Greetings fellow readers and writers. It’s been some time since we last updated Prose. Today we’re excited to provide a peek behind the curtains and give you a glimpse of what we’ve been working on. 

Over the years, as we’ve added features and functionality to Prose, the app and its codebase have become increasingly unwieldy. As such, we decided to reimagine and rebuild Prose from the ground up. It’s still the same site you know and love, insofar as a Toyota Camry is just as much a car as a Porsche 911. 

We’ll have more exciting announcements in the weeks to come; but for now we hope you’ll give the new site a test drive and let us know what you think. You will find the next chapter at beta.theprose.com and we encourage you to share your thoughts at info@theprose.com.

Pawn to King Four. The price of admittance.

And I earn a knight that shadows my very position.

Shall it be a war of attrition?

Or can a bishop angle in and hold ebony at bay, on restriction?

Long enough for my ivory tusks to sally up and slay.

A castle carried out then condemns this.

As their Rook & King Jet

In a Two part Two piece play.

That nullify’s a previous alabaster parlay.

Now I can dance around the question

"Is it black or white?" all day.

Until one can’t remember anything before?

All the grey I’m stepping in per say.

It’s like pulling teeth getting anything off the back line of the good guise.

A ransom does hand some a cheeky check? Checkmate guys.

i'm sorry.

i don't know how

to write a love letter,

one filled with pink metaphors

and purple prose

and rose colored hearts drawn in

tattoo ink.

i don't know how to

express

the way you make my chest feel

an ache like i've never felt

but a kind ache, a good ache

the kind of ache that

makes you want to snuggle under the covers

and watch the ceiling

shift and change

with the hallucinations of nighttime.

i'm sorry.

i don't know how to write

a love letter.

i'm not even sure

that i know how to love.

but for you,

i'm willing to try.

i'm willing to try anything

if it will make you happy.

so i'm sorry.

i might not be able to give you

a tv romance

with sex and drama and passion.

but i can smile at you

when you need a friend

and hug you

when you need one.

so maybe i can't write you a love letter.

but actions speak louder than words.

Relics of my past hope kindle the fire beneath the altar

destined in death to plead in repent.

Regret and unrequited bittersweet confession

leaving my tongue stung.

Spellbound words unholy writ

desperately seek to reclaim myself.

The memory and temptation of her name

lies forgotten, buried, and hidden away.

Now my love letters remain just as they were in that moment--

Crazed indignity. Just shadows. Just dust.

We’re close!

Where? Close.

Wear clothes.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Too close!

Two clothes.

To close.

- - - - - - - - - - -

They’re close!

There--close!

Their clothes.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Hello! This is my first post to Prose. I wrote this piece last year (when I was in 8th grade); since then, I have made no emendations to it. I hope you like it!

The large, heavy book sitting beside me is Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. Four hundred and seventy thousand entries grace my desk. Out of this, I pluck one, the page quivering with emotion analogous to my selection: pain. The state of suffering, of agony; the blood trickling down the edge of a wooden hammer; the stain of tears on my bedside; an asset and an incommodity—an experience common to humanity, yet not shared.

Up until the age of eleven, I was a rather ebullient, jovial child, my existence pleasant and petty, though not of an egoistic nature. I had not an idea, truly, what pain was; neither of happiness, as my ignorance had provided a barrier to my knowledge of what I was experiencing. I had not an idea that the familial ecstasy that was so ordinary would be spoilt, and that in a matter of months I would be alone.

Thus came my first encounter with pain; he was not kind. Of course, my family thought me to be reacting disproportionately, that I had perhaps exacerbated my previous anxieties. I knew not what I was feeling, except for that it was agonizing. Nevertheless, my childhood breaking off at such a startling point was, perhaps, a blessing in disguise. Though my happiness was retracted, so was my ignorance towards it; though I had not elation or joy, I had a certain knowledge I had not possessed beforehand. I was not more intelligent, however; this knowledge tortured and engulfed me, so that my focus was directly on trying assiduously to rid myself of his influences. Still, I could not stop him. He ravaged the penetralia of my mind, a starving creature never satiated. Each time I proffered what he desired, it was not enough; he would not be satisfied.

