Category Archives: Prose

Prose

Buildings – Reilly Wieland

@reillzz — Instagram

Describe a building as seen by a man whose son has just been killed in war
– Do not mention the son, war, death or the old man

Tall and dark, drawn with heavy hands and thick lines. It seemed like the creator had too many late nights, too many mistakes, too many eraser marks that somehow got carved into the structure.
It wasn’t like the buildings that lined the streets surrounding it, there was no alabaster finishes or silver lined doors. It was just dark, and not in the sense that you hope for dark things to be. Out of place, almost.
The building and the ground surrounding it both were the color of volcanic ash. Cigarette butts littered the pavement, but no smokers. Bird shit everywhere, but no birds, no trees.

Describe the exact same building by a lover.
– Do not mention love, the lover, or the person there

The building was sterile, but in the same way that the labor wing of a hospital was. Clean, dark, but promising. You could look at it and consider all the flowers delivered to it, the hiring hand shakes given between its marble walls. It didn’t need a silver lining to be entrancing. The exact roof of the building was covered in greenery, dripping off the edges and down into the top floor windows, standing like hair when you first come back to school. The vegetation could only be seen by whoever got close enough the edge of the structure.

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Prose

Dear Someone – Victoria Alexandria

Dear someone, Today I met a guy. Okay, I SAW a guy. But I felt like I knew him, you know? He had brown hair and brown eyes, the cutest smile and these broad shoulders. He had the kind of lips that aren’t really that special, but at the same time all you want to do is kiss them. His nose is a bit larger than normal, but it works with his other features. It pulls everything together, in a way. He likes his coffee with lots of milk and quite a bit of sugar. He’s not that big on coffee, but likes the way he looks when he’s drinking it. He doesn’t like tomatoes and asks for extra cheese. He walks with confidence, but if you watch closely you’ll notice he’s a bit scared of what others are saying about him. He listens to Frank Sinatra and reads National Geographic. He’s outgoing, but mysterious. He’s been judged and pushed aside quite a bit. He wants to help and he wants to give back, but nobody believes his intentions are pure. He lightly licks his finger before turning over the page on his magazine. I can imagine us together. We sit at the kitchen table next to a big window where all the morning light comes in. He reads his newspaper while drinking his heavily sweetened coffee. I sit across from him and look out the window. My coffee is black. My bedside table has a pile of fiction novels on top of it, while his has numerous issues of National Geographic. He hopes our children will make their choices always keeping adventure in mind, while I hope they’ll be a bit more rational. But neither of us wants to interfere, we want them to be independent. In our early days as a couple we would go camping and we would spend a great amount of time at outdoor concerts. We would visit museums and travel. Our weaknesses would be art, history and science. We would allow ourselves to indulge in them as much as we could. Later, when we’re older and the kids have their own lives, we’ll relish in each other’s company. Our home will become a kind of greenhouse because we’ll divulge in our mutual love of plants and greenery. It’ll be peaceful and it’ll be nice. Not perfect, never perfect, but it’ll be us. Now back at the coffee shop, he still sits there with his coffee and his magazine and it’s quite mind-boggling how I can imagine a life with him so easily. Reader, now you can discard all I’ve said so far because it’s probably all lies. Sorry, but I never even said “hello” to the guy. I merely watched him at a coffee shop. Sincerely, a girl who loves romance and people-watching

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Prose, Prosetry

11:46 PM – Bela Sanchez

11:46 PM – Bela Sanchez

@be.la (instagram)

 

all i went in to do was turn off the light, but then i saw them. all those pieces of me that you’ve been taking away, so small that i don’t notice each one until i see the gaping hole in my chest. i’m no brick wall, but you still have the uncanny ability to break me down. i don’t know what i’m writing, but i have to write something, anything, to fill this void, because tea and breathing exercises aren’t working. i’m sorry i get so stuck-stuck-stuck on words but i’ve heard if you say something enough it stops having any meaning. no matter how many times i write “i-miss-you”, it still sounds desperate. every rule has its exception. i’ve grown too accustomed to saying “i’m just tired”, when what i mean is “i am sad and i don’t know why.” but i haven’t slept in nine days and i’m living off coffee-induced dreams and trying to grasp some shred of exhaustion, so i think it’s a fair excuse. i can’t seem to remember how it feels to be so passionate about something that you fall unquestioningly into it each night. we’re driving so fast and i’m begging you to go faster because i want to know how the stars sound at the speed of light. i want to know how much it would burn if i got too close to the sun because I’m not suicidal but i might be staricidal. i can’t wrap my head around the edges of this universe and i can’t wrap my head around you. i wonder what the stars look like when they’re falling asleep.

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Prose

Thoughts from Time Zones

Being in a different timezone in Rome, I realized my appreciation for technology. There’s only so much emotion and connection that can be exchanged through series of 140 character messages, but it feels infinite when you’re thousands of miles away.

I would wake up and realize that my friends were asleep, unknowingly being thought of in the Old World. My replies to emails probably seemed comical to the recipients because it appeared as though I had sent a non-urgent email in the wee hours of the morning.

I’m always stuck in the wrong timezone, like somewhere, somebody is waking up in Boston and I’m falling asleep in Rome, and they are going to be the catalyst for something in my life if our worlds could just cross.
I don’t understand why I haven’t found them yet, or if I should even keep searching desperately for some fateful coincidence to walk into my life.

It made me realize that fate won’t always match up, and you’re never going to completely feel like the people around you are on the same page. You’re going to feel that someday, no matter how far off, somebody is going to walk into your life and you’re going to understand the time deficits between people. And that’s not meant to be some hopelessly romantic statement because that’s not how it’s supposed to work. It seems to be that for most people, the forces that change them are random, unexpected, unprecedented.

I’m reeling at the idea of missing things, both literally and physically. I’ve checked my pockets tri hourly for the last two weeks in search of my phone, hoping to avoid pickpockets. I feel as though I miss something every time I leave home, like everybody I love is together and conspiring against me in my city when in reality they’re doing the exact same things that they would do if I were there. I feel like I’ve blinked and people have moved on and morphed into strangers really fast. I feel as though I am still a fifth grader, scared of talking to a boy I like; and sometimes an adult, drinking black coffee and worrying about a mortgage. I think I’m missing it because I can’t find where I’m supposed to be. I’m terrified that I’m not going to be able to keep up with the ever-changing expectations and rules that come together to govern the choices of young adults. I feel like I’m fitting my stereotype in every way, and not at all at the same time.

It’s the age old teenage story: feeling happy and sad, lost and found, infinite and already dried up, scared and fearless. I’m old enough to choose the right fork at dinner, but young enough to not know how to use it. It seems to fit the high school student cliché just as much as comparing yourself to Holden Caulfield, but the stereotype of the “lost teenager” had to come from some truth.

Somebody told me a few weeks ago that I “would blow them all to the wall when they realized that I was going places”. What does that even mean? Is that measured the amount of small talk I can make? Is it the facts I know? Is it the number of people who have told me they loved me, and meant it?

It makes me return to my obsession with the idea of “missing things:” What do I not understand about what that man said to me? What am I missing?

After a few hours of thinking, I tried to rest on the idea that the comment was made as a compliment. And as the sun began to set in Rome, I felt for a second like I wasn’t missing anything.

My favorite part of the day is the short moment when the majority of the world is awake, time zones cross over somehow and the world is alive. It makes me think that the people of the world are here, awake and thinking, waiting for me to find them.

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