[x]

limitthat night i was frozen against the warm surface of your hands,
i was nobody in a sea of flashing lights
and i prayed this love wouldn't take my life

i didn't go to school and i didn't have a job.
my father was gone, my mother not around to see what i'd done
i didn't care, because there was no point to any of it.
how would a test score take me where i needed to go?

instead i liked to play at being a trendsetter,
a stylish girl who had everything

but the truth was that i was pathetically
sickeningly, painfully, absolutely
ordinary

and i had nothing.

you were the boy
with the stars in your eyes,
you were determined to catch your

halfwayshe lives in an old cottage by the shore, and the waves break against the shallow cliffs and spray foam all over her drying dolls. She makes charms and love-spells and potions, and crafts dolls from ceramic mold to quaint little mannequins; and they come alive under the touch of her blue-stained fingers (blue because she paints their eyes always blue, like the waves and the eyes she should have had)

he keeps a lighthouse in an island off the coast, and he comes and goes to town in a chipped grey boat (the color of her house) and he's happy living alone, savoring the silence and the power he has, over life and death, and light and darkness, a

UmbrellaheadsWe live in a city of smokestacks and umbrellaheads. A city split in two and turned upside down. A city dazed and unsteady on sixteen million feet, six feet under and darker than that. We live in a city that slept for the first time in nearly a century.
A city of people confused and bemused and infused with "what can I what shall I what must I do now?" It's a city that's hurting and breathing and fishing and wishing and laughing and living and waiting to wake up.
We live in a state of huddling and listening. Watching as the resilient basketball hoop in the driveway snaps in two as the trees behind dance in an insane tango, a physically improbable tango. We live in a state of blank traffic lights and trees flung like toys, leaves upside down and begging to be relieved of the shame of having fallen. We live in a state of emergency.
A state of people who exasperate and exaggerate and desperate to reach their families with no phone no internet no communication no no no. It's a state with th

SorrowbirdI watched him flap helplessly between the teeth of a barbwire fence, screeching for help.

"Papa, look Papa! A boy!"

My papa stood dazed for a moment, dust billowing at his legs, his eyes teetering along the field. It wasn't until later that evening he told me he hadn't understood what I had seen. What he had seen.

With grass tickling the backsides of my legs, I bounded toward the boy, "What are you doing? Are you okay?"

As I approached him, I felt his skittish eyes rake across my every movement. With his ten-year-old arms slung inside the gaping maw of a fence and darkened feathers pasted along the creases of his face; he looked squarely

Elegant

His fingers were elegant.

They worked in perfect rhythm to produce everything he could not say. Where I could only ever hear notes and simple emotion, he heard stories, saw worlds.

I used to envy him, to hide my hurt gaze behind his shoulder blades, to rest my jealousy on his thin, tired shoulders.

His fingers were beautiful.

They danced over the keys; they made the masters look like child's play; they shamed my clumsy attempts at carrying a tune without malice.

I used to long to be him – I would have given anything to have his talent, his skill. Anything was worth the fingers that never failed.

His soul was transcendent.

I coul

e.e.cummingsThe day you left, I skipped school to see you off.

I said, "There are more important things than school."

You said, "I never said there weren't."

Now, I mostly miss you, and usually on Sundays, I make my way to the place where we used to sit out Sunday School. There's still a Bible on the rock where I think you might have left it, and I pick it up and read it. I've never gotten past the gospel of Matthew, because every time I read it I see you staring at the sky and asking if Heaven's hypothetical.

There were stars in the sky that night, and you said you used to think they were god shining through a curtain.

Once we talked about Our Fath

WherewithalOnce I met a girl who carved the world flat just to tell me I was beautiful.

It went without warning, in the morning when we left our sheets and searched for a bed of leaves beneath my mother's apple-tree; I settled crooked as she leaned against my side, and even as my muscles cramped I wouldn't shift her burden from my shoulders even to walk a free girl again. I was the real Atlas, the true one so willing as to ask to bear the weight of the world on her back for all of time, and you wouldn't know it to look at a ghost like me.

August, I said to her, and when I waited for her calling voice to come back I couldn't stop thinking about the way

you still love himi.

the bare bulb flickers, and aurora's bones quiver, porous with constellations. she is named, she believes, for the mottled color of her skin: black, purple, green, yellow, and blue erupting on the pale night sky. when she tries to bend her arm, it hurts, and he says, "just rest. just rest. just rest."

they freeze over.

ii.

he meets daisy at the clinic. she is yellow in the cold but tans in the summer: blossoming daintily, shimmering with pollen, beautiful amongst the long wild grasses. she whispers and presses a flimsy little card onto his palm; "i can tell you're better than the others."

aurora accepts her methadone.

iii.

in the ar

A Love Story in Four Actsi.
     I loved a blacksmith once, back when the sand still clogged up my soul. It was only far after that I began to love the desert too.
ii.
     Underneath the casual noise--glass on wood, heat-smothered conversation, worn cards slapped down in careful triumph--there was this low, thrumming quiet that wouldn't be broken. He spoke in sepia undertones. "We're getting out."
iii.
     Hot iron smells like hot blood, like blood that's been poured out under the white Arizona sun. It's something you don't forget easy, like the taste of whiskey or the plasma patterns left on your eyelids after watching fire all night. It sticks.
v.
      My childhood was fed on medical books, and I've got this pain right behind my eyes and I wonder if this is what it feels like being lobotomized. Of course the brain has no nerve endings, but the hurt has to manifest itself somewhere.

