It rained tonight for the first time in a while,

And the Moon broke through the clouds,

Summoned witnesses to remember the mountain sky

In all their great dramas here below,

Where hellos and goodbyes take up so much of our headspace

And so little of our time.

Only dreams, only memories,

Only little moments of breaking my heart open

Like frozen fingers too quickly warmed by the fire

Shattering me in her layered lingering

And their naked splashing in the darkness,

And I shiver half-clothed,

Watching a moment I'm (not) truly a part of,

And (yet) have created.

I am so young in my flesh,

So old in my ways.

Do the trees think me curious?

Head shaking out the window

And a child in a thrice-too-large coat

And tears behind so many eyes

And somehow it feels like Winter,

And Fall hasn't even arrived yet.

Could you embrace me again,

Skin to skin and our minds reeling

In a spiraling mass moving up and down

In tandem with the rhythm of distant hearts,

And I feel like crying out: Wait!

Because I'm not ready,

Because you're gone now

And Lichen next

And everyone, everyone eventually,

And I've hardly even caught your eye

To tell you silently that I love you.

Could you wait another day?

Take another month?

Stay another year?

But we would never keep you,

Though the piano doesn't greet me when I seek it out in the night,

And the stairs don't sing when they creak under unfamiliar footsteps,

And my terrified pace won't be slowed by the patient nightwalker

When the houses get too crowded and the paths too thin.

Where you wander now is yours,

And I'm proud of that choice,

And whether you appear in a month or a year

Or never again in our little wild lives,

I'll go on dancing to strange music,

Taking up space and squeezing into tea cups,

Laughing because people are so beautiful

And because being loved is so lovely.

I want to write music like a true poet. Not just words, drifting black and white across a blank canvas, never to see colour or cadence without a musical mind to untangle it. I want to paint obsessively. Not just kiddish attempts at watercolor and sketches I give up on halfway through, the image lost with my thoughts flying far too fast for my hand to keep up. But I can't keep up with you, true artists in this vibrant world. I can't bring life to my words like you inspire your brush, your strings, your whittling knife, or your voice. I create vessels for abstract ghosts, patterns of coded sounds in further coded shapes that only work to move information from here to there if the reader knows intimately the same magick signs. It's a gated art form, this inkcraft, and though beautiful in its way---filled with the fragrance of aging leaves, saturating in the context of its library or bookstore, musical when recited by those with greater skill, recreated by each amateur, ever evolving in every iteration---it will never quite match the passion of the colored and shadowed oils on the canvas drying on Rabbit's wall, never dance through the air to the keen vibrations of Grandfather's strings. There's too much mystery here, too much concealed, and what a name means to you is different from what it means to me.

I want to dance my stories into life---no fear here, no fear here---like a restless graveyard filled with morbid boredom, inspirit old bones with movement they've long forgotten, passing strength from my growing muscles to their atrophied and consumed limbs. No more envying the dead! I want to tell stories like an old man with a captive audience, not caring that my voice is shaky and so are my hands, or that I have to breathe twice as long as my younger counterparts, intent instead on illustrating in the softly drifting air before me invisible patterns of smoke for my listeners to inhale, seeing visions of bygone days and uphill-both-ways roads and loves so sharp and beautiful and gone, gone away, gone far away, that they begin to travel through time like I do, forgetting their wyes and woes, no choices to make, no terror in the results, standing like tall trees through contradicting air currents. I want to love like a child, playful and free, to say 'hello' and 'do you want to be my friend?' and 'goodbye' when it's time for lunch, to let it all in and let it all go and let it all be and not once think of my self as something needing or lacking or twisting up at every change in the cast of beautiful faces around me.

And though my words contain worlds that I cannot share any other way---why am I wearing clothes?---they spin so far out from the Sun that I fear they grow cold, lose their atmosphere, forget their water and their heat, and life abandons them---or they abandon life---as soon as they are set into motion, whiling away their unending shorter-than-earth days like so many dead things floating in a mountain lake, brilliant in a confused and fearful way, waiting to be eaten up by fish that will never swim there, content instead to be bounced around by spiraling children passing from life to death to life again in a game of who can swim the fastest?

I don't think I'm finished though---oh, how simple!---I don't think the lack of senses means a lack of colour or sound or feel or smell or taste; even the blueberries burst all the more sweet at night, and the stars shine more boldly in their gentle way, fall through a too-broad-for-the-eyes canvas with more invisible colour than any painting can contain without turning to mud, captured only in our silly little magick-eye contraptions we call cameras. We walk through worlds each day that cannot be traveled to again only through snapshots; we need many and never enough.

