Author: fpoussin

Lost
Taylor Thornton

I am chaos.
I am dark.
I am fearful.
I am broken.
You are calm.
You are light.
You are courageous.
You are whole.
I am in a world I cannot understand; you walk in this world with laughter.
You carried me when I could not walk, now I am fearless.
You are the light I did not know I needed.
You were my saving grace.

Looking for Something
Dannielle Griesemer

I had gone looking for something.
Wandering. Walking. Singing. Running. Flying. Fixing. Emoting.

I was looking for something. I needed a new identity.
I was looking for a new leaf.
Where do you find a new leaf?

I went to the forest.
I sorted through leaves, looking for my new leaf.
Purple. Purple. Red. Purple. Pink. Blue. Purple. Blue. Green.
I was looking for something.
New music, people. Power. Control.

You would think that with so many trees, I could find at least one good leaf.
Foul language. Spending money. Wasting gas and time.
I’m in a forest! There are so many trees in a forest.

“Keep going, keep walking.” I haven’t heard that voice in awhile.
“Go deeper. Climb that hill.” I was so tired of looking, but I was too deep to get out.

Suddenly there were less trees. How can I find a new leaf without trees?
I began to panic. Go back, back to the trees. I didn’t look hard enough.
“No. No. Keep going.” But I’m so tired.

There is a field at the top of this hill. No trees. And it began to snow.
This must be some kind of joke.
Then I saw it.

I stopped looking for a new leaf.
Because I found what I was looking for.

A candle, not a leaf. Light, not shade.

“You finally found me” says the voice.
“Where were you when I needed you?” I wailed at the sky.
“I have always been inside you. You hid me in your heart long ago. You forgot me, my child.
Let me out now. Follow me. I will guide your feet.”

So I stopped looking for something.
Because what…no…Who I needed, had always been there.

Light’s Absence
Taryn Cyncholl

If all light was extinguished,
How pretty could nature be.
The tiny weak wimp sapling
Could never be a tree.
Existence would be despairing,
Earth icy, cold, and raw.
Water eternally frozen;
Flora dry as straw.
Hope suppressed much the same,
Beasts shiver, struggling to find heat.
Force feeding their minds warm thoughts,
Still freezing head to feet.
Fireflies freed of fire,
Lighthouses lacking light,
Result in jet black day,
Identical to the night.
No more breathtaking sunsets,
To them you can bid ado.
No more miraculous rainbows,
Or their bold majestic hues.
So I guess the creator of light,
Is who we have to thank.
For the life we have around us,
Or rather everything point-blank.
The Light keeps us from slithering in shadows,
While protecting us from shriveling rays.
Revealing clearly lit paths to follow,
On even the darkest of days.
The Light that goes on shining,
One that constantly glistens through.
The light that cannot be defeated,
Gave His life for you.

I Am a Ghost
Anna Raelyn

I am a ghost.

I was seventeen when I died from a plague that struck the coast of the upper peninsula of Michigan. I remember the fever that wracked my body, the liquids that oozed down my face. The plague came with boils, and that was the worst part. Itchy welts crawled up my arms and legs like swollen hickeys.

It was the plague that wiped out the town, that and unemployment, the deadliest of diseases. The factory that stood on the edge of the bay — that produced the charcoal pig iron used — ceased to bring in money and ceased to create jobs for the boys that passed the eighth grade. It was a wonder it had ever sprung up to begin with; people only used manufactured pig iron for some ten years.

That’s a mere breath of a second in ghost time.

I worked at the factory for a while, scooping coal into the giant furnace, black coating my lungs, but that was only a perk of being the son of the factory supervisor. My family was to survive the recession. Most others did not.

But I didn’t survive, after all.

I am a ghost living in a ghost town. The bones of the grocery store still stand. They’ve revived the doctor’s house up the hill and the theater next to the small school. I guess they decided, two hundred years later, that the town offered something of value. I watched as they painted over old walls, rebuilt fallen buildings, and reverted the town to its base, no personality.

Visitors liked the houses the best. I’d watch couples, families, boys and girls enter the open doorways, smile at the beds that used to fit five at a time, comment about how odd it all seemed.

How ancient.

I am an ancient ghost in an ancient ghost town.

Fayette State Park requires a parking pass. They profit from my old life.

It was hard to be bitter when chubby toddler feet ran down my flowered hills. It was hard to regret when tourists came for pictures of my home. Days turn to weeks turn to months. Years turn to decades turn to centuries. Time warps after your blood cools. Every day is the same. I flash to and from buildings. I sit on rooftops and throw myself off. I watch.

Ghosts don’t have the burden of walking. We can, if we wish, but flashing is faster – walking through walls, stepping out of the butcher and into the bakery in a single blink. Walking reminds me too much of humanity, of the people I left behind when I died, and the people who left me behind when they did.

I’m flashing past the boats when I see her. After fixing this ghost of a town, the living added a campground and a boat launch. The campground sits a mile away, the dirt path lined with wildflowers and scoliotic trees. But the boat launch — brand new wood glistens with water and fish oil. Boats dock along the edge, white and sterile.

