The floorboards creak outside the broom closet’s door, a girl cowers behind a rolling bucket, the stench of chemicals burning her nose.

“Alyssa,” she hears him coo softly, his Nikes squeaking on the school’s polished floors. “I know you’re here. I just know…”

She hears the scrape of his pocketknife on the painted cement blocks as he turns the corner, only inches from where she hides. She squeeze...

Lifeless thoughts

Bring arid truths

About loneliness

And thoughtlessness

Of those who condemn

In order to win

Again, and again,

With their cold eyes

Disguised

Behind friendly smiles

Made of white tiles

That are fake

And who take

Your souls

And burn them like coal

Until there is nothing

But lifeless thoughts

Tessa🦋...

I fell victim to death on a cold, arid day where color was mute and the symphony of the birds was lifeless.

Isla had gone just a week before. I was wearing ragged, sole less sneakers and my feet were frozen but I refused to change them because they used to be my father’s.

It happened almost too sudden. I felt the hot breath of demise on the back of my neck, a quick calm in a snowstorm.

By t...

She's freezing, her clothes are wet. The cold leaves its mark on her as she shivers. She looks around the pool she just swam out of. Empty. The usually crowded pool is devoid of people. The room itself has an eerie quality to it and everything feels unreal. Her head moves upward and it hurts.

It feels so heavy, her eyes feel

so drowsy. And her body...it aches. There's also a stuffy feeling brew...

The blackened, dead grass crunched underneath my feet. It was night. Or at least I thought it was. The sky was a blank dark blue, but not navy like it should have been. It was a royal blue, too vibrant to be natural. As I looked up, I felt the cold air sting my cheeks. The cold was all-consuming, sending ice into my bones. I looked out in front of me to see miles and miles of the same arid, lifele...

My body shivered, muscles quaking, teeth chattering. I had no idea where I was. And there seemed to be no land marks. Every direction I looked in was filled with empty, dead, fields. Fields that had once probably flourished with corn, or wheat, or soy beans, now, just barren. I knew I needed to get out of here. I had to run. To save my own life. To live. I had to find my way out of this wasteland ...

Lifeless, his body lay there clammy and cold, this was not part of the dream he was sold. His environment matched his predicament. A soulless room, lacking the promise it once held. The sent of regret suffocating every last last bit of hope. An arid aura sorrow hung in the air....

The cold wind cut through the landscape, making it harsher. Not that it needed to be. The place was completely lifeless. Nothing seemed to touch it. A barren circle inside a copse of dead scraggly trees. It seemed that no rain wanted to fall on this spot, as if everything that could give life wanted to avoid it. An arid wasteland. The area seemed cursed, and that was where they had decided to meet...

She woke up from her nightmare, abruptly, gasping for air. She squinted her eyes a few times, allowing them to adjust to the stark darkness of the room. She placed her index finger and middle finger on her neck, feeling the rhythm of her heart begin to slow its pace, and she became more calm.

Suddenly aware of the fact that in her hastened awakening, she may have disrupted her sleeping husban...

I’d run to you,

Barefoot,

On a crisp winter afternoon,

Silver layers on grass,

That feel like running on broken glass,

Shivering in the cold,

Watching your smile,

No longer lifeless,

No longer a dream,

No longer a memory,

No longer in pain,

Sending warmth straight through me,

Enough to thaw my frozen heart....