Silence A blessing or a curse? Has daddy finally gone to bed With his reeking breath and angry eyes Or is he out there waiting Wanting me to move Another excuse to hit me A beating I enticed My stomach grumbles loudly When was the last time I ate?? Do I dare to risk it Is food really all that important? A second growl is rousing Me up from the bed Maybe if I'm quiet He'll never now I 've gone Down the stairs Skip the sque...

Ghost I can still feel the ghosts gathered around me like ancestors in reverse, where the children die and old warhorses get older in their place. (Elizabeth Bear, Worldwired) I do not know why I do this to myself. At the end of the Vietnam War an estimate of over 3.5 million human beings on all sides were dead. Of those, 1.4 million were combatants. Of the remaining 2.1 million deaths, the majority were children. I canno...

That summer, it was too hot. We didn’t have a thermometer, and even if we had, the little red lines and numbers wouldn’t have meant much to me. But I knew that it wasn’t normal. It couldn’t be. By the time the church clock struck ten it was already too stifling to venture outside. The sun had swelled to an angry pulsing ball of fire which I had come to regard as evil, lancing my eyes with pain when it glanced off the shin...

  If we weren’t here everything would flourish. The blazing sun would rise each day like now. The moon would do its rounds and what would perish would not know its name. New seeds somehow would grow and from decay bloom new flowers, new colors, new aromas and the new seeds would plant themselves with no one on their knees. The forests would take back the land, grow thick where cities were, the vines embracing towers, ivy...

I watch the fathers running through the streets,carrying their limp dead children in their arms,their broken hearts bleeding grief and rage.I see them running past the wounded everywhere,past the blood, past the fires, past the crumbling buildings,past the rubble of homes and businesses,past the screams--fathers running for their liveson frantic feet through smoke filled air,the boom of bombs bursting in their ears, bulle...

My Dog Ate It The excuses they are so varied, Why one’s homework is never done. On Mondays it’s easy to say: “On the weekend - we took a vacation.” Teacher said you had enough time “But my puppy had run away. We looked for him into the night.My homework I had to delay.” “It’s not that I hate all the homework. There’s so much, I can’t get it all done. Just too much going on in my day.And homework’s never much fun.” "Now I...

I was sitting on a curb on some random city street with 3 duffle bags full of what I believed to be the most important things in my life. In reality, it was all just clothing...some clothing I don't even wear anymore...and a couple of CD's that I considered to be a part of me. You ever have somebody yelling and crying at you while you're trying to pack your belongings? You sorta leave things that you should of packed, and...

The Boat of Sand When I was young, my Father built for me, a boat of sand, so very grand, to sail upon the sea. My sister was the cabin girl and made to swab the decks, we searched the seas for pirates to turn their boats to wrecks. Our anchor was a bucket filled with stones and sand, tossed with caution overboard, if we spotted land. Bright red spades were used for oars or cricket bats sometimes, we’d row for miles acros...