If I was the kind of ghost who scared the living, I might take one. I might climb behind the wheel and ride it into the waves. But I don’t care to make myself known, so I climb pillars, watch the unloading of fish, and admire the sharp architecture.

Her green eyes make me want to whisper hello.

I was almost married before I died. Margaret Holloway. She had a nose like the perfectly sloping hill behind the Grand Hotel and straight hair the color of the dirt path to the factory, blackened by soot. I didn’t love her, which fills me with shame. Our parents thought it was a good match, but I still needed two-hundred years to learn about what it meant to love a girl.

The first time I saw Jane — I learned her name was Jane from a conversation between her and her father. It seemed it was just the two of them — I stopped in my tracks. Her hair was a dark red, an unnatural but eye-catching color. Her green eyes could be seen from any place in town.

What I liked the most about Jane was that her face wasn’t buried in technology. I didn’t know much about these “phones” everyone seemed to carry lately, but I knew they were unnatural. People aren’t meant to stare at one thing for too long, though that rule doesn’t apply to Jane.

I might watch her forever.

Jane returned to Fayette the same week every year, her and her father gliding in on a large sailboat. They didn’t stay at the campground, but instead slept in the belly of the boat.

Every year she returned with a sketchbook, gliding her graphite across the page instead of gluing her fingers to a screen.

Sometimes I stood behind and watched. She liked to wander the property and her favorite spot was the cliffs above the bay. I followed her whenever I could — whenever I wasn’t keeping small children from ripping apart the toys at the school. It was easy to guide a child in a different direction without alerting to your own presence.

I found out early on that the living don’t like to be touched. By me, at least. Confusion, sometimes fear, floods their features. I didn’t intend to scare, so I stopped. But sometimes I touched Jane’s red hair. Only on a windy day, so it’d seem like a gust of wind instead of my snow-white fingertips.

One day, I can’t help myself.

It’s her fifth year here, her fifth year sleeping in a boat and climbing the trails around my old hometown. She’s older than me now. I can see it in the way her face matures and the way she speaks to her father. I am two-hundred-and-something and she might be twenty.

After five years, I can’t help myself.

I follow her to the doctor’s house, past the wealthy side of town and into the woods. At night, the doctor’s house is the last place you want to be with a ghost, but during the day it’s not so bad.

The house is two stories, unlike other homes in town. The basement was used as an office and the bedrooms were upstairs. I remember falling from a ladder one day at the factory. I fell into the opening of the furnace, the door still open from my own careless actions. I burned a good portion of my back and was rushed to the doctor. I still remember the wet strips he laid on my skin. I was lucky it never took to infection.

Jane climbs the stairs to a door that remains forever locked. They didn’t restore the inside of the doctor’s home, so she sits on the stairs leading to it. I sit next to her, as I often do.

She ties up her hair, missing a streak of red. It curls around her cheekbone. I can’t help it.

“Jane,” I whisper. After two centuries of not speaking, my voice is scratchy. My tongue feels as fragile as brittle pig iron. Jane’s hands freeze, one holding her sketchbook and the other, a pencil. She’s heard me.

My mouth opens to say it again. I almost laugh at how good the air feels, sliding down my throat. Her name is on the tip of my tongue, when I see her face.

Lines fill the space between her brows. She bites her bottom lip. And there it is, the same confusion and fear. The wind doesn’t whisper pretty girls’ names. Her eyes scan the clearing, wide and unblinking.

Jane.

She doesn’t hear her name as I whisper it again and again in my head.

Don’t be frightened, Jane.

I reach out again – I can’t help it.

I can’t help it. I can’t help it. I can’t help it.

Her hair feels like whitecaps sweeping over my fingertips, of steep waves flooding my senses.

Jane jolts, standing abruptly from the rock ledge. “Hello?” Her voice shakes. Her eyes lock on an area just behind me. I feel eyes on my chest, then my shoulders, and finally on my face.

Eyes wide. Emeralds stuck in smooth stone.

A whisper, “Who are you?”

I flash from the spot.

Standing atop the stone grocery store, I look down at the town I know so well. The sun hangs low in the sky, changing into its evening colors. An orange glow highlights the factory, the field of daisies, the family picnicking below.

No one has ever seen me, not in my entire two-hundred years of wandering among the living. And I tried – I stood inches from strangers’ faces, screamed every word I could think of while their wide eyes tried to find the voice’s owner.

But I’d felt Jane’s eyes lock on mine. I’d seen the flash of near recognition, the clench of surprise.

She saw me.

And I want her to see me again.

Her Light Eternal
Fabrice Poussin

She shivered beneath the budding frame
Terrified of those many years to dawn
Pen in hand her gaze lost into a dark void
Horizons too distant to take a chance.

The flesh tepid under her massive yoke
She may have been a cripple in those twenties
Yet a glow, weak as it seemed near extinction
Showed the way to an uncertain fate.

Hazy humanoid shapes form upon the night
Afoot as ghosts in an eerie procession of hopes
A gentle reflection outlining timid souls
Maybe the spark to jumpstart another birth.

