungs tearing into the mud for breath.

”It’s a kid,” Landreaux observed in a heavy Cajun dialect, the words hollered so that they would carry above the surrounding tumult.

”What-choo dooin’ here, Kid?” Jackson’s voice boomed in its own, nonchalant Brooklyn accent. “You have a death wish?” The old soldier chuckled drily at his own words.

Pulling himself to a partially seated position Cooper observed that both men held poker hands. A small pile of Pall Malls in a half-ways clean mess kit sat in the mud between them, serving as a “kitty” as the .88 shells ”ka-BOOMED” every-which-way around them, each somehow fantastically missing it’s mark. Of course, Jackson’s question had not been a serious one, and the two men were already back to their game, where Landreaux swept in the cigarette “booty” as his pair of aces easily trumped Jackson’s 8’s.

Cooper attempted to read Jackson’s disgusted lips above the fracas, which he easily could.

”You lucky son of a bitch! You win every damned hand!”

Jackson turned to Capson then, who noticed for the first time the empty glaze to the man’s eyes. “Hey, I’m out of chips. You got any smokes, Kid?”

Cooper’s body was leaned disproportionately in as he tried to hear Jackson’s voice below the fearful clamor. Capson didn’t smoke. Not yet, anyways, so he shook his head in the negative, not trusting his voice to answer.

”I need more chips. What do ya got?”

Reaching deep into his pocket, Cooper pulled out a couple of wadded up singles and change. Reaching over, Jackson stole it from his innocent hand.

”I’ll pay ya’s back.” Jackson stood up then, and with his rifle strapped uselessly to his back the big man stepped away from the foxhole as if headed out on a stroll to the corner store.

The two who remained in the foxhole watched him away. Jackson, counting the money as he went, was nearly to Cooper’s old foxhole when he disintegrated in a spew of mud and smoke. Aghast, Cooper looked to Landreaux for some sort of guidance, but Landreaux only smiled as he slid the mess kit full of cigarettes Cooper’s way. Cooper took one, pressed it between his clicking teeth, and accepted Landreaux’s offered light. Waiting for the initial coughing spat to quiet Landreaux stopped shuffling and self-cut, the tell-tale whisper of his bottom deal going undetected by Cooper’s inexperienced ears. Curiously, youth fully, forgetting for the moment that he sat amid raining death Cooper picked up the dealt hand, fanning it out before his hopeful eyes.

A pair of 8’s.

Cooper took a drag off the cigarette, liking the way the unfamiliar nicotine numbed his fear. It was a shitty hand, 8’s was, not good enough to play, yet too good to fold. So holding the crap pair along with a suicide king, he tossed the remainder away.

“I’ll take two.”

Landreaux’s was a knowing smile as he tossed the kid two off the top, appeasing the Gods of Chance.