I sought out what was beyond me, to search for what was within me—an erroneous mission from the start. I was not yet cognizant of the fact that oneself is the only barrier from pain’s rapacity and deleterious deeds, and yet, this is not a barrier enough to preclude him from seeping into the fallacious niches of human nature, the impetus for the inciting of his forces. Inside oneself, the empty void that must be filled by being and the self is instead filled by his seeping vitriol. In some cases, this may be exacerbated by the circumstances of loss—and now, the lucidity of this assertion is engendered; I see all around me others that have lost: their careers, remuneration, relatives, friends, and sources of education. Yet, perhaps, their greatest loss is themselves, as they succumb to the cacophonies of silence—our eyes were created and oriented so that we cannot look inwards at ourselves; thus, the unambiguity and cogency one can purport to possess not being directed towards what first must be addressed. The media, then, is a lure, a trap in which the bait need just to employ their senses, for pain to catch hold and proliferate, the lure being that much of the time, the media exemplifies the obtainment of which the opposite is what must desirably be attained: the condensation of emotion and conflict into a form only understandable to the most frivolous.

Thus, pain is inescapably imperative to life, just as is imperfection and death; yet, many of us seek, as our unbeknownst purposes, to ameliorate this, without the knowledge that what first must be expiated and filled is themselves. In spite of this, our concerns are too widespread. We are afraid of the unknown, of what comes beyond our lives and sits beyond our consciousness, leading us to engage in the fruitless pursuit of the former. Most of us are merely concerned with the frivolities of life, our fictitious purposes only a headstone we strive to obtain after we fulfill the years of our lives. We heed not the truth, nor the reality; our experience of pain is solely physical, for we do not seek to find the power within us. Rather, we seek in vain for effervescence around us, already a river run dry. Empathy is a tone too sharp for the pained and too flat for the dissipated, and yet, we brim our souls with sophistries that vindicate a tone purportedly precise. Thus, pain is further fomented and his forces instigated, as he sucks both the falsities and the self to the dry marrow before again suffusing the self with falsities, as though supplying a dry mouth with salted water. Often, I cannot bear to watch these happenings that occur about me, the facetious life that is familiar to me, and that I cannot understand, even though I contribute to its continuation. The monotony of the morning carries to midday, and mutates to the moroseness of midnight. Each day blends together, an amalgamation of such monotony with the frivolity each member of the household acts upon. I look at my mother the way I have looked at her yesterday, with the same carelessness she exudes when looking at me. Likewise, though I am aware of this, we act with the frivolity we exerted yesterday. And yet, was it not yesterday that I sat at this same laptop, watching men commit an unforgivable atrocity to another man?

This is what pain has taught me, the greatest and most horrible teacher. He has taught me about myself, such a being he knows that I will never touch, so long I am alive. I wondered for many years on why it was I that pain chose, out of so many—until I learned that I was lucky. He gave me all that I know today.

There is a hole in the back corner of the fence around my house just wide enough to fit through if you turn sideways. It connects to the backyard of a pale yellow house with two pale, white-blonde children who sit on their back deck, feet bare, orange popsicle juice dripping down their chins. We peek through this splintered gate between our houses, knowing that in this summer air, seeing each other is almost always an invitation to run and play. Sneaky glances and shrill yells tell our parents where we are going as we slip sideways through the wooden slats. Sometimes the boys next door join us, increasing our gang to eight. They tumble their way into our lives with loud voices and wrestling moves. I’ve never had brothers, but with them it feels close enough to count. All of us sit in a row, variations of sun kissed blonde hair and sunburned cheeks, a rainbow of popsicle juice sticking up our fingers and staining our tongues. Sometimes we chase the ice cream truck instead, worn dollars from our allowances clutched in our hands. Most of the time we just listen to its tune, a soundtrack to our summer, an acknowledgement to our childhood. As we grow older, our group splinters in a similar way to the fence we still slip through. Not broken, just worn. Our range of ages more apparent, some too old, some too young. We are a straining rubber band, strung together by our childhood but stretched by our experiences, by the people we have all become. We remain taut, strong enough not to break, but never with the closeness we once had. I can’t remember the last time I let popsicle juice drip down my fingers, the last time we sat next to each other on the deck, our laughter being carried by the wind. It’s weird to think about that space and time that occupied our childhood, when we were a collective “kids”, not worried about our ages or our grades, about the friends we had or the games we chose to play. Kenzie left first, weaving in and out of our story as she entered each new chapter before us. David left second, his interests and ambitions not quite overlapping, his joy not found as often in the storybook of our neighborhood. Nell left third, always a call away but still a step ahead. Sydney and I left at the same time, always in match on our paths even when they began to diverge. We left behind the others. Mark. Ally. Taylor. I don’t know when they’ll leave the refuge that was our row of houses. Taylor will go last, always jumping to catch up. But we will all go. We went from kindergarten to college, from diving in the pool to driving in the car. The yellow swings that once carried us back and forth have disappeared from the back yard. Our chalk drawings have long since been washed away by rain. My memories remain, of climbing trees and foam swords, of halloween and hills explored. A part of me will always be sitting on the back of that deck, legs hanging off the edge, with seven other children next to me. The eight of us might never sit on the deck the way we used to, but we intertwine back together in groups of two, three, four, five, eight. We go back for fireworks in the backyard and burgers on the grill. We go back for casual conversation and meet-ups at the coffee shop on the corner. We go back for memories of smiles, and laughter, and popsicle juice dripping down our fingers.