Aflame in the thickness of the frigid cosmos
She may vanish into an infinite realm
Yet her beacon will to burn in the spirits
Of all who believe thus forevermore.

He Was Beautiful
Taylor Thornton

He was there,
Unknown to the light he bares.
He was there,
Unknown to the love he shares.
He was there,
Unknown to the light in his eyes.
He was there,
Sharing his heart.
He was there,
Until it was time for him to no longer share his beauty.
We said goodbye to the man who was unknown to his own love.

Go Home, Kid
Tayla Vannelli

Sorrow pulls on my jacket.
I stumble along, a forced smile
ripping my cheeks into lines,
rather than crinkling my eyes.

I drag my shadow to work,
shove some joy in my pockets.
Today, I will distract myself
from the ache to run away.

I load my days with excitement:
activities, adventures, anything
to let me pretend I’m not counting
the minutes until my flight home.

I see loved ones in passing faces.
Night brings silence and loneliness,
but also hope, because another day
has brought me closer to August.

Soon, my family will drive me away.
My plane will await my arrival;
I will finally fly home to school
and put an end to this summer apart.

My life is in Georgia now.
I dread school breaks meant for joy.
No one understands my homesickness.
I’m at “home.” It’s just the wrong one.

First Star
Fabrice Poussin

Fashioned by the thickness of the dark
I lay unconscious for time unknown when
A spark ignited the void to jettison a soul
Upon the original lightning.

An illusion of what I may soon become
Began to grow in a vertiginous twirl
Like a fiery dust of minuscule atoms
Without boundaries yet.

Not a cry nor a whimper in the immense vacuum
I could find no anchor to attach a fate
Thrown to the mercy of birthing asteroids
Per chance to encounter a mate.

An infinite line traced a path through the mass
Solid as a rock fluid as streaming molasses
The only proof that perpetual motion finally
Had come to exist.

I surrendered what I sensed was the shell of a destiny
To the passing arrow sole guide in the emptiness
And I found something accelerating nearby
It took me on a surreal journey.

Thus, what I am now joined with the light
Dim star within the deep of oblivion
To make one amid so many new creations
As the world came to be from nothing to the first star.

Did You Miss Them, Elisi?
Whitney-Faith Smith

Would you imagine
the village of teepees
when you sat on your front porch?
Did you whisper Cherokee
to the wood-burning stove
as you swirled Granddaddy’s supper,
hoping it would understand?
Would you Stomp Dance with maples,
remembering the laughter and calls
of your forgotten family?
I can only ask questions to this page,
but honestly I wanted to say to you, I’m sorry.

I see your face, creased brow, eyes made
sharper by your rising cheek bone,
stark black hair standing out
in the grayscale photograph.
I know the rest of your people
were forced to vanish,
the burdened white man
sealing them behind walls of pine,
then corralling them out,
whips and guns poised at their backs
to keep them stumbling
to Oklahoma.

I’m sorry that you could have missed them
each time the stars came out,
each time you felt the garden’s cool clay
between your fingers,
each time you saw a Cherokee Rose
climbing over the oak.
And I thank you for being my Elisi,
though I was never taught
your name.

A Thrift Store Ball of Yarn
Sarah Bramblett

I. Casting On
Once, I sat on the hallowed shelves of Hobby Lobby.
I listened to young girls beg grandmothers
for the aquamarine with the thread of silver.
Expectant mothers bought in bulk the baby blue.

Workshop days brought in crowds.
I watched knitting needles find their match
fall in love, make something beautiful.
Burnt orange and I earned a clearance badge.

More hands picked me up in December.
The attention made me tangle.
A frequent shopper, with graying roots, frayed ends
used a coupon to bring me home.

II. Working in a St st (k every round), knit 12 rnds
Would I be a winter hat for little Hannah?
A criss-cross scarf for Granny Sue?
An amigurumi frog to comfort teething Sammy?
If stitches were days, my benefactor required
forty-seven rounds to remember me.

I should have known. I’m the scratchy,
utilitarian material made for rags,
not beauty. She printed “Easy Crochet Dishcloth”
from Pinterest. But she spilled coffee
on it and on me; all the counts blurred.

Before the bitterness of being stained,
I tasted the sugary sweetness of aspiration.
My strands were knotted with care
not a thread unaccounted. Still riding potential,
possibility, I was plopped in the minivan.

From soccer practice to the kid’s choir,
I just rolled under the driver’s chair. Forgotten?
Slimy cheerio crumbs decorated my edges.
I picked up some of the dog’s hair.
Fifty-nine stitches in transit.

III. Join, taking care not to twist sts
She discovered me again in a parking lot.
With her mutter, my last benediction,
s h e u n r a v e l e d m e.
Dropped me here, the generic nonprofit.
I’m not even good enough for GoodWill.
Scotch tape on my skin announced
that I’m worth only fifty cents.
From here, I’ll begin again, with the quirkier cast
Of discarded friends—the VCR and the amateur
painting of fruit share my shelf.
Rpt rnd 1
on day 403