To take to learning a craft as powerful as the one that creates life is such a wonderful thing.

Yalin swayed a locket in between his fingers in motions like grass blessed by the morning dew, and sea buckthorns sprouted one by one from their little stems. He rested the same locket upon his altar before midnight, and the next day, a small peony blossomed through the cracks in the wood beneath it, ...

“3, 2, 1, GO!” The referee announced commencement of the arm wrestle competition. The two men’s vein in a sudden bursted out, their arm twisted, twirled, in attempt to overcome the one in front of them.

“I can feel you’re strength decreased, worned out already?” The man insulted in hope of tarnishing my confidence.

“Maybe if you used the strength you used to insult on your hand, you might win”...

Everyone has their great strength in life. Mine is my composure. I don’t show emotions. I never have. This is why I’m such a great fighter. I don’t feel pain or grief. I can’t feel regret.

My strength was the core of my greatest weakness.

A long time ago, only about a year, I met a girl. She wasn’t just any girl. She was my girl. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. I wanted to grow o...

“I shall never speak her name again for she never made it to the garden of Dovehill,” said the young man at his 38-year-old wife's funeral.

***

“Please, grandfather, tell me about my grandmother,” said the man’s young grandson, Thomas.

“Your grandmother was a lovely young woman. We married just days after we met. You see, we were both on our own at that point, our parents far from where we we...

I’m desperate

Feverish

Looking everywhere for love.

To pluck it out the hands of the ones who push and shove.

I need a nurse, a doctor.

My temperature is high.

My empathy is eating me

Bit by bit alive.

I love the poor

I love the needy

I love the ones who try to kill me.

I love them all

And bare their pain,

With heavy heart

I feel it’s weight.

Desire kills me

Desire to be loved back.

But I ne...

Anger: It’s tightly clenched fist, broken teeth, rapid breaths.

It drives people away, and you convince yourself that they’re just afraid, but they’re not. That’s fine, though, because you like being alone. Anger is your strength, but what happens when it’s gone? When the echoes of your outbursts fade away?

Do you sit in the quiet of your room, blood tricking down from your head? Do you find yo...

Connecting strangers

It ends now

People staring

Staring at what

What do you think

Of girls like me

Naive and loving

Matching your pretty

Chest out

Blushed cheeks

Cigarette smokes

Parted lips

"Have a ciggy?"

Mouth open

Tongue to taste

Taste remains

Sickly

Sour

Wrong place

Here for the taking

No brain

Mind in sight

Pretty wide brown eyes

Teenage girls

Obedient

Docile

Tak...

I watched as my sister and Father argued. Elda had her hand on her sword. And indeed no one would stop her from killing the king. As crown princess it would only cement her rule. Not that it mattered. Eventually she would lose the argument either to Father or the council. And I’d be sent away as some prize for an otherworlder. But that didn’t matter as long as my planet was safe.

I touched Eld...

I had always been the type of person to lend an ear. No matter the predicament, people would come to vent their frustrations and I would sit and nod in response. I listened to a woman bemoan her cheating husband while sitting on a park bench; a high school teacher who had lost the will to inspire his students as we watched the waves roll along the beach; and even my sister, who had been trying for...

‘If you’re afraid, we don't.’

Zoe whispered sharply in Sara's ear.

The two girls stood in the sun in the large empty parking lot, an immense hollow structure with a tangle of bare ramps. It literally marked the dividing line between the city and the countryside.

Zoe looked older than 17. Maybe because of her jaw and short crew cut hair, or her black T-shirt and military trousers. Her skateboard ...