Writing Fairytales I told him, "I think I'll write a book."

He said, "Do it right, November. Write a best-seller and send me a copy with your autograph on the inside cover."

"I can do better than that," I promised, our fingers intertwined for the last time, "I'll write the best damn book you've ever read. It'll tell the story of lost love and lost innocence, of found friends and staying out too late on a cold night, and the story of endings without closure. It'll be about boys and girls and break-ups and hook-ups and how everything happens in the backseat of cars."

"They'll interview you on television because everyone wants to know who inspired the story

For Sarah, Forever AgoI worked the midnight shift last night. It was the sort of night where you body feels so heavy that your mind just starts floating away. I was exhausted, worn. Sleep reached for my heart like a vigilante reaching for a gun, and I couldn't stop thinking of you.

You filled my head with poetry.

I could write something beautiful, that it was a clear night and the stars were out, that the moon shone above me like a love song in the sky. But it wasn't. The clouds were low and heavy and the streetlights painted the sky orange.

It was the kind of night that makes you feel trapped. The kind when there's no one alive but you, no sound but

wanderlust she was a s e v e n t e e n year old girl from nowhere [or was it everywhere?] with dark hair and long eyelashes and skin that was always pale white. when she was young she played in the poppy fields of greece and when she got older her tongue started yearning to speak italian and russian so that she could travel to other far off places.

she was born on a friday between two ice storms, and the first word she ever heard was b e a u t y. her mama told her that when she first opened her dark blue eyes, her pupil was surrounded by a ring of pure white. the blue stayed but the white turned to green [and from then

everything is okayone beat two beat three, beat
one (beat) two (beat)
three

the world is easy today,
a sharp line
trickling down a white page
nonchalantly ordered and meticulously kept

i am not happy in this place
nor am i anxious, nervous, depressed
i am not dead—therefore am i alive?
no. i am nothing here.

everything has an order
and it is my duty to keep it
in that order

i am keeping the rhythm of my mental drum
keeping this world underneath my thumb

i am at the centre of emotions in this place
skipping past the rage and entering serenity
a calm that is numbing, all-enveloping
i am honest, ideal, i am in control

every atom

we are all waiting to be found.August 17, 2012

I met a girl five years ago on a train to Paris and she told me she was running away. I asked her why, and she said she didn't know why—just that she had lots of things in her life that would justify her escape.
She held a cup of coffee in her left hand and periodically, she'd inhale the steady steam and sigh. I think she caught me staring at her once when her nostrils were on the plastic lid, so she explained that the smell of caffeine kept her heartstrings alive.
Her eyes were forever open, as if she never stopped to blink because she was afraid she'd miss something, and the sun sat on her eyelashes like birds on a wi

The extremely short storyI once heard the tale of a man who had the whole universe inside his throat.

"Was he a giant?" someone asked.

I thought for a second.

"No," I said. "He was a storyteller."

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Orchestrated madnessJust for a moment, she can pretend that the cigarette held between her two fingers is a conductor's baton—

The flame that sets her eyes alight makes them dance like starlight on the dark side of the moon, and for just one second she is a thing of beauty, she is more than a puzzle piece with cracked and jagged edges, she is loved.

She is a machine-made monster, a girl of such horrendous gravity that she devoured herself from the inside out—she is more than human, she has surpassed humanity—and someday she will be complete, unified, with the other half that calls from the gutters and the dark alleyways.

She is a puzzle piece w

Never good enoughI hate you because I'm never going to be better than you.

I hate you because you're everything I've never been—you're going to be everything that I'll never become. I hate you because you are better, you are stronger, you are one fucking step above and there's nothing else I can do about it.

I hate you because you're the only one who can make me cry, you're the only one who can make me want to tear my skin apart and devour myself whole. You're the only one who can make me scream, you're the only one who can make me feel second-class, inept, like I'm not on top of the world.

Because I'll never be, not as long as you're around.

I hate

To the boy with bleeding eyes Sometimes I wonder if we'll be doomed to gaze into each other's eyes forever, your eerie bleeding-blue violets staring into my own summer sky blue ones. I wonder if your bleeding eyes will ever look into mine with truth and passion and you'll be more than a porcelain boy—alive, animated, real.

