I have a much harder time feeling like I’m poet-ing. I like stringing words together, creating images, and playing with form and sound. I don’t necessarily feel like that makes me a poet, though – I haven’t produced any finished pieces I liked in a while, for one thing. I can string words together all day, but a poem with minimal effort just isn’t a poem the way a short story with minimal effort feels like a story. A bad story, but a story nonetheless – whereas a half-finished poem is just word salad.

I’m looking forward to NaPoWriMo this year, if only because it should get me back on the metaphorical horse. I can tell myself about the magic of first drafts all day long, but it doesn’t mean much if I’m not actually producing drafts.

Looking back at last year, I produced some stuff I can still stand to read. That’s not always true for me. Maybe I should put together another poetry zine; it might make me feel like I’ve got something to show for it, and let me move on to the next thing.

Little colored lights dot the sides of the wheel, and I’d swear the stars are almost as bright, almost as close. We go around once, twice, three times, and I think that if I jumped out, I would fly.

I don’t jump out.

I sit there as the wheel stops, me at the pinnacle in my empty car, swinging gently in the breeze. The park below me is lit up like a fairyland and I think that if I could just find the right direction to wander off in, the right angle, I could be lost forever. I tried all day, though, and never found that angle, no matter how many times I devised excuses to slip away from my parents.

Though, speaking of excuses… when I get off the ferris wheel, my parents are nowhere to be found. I know, I know I should stay there and wait for them to turn up. I know all about stranger danger. But I also know the park doesn’t close for another hour even if they want us to leave now. And they’re not here.

So I’m gone, looking for one more ride on the Viking ship that makes me weightless at the highest point, and the spinning room that holds me against the wall with no floor, and the biggest roller coaster I can ride without an adult. I keep going deeper into the park. The crowds are getting thinner and the night is getting darker, if that’s possible. All at once I realize there’s no one else around. I should go find my parents. I’m going to be in so much trouble.

The man in the top hat is waiting outside the dark ride. He waves me in.

One more ride can’t hurt, I tell myself.

I wake up in the car, the only sparkling lights coming from the occasional oncoming traffic. It’s pouring rain and my dad is assuring my mom that we’re almost home. I could say something, but they’re both focused on the road and my sister is asleep beside me. I close my eyes again. I want to go back.

If there was anything in all this paperwork that was going to free Emily, his lawyer would have found it by now. She was good. But Emily was determined: this was about the rights of all supers, and she’d take it all the way to the Supreme Court if she had to.

Dan admired her for it, and wished for her strength. But he also missed her.

Its use has changed, and its name has changed, but the earliest real posts on here are from 2006.

Because of the changes, it doesn’t really feel like it’s been that long, but somehow, I’m still here, and so is my blog (400+ posts and 200 pages later).

I took some time today to fold in some posts from a side project that didn’t quite take off. I think it makes more sense to collect all my creative endeavors in one place, so I’m going to be looking at some gallery options.

He leads the youth masses, but he tries not to make eye contact with the high schoolers. They all know, with the uneasy osmosis of teenage rumor mills. He wonders what they think really happened.

He says the words, breaks the wafer, pours the wine. Nothing happens, but that’s supposed to be the miracle. That’s faith, right? Believing it’s changed, even if you can’t tell that it has.

He’s never had so much respect for faith as he does now that he’s realized he never had any.

He sits in the auxillary chapel, at the base of Mary’s statue, and he wonders how he’s supposed to keep this up. The only things he believed in were what he saw – demons, angels, spirits, fairies. Now there’s nothing; he feels blind in church, and empty as well.

The statue’s spoken to him before, given him directives, told him what Heaven needed him to do. He’s done everything Heaven asked.

Heaven doesn’t need him anymore.

He’s starting to think that’s a directive all its own.

for Poetry Fiction