The midwinter somber broke with even gusts from the diseases that struck solid in those up near the woodland’s edge. Quiet was so common that the squeak of a bug could draw the whole world’s attention there. The cold air that groomed the valley soaked the wood of the establishment in frostbitten flurries. It was a quaint house, big and roomy inside. Three bedrooms, home to four inhabitants, sunk into the wall’s forgiving surface with a few stray indents in the forms of bathrooms to count. When one walked into the quarantined hellhole they could firstly be found in the smooth tiled kitchen overrun by the messes from days prior. Not a soul touched such slop, dishes lay eschew and random slips of paper littered the ground. As it was now, the kitchen was far from a sightly place, but when it was new its floors shined of hope and its walls welcomed each individual who chose to work in it. Now the walls simply beconned those to leave that the room had an unfamiliarity with. Two passages lead off the welcome area, one into the open spacious pit of living dubbed by those who resided there as their living room and a hall, long in size, thin in width. In the living space were situated two mighty leather sofas, tags still clinging to their sides, and a beaten old chair whose cushion no longer provided a place for one to sit. It wasn’t all so bad to those who lived there, for the place was a common ground that all four people felt akindred to. The hall leading off as the other entrance from the kitchen stretched for what seemed like miles to the unfamiliar eye. It was painted in a dull cream, as the rest of the house was, with a singular painting lining its right wall. The piece displayed three boats with three men positioned ever so delicately on each ship’s bow. It stood as a true work of art to the family, but in reality the painting was nothing special. From the wall mirroring the kitchen, facing inwards towards the two leather sofas climbed a slick staircase of wood, lined with various pictures of a random individual. As one scaled the steps they found a platform facing out towards the living space. One could look down below and see the whole common area displayed before them in a perfect fashion. The rails, although they prevented one from falling, were far from their best days in use. As one traveled deeper into the level there stood three rooms, two of which were the children’s rooms and the other a white washed bathroom whose paint peeled at the seams. Each bedroom consisted of a bed and homely dresser stuffed with endless amounts of clothes and fabrics. Although each place was well liked by their owners, recently such places that once gave off a homely comfort now felt like unbreakable prison cells. One of the rooms belonged to a boy and the other a girl. Their difference of age caused a wide gap of interest between the siblings, but their bond was somehow strong. Down the hallway with the painting so ever plain bridged off a quaint bathroom and the master sweet. Off the sweet stood a glorious bathroom filled with bottles of the most elegant soaps and a porch, screened in and reduced to a rummage pile by the family’s various animals. The sweet itself was quite large, consisting of a closet on each of its sides as well as a wide king bed at its center. Near the women’s edge of the bed sat a camo pillow with various blankets covering its surface for a dog to sleep on. On the man’s side clothes were sprawled all over the floor with stains blotched on every other garment. It wasn’t perfectly clean, but the couple made due. The family slept each night in the constant silence of the woods and its majesty. Few other houses scattered the hilltop’s barren edge. It was a peaceful life, a good life till the years rolled by and hit the decade of disease. A virus began plaguing the world, torturing its inhabitants with unsightly symptoms that killed the morale of the populace slowly. This little family atop their grass speckled hill led lives untouched for so long. Their dreams had been their only true distinction between reality and fantasy for years, but now they awoke in a place where the horrors of the world around them hit hard. This disease, it crept like a mouse through a house leaving not one unaffected by its unsightly charm. In the night it did sweep through bedroom after bedroom, infecting the entirety of the household by sunrise. The first to come down with the sickness was the man, father of two, husband to the women. He was a hard worker and loud about his various educated opinions. In all, the world of his family had seen him as an unbeatable beast whose very will was of the hardest of stones. At least, that was what the daughter had always known to be her father. She admired him with such respect, taking every word he ever spoke into deep consideration. She modeled herself after his work ethic and great aspiration to better the world he lived in. This virus, it ravaged the man, he felt broke inside by the scars the disease continued to leave. The family watched in horror as their once unbreakable will began slowly deteriorating into what seemed like their new reality. Next, the mother caught the dreaded sickness. It was slow for her at first, but fear of the uncertainties it did present were present in her mind. Over time the kids watched as their mother grew worse as their father before had. Her will broke too and her body slowly gave into the disease's demands. The older of the two siblings, the girl, watched as her mother and father grew worse day by day night by night and began running the house to her best ability. Responsibilities piled in as her schoolwork began to slowly build up overtime and her homely duties called her to action. It was hard, mentally and physically and before she knew it the sickness had overtaken her as well. Nevertheless, she kept working, fighting, watching and doing all she could to be of use to her broken parents and little brother. The boy, he watched it all happen, he experienced the pain of feeling alone in such dismal times. He was broken just like his parents, for no longer did he smile or giggle as he once did. On his own he thought of the things of far away memories and distant futures that had and could happen. It was a hard life, but a life nonetheless. The girl tried to make it as normal and smooth as possible for her brother, yet there was no way to mask the truth. She took care of him, put him to sleep, fed him, and played with him to replace the roles her parents were unable to fulfill while stuck in bed.