I'm creating now alongside Rabbit and Grandfather---the wind is my friend---the one painting and writing and laughing, the other touching keys and strings and singing out, and I draw faces in leaves and flowers blooming behind closed eyes and write, a volunteer insomniac in the minutes between the hours, sketching out in digital glyphs impossible geometries that fill the sky and pattern onto our ceilings, collage the musings of other souls into a little container, which opens onto a little world being created above the waterfall, a bed of moss and a sun-soaked field in the wild mountain country hemmed in by wildfire.

And I ask myself now, seeing this world---Time unwinds its coil---can you walk upon that forgiving water? let your storm be roused and calmed in the same moment, the same rhythm, the same pattern? You won't drown, I promise. But you may very well fall, singing in tune and grinning through a thousand illnesses, into an impossible, ferocious love.

I knew a guy

who applied

to be a

police officer

six times

went through

six rounds of

training camp

to be told

he'd failed

and he wouldn't

become a cop

after all that.

I could tell you

he was five foot five

skinny, nice as sunshine

but what I remember

about him

is that he got up

five times

after failing and

kept trying.

Five times

of being at

the bottom of

his class

and still wanting more

of what lay ahead.

The only question

I had for him

was why not

make it seven

and he laughed

at that

said he knew

when he'd finally

been rejected.

I think of him

when I fail

and I don't know

what he'd make of that

but maybe

he'd like that he shed

a little light

that he'd succeeded

at least, in that.

The above image was the prompt for a monthly contest (can share the link if you want to join in starting next month. You get 55 hours to write a 500 word story.)

Here's my take on it.

Ferguson, with his thinning hair, crooked nose, and a “vipe” in his mouth that gave him a sleuth-y look, was staring at the virtual screen.

“Are these all of the suspects?” he asked.

“That's right, detective. These are the seven that I could find for you. They are an acceptable cross-section of the society although some cultures may be under-represented-”

Ferguson cut his AI assistant’s excruciating verbosity off with a precise wave of hand. He then closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. It was pointless to admonish an AI bot lacking all emotions. Instead, he pulled the “vipe” from his mouth, sending a whiff of imperceptible diffusion, pointed at the screen, and asked: “And… one of these… is an imposter?”

“Yes, an imposter is someone who does not belong in a group. Some of them can disrupt modern life by reintroducing old ideas, reducing dependence on fossil fuel, and exposing the ills of processed food.”

“Yeah, I know! Let me think-”

“The function of AI is to supplement your thinking by providing you with banal information you would otherwise-”

Ferguson waved again to silence the bot. “Tell me about each of them,” he ordered.

“The female with the wine-coloured top is of South African descent, has no family here in Australia, and was born just after E-volve.”

E-volve, Ferguson mused, the Singularity when everything–everyone–went digital. Irreversibly.

The bot continued: “The male with the coloured skin is an American, excels at Basketball, and was born after E-volve.”

Ferguson stared at the artificially generated image and wondered when the old guy with the pastel green shirt was born but waited until the bot narrated key facets of each person.

“The senior male,” the bot revealed, “was born before the E-volve but has undergone voluntary conditioning with an embedded chip.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Would you like to know their sexual orientation too?” The bot asked. “It requires escalated authorisation for security purposes.”

Ferguson smirked. “No but, out of curiosity, what can you tell me about me?”

“A private investigator who moved to town five months ago, smokes raspberry-flavoured vipe: a portmanteau of vape and pipe, and has an illogical phobia of AI.”

Satisfied, Ferguson smiled. “Excellent! I have everything I need except their addresses. Text me those, please. Thanks for your help.”

He knew the identity of the time-traveller. He was also glad storage costs and legal restrictions prevented the bot from going farther in history. His story.

Then, Ferguson drove to the address he had searched. “Mr Clifton?” he asked the man who answered the door.

“Are you a cop?”

“No” Ferguson raised his palms. “But I know that you come from the early twenty-first century.”

“Oh, really? And how's that?”

“The formal shoes gave you away, and the clothes, of course. But open palms? That's a pre-cellphone stance.”

“Shit!”

“Don’t worry, Mr Clifton. I’m not here to rat you out.”

“So, why are you here?”

“I was just wondering if you had an extra seat on the return trip.”

