Stream of Consciousness
The City of Almost
The City of Almost When Mira first moved to the city, she thought the locals were joking. “You’ll see them,” her landlord had said while handing her the brass key with its strange, crooked teeth. “Don’t stare too long. That’s the trick.”
By Timothy A Rowlandabout a year ago in Fiction
The Crime of Her Hand in Mine. Runner-Up in The Shape of the Thing Challenge. Content Warning.
(Trigger warning for hateful language from one character in this work of flash fiction.) ~~~ Summer of 2012 The world was supposed to end a few months ago, but it didn’t. The billboard put up telling people to repent on the side of the town’s little two-lane highway still sits there, even though the anointed day of fire has come and gone. Without any flame, unsurprisingly. She’s still here, rinsing the remainder of the soap from the stained yellow sink, in the same kitchen with grease-stained walls.
By Leigh Victoria Phan, MS, MFAabout a year ago in Fiction
The Message That Never Left
Elena typed the words three times before erasing them. The first draft was too blunt. We’re done. Don’t call me again. The second too sentimental. I’ll always care for you, but this isn’t working. The third hovered somewhere in the middle, but still her thumb trembled above the glowing blue arrow on the screen.
By Timothy A Rowlandabout a year ago in Fiction
The Room on the Plans. Runner-Up in The Forgotten Room Challenge.
The first time I saw the room, it was a photocopy at the city office, third floor, Planning and Development. Fluorescent lights buzzed like gnats. The clerk, a man in a loose tie and a loose understanding of urgency, slid the papers across the counter as if he were sending a raft down a lazy river.
By Aspen Nobleabout a year ago in Fiction
If X = Y
I have this fantasy in my head where I marry my childhood sweetheart. We met when we were 12. Still had the baby fat in our cheeks and the twinkle of innocence in our eyes. We were forced to sit next to each other in Maths. I was more annoyed than he was, I think. It was the last class before lunch, so I wanted to be next to my best friend. Make the class an early start to our lunchtime chat sessions. But alas. The teacher put me next to him. Neither of us were Maths whizzes. But we both got by.
By Sarah O'Gradyabout a year ago in Fiction
A Voodoo Conjuring.
The serene conjure woman stands in ritual, her hands dancing above a bowl of smoldering herbs. Candles flicker, shadows stretch, and ancestral symbols curl upwards through the smoke. The palette glows with warm earth tones - brown, gold, and soft white - evoking reverence and quiet power.
By Novel Allenabout a year ago in Fiction
Of that, or this, so declared!
If I were to exist ,by far, in no other than the interim and seen as myself, then, here’s “I,” more or less, as that ONE ☝️—preceding, deeply moving and proceeding thro’ that temporal zone, fully possessed, to know more. It’s about the things that make me dream 💭 and in that waking dream think about the victories and the challenges as I experience them as a day dream put off , or at most, from twilight dims. And as for the enquirers this entry could chronicle aa a poetic forage which directly or indirectly tends to draw out the precious life. Also, in the center of all and the object of all is this indescribable consciousness —a heirloom upon which one can curiously review everything in the light of their own intentions. Meaning —how our souls love to receive the dawn -dazzle of life, casting away backward glances, only to find itself adapting to ( in most degrees, growing out of it) new changes. Yes, I am talking about the new world of awakenings received with joy and faith. In these lines I have lain myself unfolding into others, quite changed of my own “ego,” identity and projected it towards fellow humanity. In that sense, consider the glows and glories of this illustrious poetic form depicting “PRECIOUS life,” which belongs to every real thing. O! Precious Life!Ah! fleeting hope, flittering fireIs thou oafish as a quenchless briar Thirsty, perhaps, for long, so miredYet, in every nature spread so to inspire That you must behold that entire desire-Within which renews hope thro' heartless quagmire As grating gropes over gurgling gyresEbbing in flow as some embodied empireUnto that, bellying long, those flown off spiresAs clustered congeries over cloistered choirsO! Must you lie bare upon death beds so expiredSeemingly dropping a thousand dirges over deathly pyresBut, for the spirited souls thickened by direIt's all an illusion which they pledge not to ever acquire!For the flesh so camped in rubies and lodged sapphiresWhen post -personified, it waves its final flags as in an esquire;Finally bidding adieus to everything that coexists to equally transpire! O Precious Life !Co-concurring off the hook, as though on a timely spire...How upon innocence you gently conspireAs faith so ardent rolls its' own ardent hope —so dire Dear Reader, Know this, for sure, without the limiting surface, forced less or more into depths —here is a special demand made upon you. As you participate in this poetic journey with me please affirm that you shall unleash your imaginative (unreal,) capacities. In this way a continuous presence but now fixed in time, must be re-imagined in a new , continuous present. Thusly the consciousness of existence from real to unreal passes in time, constructing a continuity out of the discontinuity created by time as we are passing the life. By doing so the reader shall feel the grace such so: she mused, therefore ,I am .” And by perceiving so —give yourself a little time to be or not to be, fully here. Lie over — ever in a round —encircling that— beginning and the end, and then merge with it, consciously aware. It’s the “ middle ,” as far as it grows and that —which must really show! A State of being, decidedly centered, yet nakedly bare ! Interim : It’s an enigma which fills in the “ present,” without knowing what’s going to come next. Just like the concurrence of the real to the unreal, one moment rolls into the next with no clue of what’s going to happen next. In time or otherwise, it all appears,as though, one is fully prepared for the future. But unexpectedly here comes a space. A void—perhaps, where cold fits in equally, as well; duly stitched, fully dressed, appearing suddenly out of nowhere. Then again, as the Heedless—interim, comes and goes, fleetingly, For in it bears precious life, all hoarded, in all thy caresOf that calm —lain over nothingness ….duly spared, and everywhere, Wave upon wave in silence it keeps nothingness up in the airAnd of that inevitable, ever present to take on its final dare Much as the spirit gets flown, much over that eternal, beyond compare Hey there, here’s a place where the interim meets to get all mixed up with hope residing already out there O Come along! O full phantom hope —draw close , pour thy prayers around us — as if it must now be cheerily sparedAs unborn deeds imagined as above over troubled despairO fresh giver —like the running river flowing throughYea are beyond compare! Concluding thoughts: O ! Heavenly counsel ! Were these ☝️ those verses—the very ablutions, received to get us out to nowhere …. A void ! Dear Reader, you decide !
By Madhu Goteti about a year ago in Fiction
Burning Down the House
Burning Down the House was getting heated, I couldn’t believe my mind as David Byrne and Alex Weir bantered back and forth, vibrations of their guitars flowing with electric ricochets; Steve Scales sowing it together in beat. My mind tried to distract me, is the laundry done? Caleb would be frustrated by my impatience in getting up. I consider this. What keeps me from enjoying this moment? Forcing myself to stay present, I shut my eyes and listen to the beat. Stay in it, I beg myself. I can feel the groove gradually bring me back to presence; I know this feeling and try to keep it here. Yet sabotage thoughts of Facebook notifications beaming, “10 years ago today” flood my mind. Of friends come and gone. Stay Here, I say, and I watch them sway with the sound of their own beat; burning down the house. I rest my eyes for just a moment, thoughts engulfed by heated visions.
By Krystiana Lontosabout a year ago in Fiction
