What do you see when you sit and listen?

What do you hear when you observe?

You tell me I am barren.

You tell me I always have been.

When do you seek out a voice long passed?

When do you wait and let it come back?

How did everything die here?

How does the rest survive?

Is it grit?

Is it natural?

Has it been changed beyond repair?

Has it become something else entirely?

Will you be ri...

I’m fighting the ace with arrows of romanticism.

The distance protecting her nature,

The arrows poisoned with desire,

I nock one,

She looks back, fists raised, face adorned with pink shades

“What is love to you? Romance?” She yells

“What is the difference between a friend and a partner?” She yells

She bows her head, running towards me, she yells,

“You think this is the only way?” she contin...

There’s anger in their tone. Calm but seething with tension, a question follows

“Why are you telling me this? You want more from me? What do you want? Are we not enough as we are?”

“Nothing! No!” you reply, “nothing at all, all I want is for you to know. At least if there’s a time where you don’t feel loved you can know that I love you and I would express it in any way you’d let me. In any way y...

Eyes open.

Water rushes and melts our cabin in some icy tundra.

It ricochets off the roof and loosens the foundation.

The house clinging to a rock,

I to my friend.

When we slide out we rush past a polar bear in slow motion,

It can sense us.

Eyes closed.

It’s silent.

This is the best hour to be in my house.

When all are asleep but me,

and I talk to Nyx through my window.

“Thank you for the ...

*in a voice note to one of their best friends and coworkers they say*

“I’m not shocked that there are cameras. I’m not even shocked that they’re hidden. I’m shocked because they’re hidden horribly! I mean really, if I could find them at the ripe age of 23 who did they even get to hide them?”

*they ponder for a moment and their eyes widen at no one in particular, though the emphasis can be heard ...

No streak!

Just monkeys on typewriters stumbling Shakespeare by accident!

Do they go insane trying to find him again?

I write and I write and I write

And I think and I think and I think

Appear and disappear

Until my friends think I don’t care

Or they think I’m mad

I don’t care and I do what I want

But then what I want is influenced

By choosing to care

And then I wonder if I care about ...

I decided to write thoughts and things said to me in relation to avoiding scenarios resulting from the prompt.

‘Everything has consequences you know? Everything you do is a choice you make, even the times where you do not choose’

‘The absence of data is still data’

‘If we ask questions to understand the other persons perspective, it turns from an argument against each other to teamwork again...

We pop and we crack when we face

We laugh and we duck away

Eyes darting to the wall

Sneaking back to tick tock out of turn

met gazes and sharp wit flit the spark

let it crackle

Light it

‘Set it free’

Billowing the smoke through a breeze

Cooling between the trees

oxygen fans flames, sure

but dust settles all the same

Breathing the same air in

true desires coming out

Pooling sand in ha...

“Should we…?” A

“What play it? He responds, “there’s no bench.” B

“We can make a bench,” a

A wave licks up their ankles, directly mocking his statement.

“The only song I know is hot cross buns,” he continues “How have we walked here every day and never seen this before?” B

“Well obviously it emerged from the ground and is waiting for you, oh holy chosen one, to play hot cross buns,” his boyfri...

beyond the maps, where legends dwell, I ventured into the unknown.

My friend seeks a void to scream to,

The other a cure or a cleanse of sorts.

One seeks a deity to face,

The other follows behind, a sword in one hand and bandages in another, and hopes the deity doesn’t look like their brother.

I venture into the unknown with no plan of knowing,

Because ‘not all who wander are lost.’

And b...