I meditated on the wind the other day, sitting half-lotus in a half-decayed concrete garage in the middle of a forest, where we used to have our fires last winter. I sat with a friend and waited for my brain to start trailblazing, taking me into the truth of the automaton that is me, entering a state of flow, becoming a muscle responding to an electric pulse originating somewhere outside of me; I am only one small part responding to a stimulus. The flutist inhales the spirit, breathes it into the instrument, acts as lungs for a body-less entity, and the voice of the wind emerges. This day, I allowed the trees to do so, and listened to memories of the wind from another artist repeating in a digital plane.

I sat with my friend and could not open my eyes without being overwhelmed. So I breathed, and I stayed still, and I listened to the wind and the music and I smelled the air and I wondered if my cloak would be warm enough, and found that it was so. I drifted into reverie and out of it, felt the push and pull of heart-clingers, loved it all, or hated it; there was strong energy, but no real judgment. I've listened to my heart time and again, and it always tells me something different. I've reasoned with it, abandoned reason for it, given it space, given it attention, swaddled and freed it, fed it with good and ill, and never once has it been consistent. There is a wound somewhere I cannot find. A healing I cannot achieve. What guidance can such a thing be that beats as consistently as the wind blows?

I lay under the trees and the air rushed into my lungs, seeped out of them slowly, or quickly if it so desired. And I listened for the wisdom of the vaporous sea, wondered at the patterns that emerged within my mind from its variance: air rushing down claw-marks in the aspens, spinning through channels in the grain of the interior of the flute, filling a space and leaving it, dancing along the surface of the water, wisping into nothingness in the atmosphere high above, turning on itself at a moment's notice. The wind is treacherous, like my heart. What wisdom is there? What wisdom is there to be gained?

There are patterns, but not to be thoroughly obeyed. There are names, but not to be confused with realities. The wind is a fickle deity, a mischievous spirit full of tricks and power and voice. And it calls to me deeply, deeply. I cannot stay in my flesh when the wind catches me right, cannot remember my own name when the flute begins to sound. I am sent far, far away, and forget that I have not wings.

Memory doesn't matter here. It blows away like a slender candle flame in a sudden gale, whispers half its secrets and vanishes into nothing, and the secret is scattered like the stars about a new planet, which becomes a seed, which becomes a child wrapped in a cloak, which becomes a galaxy and an astral body, which stretches apart like light entering a black hole, which condenses in a moment into a nest on a once-halcyon sea now swelling to a moon-drunk wave in a silver and blue ocean somewhere deep in the eye of the mystic.

My friend writes poetry and I turn over a half-shaped haiku, forgetting that the wind cares not for structure, knocking over the pines, pushing the smoke out and pulling it back in. And I watch my jealous mind from my laughing mind, and it isn't unkind, and I drift on his words and twist about them, imagining a fire before us and I the smoke dancing in celebration that the ban has been lifted, and I am in the future then, and time is taken by the wind and left in pieces out of order, like the chess pieces buried by the squirrels in the village.

Down from the sky I am inhaled, a molecule in the lungs of God, traveling through the heart, to the brain, and I am torn apart into my bed, and open my eyes like a child with a thousand, thousand lifetimes behind me. The silk scarf has only worn away about a few inches of the mountain.

The winner of the “By a thread” challenge is @ChrisSadhill! His entry pulses with an irresistible noir vibe that leaves the reader wanting more:

https://www.theprose.com/posts/newest

Runner-up: @CindyCalder. Her description of that “gossamer of hope” when grieving the living is visceral, yet elegant:

https://www.theprose.com/post/828872/stillen-gedenken

Runner-up: @GeraldDiLeo. If you have not yet done so, please feast on this buffet of metaphorical greatness here:

https://www.theprose.com/post/829031/hanging-by-threads

Honorable mentions are:

@HandsOfFire with a tale that made me remember the bittersweet lessons of summertime:

https://www.theprose.com/post/829435/through-summer

@JosephLord, with vivid imagery and dark introspection:

https://www.theprose.com/post/828940/a-bad-fit

@kpsplaha, with a timely and wise reminder:

https://www.theprose.com/post/829036/hang-on

And @SarahF, finding freedom in choosing what binds:

https://www.theprose.com/post/829429/the-weaver

Thanks to everyone who entered the challenge!

More to come soon :)

Do you still remember our nights? How we used to walk back home at night, crossing almost the entire city? How, once in a while, we would stop to look at the stars and wonder? Remember how alive, how real we felt during those nights?