Over time, underwater,

Cased in glass, your dead body.

See the eyes, stare unseeing.

Only mourn the unbelievers.

Amy’s near, yet she’s farther.

Still so close, fading quickly.

Don’t avenge. Sorry murder-

What to do? Unsightly error.

Eyes of light, shining darkness,

Hair of Fire, catching glimmers.

Gold entombed, gone forever,

Feel it thick upon her shoulders.

Come again? Will you never

Leave us be, with your taking

All my friends? Gone forever

When you end - o’er my dead body.

“Fear is a spell.”

That’s what she told me the moment before the door got pulled by her leaking frustration. I knew she meant it to be something that would stick to my teeth for a while. Something to chew on.

Well, fine.

Here I am with the cud firmly scoured and torn in my mouth.

I’m a witch.

So be it.

I am sitting by the kitchen window, watching the butterscotch sun pour over my coffee like honeyed milk. I want to drink it in and feel light. But how can I, when I know that everything is wrong?

I didn’t bother to pass the mirror this morning. I was so full of my wanting for her that I knew if I saw myself, all I’d hear was, “How can you have hope in a world such as this?”

I can’t bear one more thought.

She had come over like she always did. A burst of affection and life-fire. She must’ve gotten something out of being with me, otherwise why would she keep coming back?

I always thought we were a balance to each other. Yin and yang. Now I’m not so sure.

I may be overwhelming.

Just hours ago, we were sprawled out on my bed. We were ready for a feast. Her creamy hands eagerly twisting at my dark silk sheets in anticipation.

Some blackness was dancing in my eyes. It often was, but this time I couldn’t keep it hidden from her scorching, searchlight eyes. She spotted me. And I was left the clueless criminal.

She placed a finger solidly on my temple and began to rub me there.

“There’s no doom here, my love.” She sighed my sighs. “Only possibility.”

That word.

She knew it was the one that would ring the church bells in my ears.

Possibility. Possibility.

The great spell-killer.

“Just come right here, lay with me right here and you will feel the magic of which I speak.”

An ancient trick to snap me back to where everything was perfect: the moment.

My shining star and all her wishes. She knew I couldn’t really do that.

She was always talking about creating. The latest painting, the newest friend, the growing excitement. I was stuffed on my envy of her joy. Yet she never belittled me for the lack of mine. She just smiled at me in a funny sort of way. Bemused. She gave herself to me all the same.

But that blackness…no. This time would be different.

There was something she wanted me to get. Something this whole time that I was utterly blind to.

She knew I was afraid she was beginning to doubt me.

See, I was always talking about destroying. The latest government scheme, the crumbled social calls, the growing anxiety.

I thought she understood, but suppose she didn’t? How could she, when she was so different?

When the shadow over us didn’t pass, no matter how many times I softly pleaded at her chest, she chose to remove herself from my manipulations. She said it wasn’t because she didn’t love me. It was because “some of the best transformations come when we look at our desire for separation.”

Did I want to be separated? No. Not from her. Not from the whole world. Yet here I am, away from them all, knowing that were it not for the sorcery upon my mind that I then imprinted upon the world, well….we’d all be a lot happier.

“I am my own undoing.”

The most destabilizing thought.

She wanted it to motivate me:

“You are also your only hope.”

Fine. Fine, sweet angel. Then why do you want to save me?