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 ...

I have always been brilliant at keeping my true feelings hidden. About showing a calm expression while secretly wishing I could murder the person I’m talking to — or at least seriously injure them. To fake crying even when I’m not actually saddened by the events happening around me. To throw a realistic-seeming tantrum when it’s required, when it’s good for me to do so.

But wielding a power that ...

I love unconditionally,

I trust far too easily,

I forgive when maybe

I shouldn’t.

I try to see the best

With truth and lies confessed,

But they’re the things that

Keep me awake.

But I will keep on trying

To see things in the light,

And I pray that, in the end,

I will be alright....

I was a secret weapon. People have long speculated what my power was. I’m the only one in the Hero’s who’ve never shown it.

But then again, it was better to keep it secret.

When I touch someone, their power enhances. It becomes 3 to 10 times stronger.

I’ve always loved my magic. I felt proud because I’d had the strongest Enhancer gift in generations.

I’ve seen other Enhancers, and they do n...

“Patience is a virtue,” I whisper to myself. The crowd bustles around me, talking, walking around the dome. I finger with the tiny coin in my hand. The Mars dome is always busy this time of day, what with people heading to transport pods and communicating to their loved ones back on earth.

Those fighting in the war, where my husband is.

He told me to wait for him, that he’d come home when the t...