Do you still remember how, be it a good or a bad day, we always had each other's back? How you fell into my arms when you felt miserable, and how dearly we embraced each other? How you always supported and believed in me when nobody else did, not even me?

Remember how, during our nights, we danced and laughed in the freedom of the empty streets, feeling free to act however we pleased? In those nights, we were far away from the worries of the day, from the expectations, from the preying eyes filled with prejudice and hate.

Do you still remember those nights? Do you still remember me? Because I do. Because I never went anywhere.

You've moved away and you've moved on, and I can't blame you, really. I guess it's just a part of growing up. But I wish we never did.

Even though you have left and forgotten me, seldom remembering me as a childish make-believe, I have never left or forgotten you. All those years later I'm still here, in the back of your head, waiting to catch you with my arms wide open.

Always cherishing our nights back home,

Kate

By random convenience I am sitting here on this washed out orange toned couch. With the clamorous sound of people talking and the motion blur of the people walking. The room is heavy with the pressure and burden of the anxiety that ridden me. Bodies pacing back and forth again and again. I can feel their eyes burning into my crawling skin trying to fleet from the shaggy breath i try to take. I can feel my eyes a little too well they are becoming dry and i can feel as they flutter open and shut. I feel cold but i am not as i feel the sweat trickling down my face. I feel numb all around and that feeling of paresthesia poking me everywhere at the same time as if in a horrifying synchrony dancing together on my skin as the goosebumps rise with them. I see the faded faces of people i once knew as friends and my family, their faces in scattered unidentified features. Eyes seeping as if melting, mouths wondering, noses becoming flat, and eyebrows changing shape. But i know this is in my head, its not real. Not real. But i can’t tell what is real? The glass featured on the table? I want to touch it but i can't move. I can't move. It's all becoming real and i feel sick to my stomach. And people notice me. I'm just sitting here with beating eyes and a heart pounding way to fast for comfort. My heart. Its in my head beating over and over i can hear it. And my lungs are breathing too fast. In and out, in and out. Becoming more rapid by the second. My heart and lungs beating together like they want to take over my body.

Some of my works are actually…... written on the spot

Crazy

I just write here on prose without even looking for an inspiration

It scares me sometimes but it’s nice some other times

Because I see a like & I end up smiling the whole day

I hope what I’m saying is not crazy talk though

Thick rope. Coarse and fibrous, binds me to my life. Thinner strands woven together, to create a stronger whole. Tied to my memories, my beliefs, my loves. Fastened to the ideals that society sets. I move the rope - but the rope too, moves me. Am I a puppet? Am I free?

Lately I've been finding more of these lines severed - in places where they should be holding strong. I examine the frayed ends - my brow furrowing. Something is gnawing through them, something else is rotting the fabric of these strands, until they hang by just a thread.

My partner exhales a cloud of vape smoke into the room - and through the haze, I notice. The once thick chord, so sturdy that it might have towed a cruise ship safely to the shore, is almost worn through. The useless threads hang in the smoky air - and I as I watch, another piece stretches and snaps - the ends drifting slowly towards the ground.

At work, it's the same. Rope that was as thick as a tree, has eroded to something less. But I know what sliced the fibres here. Unequal pay, lack of appreciation, burnout. Each disappointment has hacked at this cable of belief, rusting and wearing it down. When my boss denies me holiday leave - the final thread snaps and I am free.

No I won't be ensnared by them again - with their false promises and empty virtue signalling. With their lies and callous disregard.

Now I can move my hands. At home, I take the kitchen scissors and I cut the final string connecting me to my partner myself and with it comes relief. Sadness, yes - one so deep it weighs on my bones, but also a sense of peace.

Then it starts to come easier. With every cut, I gain more freedom, more movement. The haze clears from my mind - and the pain makes me razor sharp.

With a machete I carve through the rope tying me to my apartment, to my material goods, to my picture perfect life. I hack it all to pieces and I find I can move in all directions now that I'm not tied down like a puppet on a string.

I gather all the fibres to me - like a spider swallowing it's web. I didn't choose these threads, they chose me. They caught me and bound me tight, until I could hardly breathe. Until I couldn't conceive of a life outside their existence, outside their influence.

But I too can weave. And with my raw fingers and aching heart, I start to stitch and sew. But this time, I choose. I choose my anchors, my beliefs and how restricted my movement will be. I tie slipknots throughout my web of threads and ropes - so that I will always have a little more leeway. I can't ever be completely free, blowing on the breeze. I love too many people for that. But I can choose what binds me - and how long the line is.