These days are gone, but sometimes—sometimes I remember when we were fifteen-year-olds lying on the rooftops of my grandparents' house [it wasn't—was never—a home] and I showed you every constellation I knew, and for a second your eyes stopped bleeding, started glowing—and I thought maybe you'd be whole again, but then you tur

We must be oneWhen I first met you, I was filled with an all-consuming jealousy that gnawed away at my insides and bled through my fingertips in the form of ink from a pen. I didn't hate you—you know I've never hated you—but I was so envious of everything that you'd ever had.

I was just off the jet from Novosibirsk, while you had grown up with wealthy grandparents in the southern United States. I grew up with two younger sisters and an older brother to contend with; you were the single beloved and adored golden child of your family. You had had everything brought to you on a golden platter; I had to work and sweat and steal just to get something

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blue velvet

by ~Hildetann, Oct 30, 2012, 12:02:41 AM
Literature / Prose / Fiction / Philosophy & Perspectives / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

^{"i think it's better to be crazy and free."

she's sitting on the balcony of my apartment. her blue dress is dark against the edge of the sky and against the paleness of her thigh, against the glittering outline of the eiffel tower just outside my window. the weather is getting colder now, late autumn fading into early winter, and the wind dances through her choppy, curled hair.

i want her to close the door, for her to come inside. i want to say something to her, to say something back, but the words aren't forming in my mouth, are lodged somewhere between my tongue and my throat.

the light from my bedroom is soft gold against the edges of her face as she slides from the rail, brushing the velvet dress off with her hands as she stands. her cream-coloured pumps, red-soled and hinting at a glamorous life, seem almost to float above the ground. perhaps she is an angel, otherworldly in the glow of an old city tinged with the impressions of a thousand old souls.

"don't you agree?"

i don't know what to tell her. i don't know what to say. her mouth seems to move in slow motion, painted flawlessly in deep crimson. the light is softer than starlight against her face, softer than a satin apparition. she is beautiful, so beautiful, with a face that could be the wind in the sails of a thousand ships. perhaps she is not real—how could i know if she was real?—but she is still perfect, she is untouchable, she is pure.

there is simply nothing for me to say.

she leaves soon after, ebbing away into the ether like a cosmic eidolon, the ghost of starshine; she knows there is no answer waiting for her, no precious words set to tumble like rubies from my mouth. there is no reason for her to stay. and i am left standing in my bedroom, french doors wide open and letting in the cold, deep blue curtains nothing more than a memory of someone i could never forget.

i am standing in my bedroom, wishing i could have told her in her blue velvet dress: "yes."}

blue velvetby ~Hildetann

Literature / Prose / Fiction / Philosophy & Perspectives / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

^{she wore blue velvet
bluer than velvet was the night
softer than satin was the light
from the stars
- lana del rey, "blue velvet"

1. give me your impressions of the narrator. what are they like? who are they?
2. what is the meaning of this? what do you get out of this?}

~WhisperedInsanity Jan 18, 2013 Student Writer

This is just amazing. Wonderful job! <3

~Hildetann Jan 18, 2013 Student General Artist

wow, thank you so much! c:

=DailyLitDeviations Jan 16, 2013

Your wonderful literary work has been chosen to be featured by =DailyLitDeviations in a news article that can be found here: [link]

Be sure to check out the other artists featured and show your support by

ing the News Article. Keep writing and keep creating.

~Hildetann Jan 18, 2013 Student General Artist

wow, thank you so much!!

=andrewpom Dec 10, 2012 Student Writer

This is very abstract. Your use of language is very eloquent and free, even hinting at poetic meter sometimes; the use of commas, too, makes it read like someone who is languishing: it's difficult to explain, but the sentences sort of go up and down like sea waves, or like a dress in the wind. It's subtle. Even the lack of capital letters and your choice to use small text seem to suggest a mood of evanescence: of shyness, of elusiveness. It's so lonely and enigmatic. I think it's beautiful.

~Hildetann Dec 15, 2012 Student General Artist

thank you so much :>

~Flummoxative Nov 2, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

"i don't know what to tell her. i don't know what to say. her mouth seems to move in slow motion, painted flawlessly in a deep and unforgiving crimson. the light is softer than starlight against her face, softer than a satin apparition. she is beautiful, so beautiful, with a face that could be the wind in the sails of a thousand ships. perhaps she is not real—how could i know if she was real?—but she is still perfect, she is untouchable, she is pure."

I loved the reference there, and it was a lovely description. The narrator is someone who seems to be truly in awe of the woman in the blue dress, how beautiful but distant she seems. Someone who wishes that he/she could step into the woman's life and unravel her mysteries, but at the same time knows that the woman will always be too far out of reach.

It could be about loneliness. I'm honestly not entirely sure, but all the same I loved this.

Couldn't stop thinking of this while reading: [link]

~Hildetann Nov 7, 2012 Student General Artist

wow, that song really suits this! i actually know the song, but i never really made the connection in my mind...! thank you so much c:

~KaiserWolff Nov 2, 2012 Hobbyist Photographer

This is really cool, I like it.

~Hildetann Nov 3, 2012 Student General Artist

thank you c:

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