creative writing
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Chapter — The Alphabet That Couldn’t Sing I tried to build words from an alphabet that was not my own. Spanish at home, English at school. The letters felt foreign, cold to the touch, like tools meant for someone else’s hands. The sentences they made were like conversations overheard through a wall—recognizable as speech, but
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from, Chapter 4: Walnut Season It starts like this: the end begins with the cards. For years, I kept my life organized on 3×5 index cards—neat, white, lined. They lived in small gray boxes stacked on chrome wire shelves above the kitchen sink. Stainless, or trying to be. Twenty boxes, two deep, three high. A
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He sat undone. His left leg folded under him, his right stretched into the pale dark as though it belonged to someone freer. The air at 2:30 slipped through the screen and slid across twelve inches of open window. The blinds caught it, sliced it, and delivered it to his skin with the precision of
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I grew up in that age when television screens stretched anywhere from a 13-inch “personal” set to a 28-inch family behemoth. In our house, we had one TV—24 inches, rabbit ears on top, wood panel sides, and a dial that clicked its way from channels 2 through 13 on VHF. Channel 3 was just snow,
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Romulus—the dog that smelled of sun-baked fur and dirt,ten years pressed into the seams of his chest. He carried him through the glass doors,yelling something half-formed to the receptionist,“he’s in pain—just…”and the words dissolved into the silence of strangerswho already knew. Romulus on the cold stainless table,eyes too wide, whites swallowing the brown,staring at him
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the old woman is making a war in the other room— shoving anything not nailed down, raising more dust than she ever sweeps up. I don’t look. looking is an invitation. and it’s Saturday. and Sunday is coming. “preach it,” I whisper to no one. I hold my phone like it’s a holy book. feel
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The screen glowed in the 2:30 AM stillness, a sudden star in the domestic dark of his bedroom. Her text bloomed, then vanished, a digital ghost that left its afterimage on his retinas. Arlo fumbled for the phone, pressing it awake. He didn’t bother with his glasses; his nearsightedness was a loyal servant in the
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of course you said we& so i unlearned my own namefor the shape of an us only to findthe space between your hello& your goodnightis an oceanwhere i amdrowning alone. you have your houseyour children a steady chorusin the same keyyou have the same wallsthat have held other voices& called it home. & me?i have
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In war, you wear two faces—casualty, survivor. In peace, only one remains, and it weighs heavier. Pain drifts in—neither enemy nor friend,a shadow castby the flickering lamp of existence. A war without armies,fought in silence,where each breath is deathand resurrection. The lungs whisper, why?No answer comes. Eyes in the dark—promising nothing,searching endlesslyfor the fracture that
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“It’s been seven hours and fifteen days,” (Sinéad O’Connor, Nothing Compares 2U)or 2191 days if you’re the kind who needs the math, since you walked in like you owned the placeand bent me into a kind of happy I didn’t trust but wanted anyway.It only needed water, we thought.Turns out it needed a whole lot
BB Grey--musings 