Tonight, I was beautiful.

I knew it in my bones

I felt it in my soul.

It wasn't the kind of beautiful in magazines

Or the beauty of the stars

But the beauty of a thousand atoms coming together to form an imperfect smile

And to smudge some doubt away.

Feeling beautiful, truly beautiful

Is rare

And as sad as that might be

When you do feel it...

There is nothing more glorious.

There is nothing more amazing.

It's when the universe gives a standing ovation and you feel it in your chest that everything is going to be okay.

Even if it's only tonight.

-AshleyAnne

It may have been the whiskey the princess and I consumed after he boarded the plane. Maybe the parting words he whispered before stepping on the escalator, "You always take my jokes seriously and laugh when I'm telling the truth-what more could I want?" All these tiny sub-plots shacking up together until our destinies were a tangled mess of co-dependent probabilities.

We were made for loss, the three of us. The opposite ends of the globe conspired for eight weeks to fuse our skins until geographical impossibilities ripped them into separate humans again. A line of happy paper-dolls forced to face the world as flimsy individuals. The universe never holds its breath.

So we ricocheted back across oceans, finding places where the booze ran free and our lungs recognized the air. Still, the ache. Memory became an angel that tortured and sensitized.

The princess faded like Sleeping Beauty, letting silence lull her into a dreamland where everything floated in suspended animation.

He and I swung across the internet hoping to inspire some kind of apocalypse. Nothing moved.

We were relentless romantics, yelling through a translator that worked in binary.

When actual death occurred, there was little to say. All that beauty had bled its way into the fluid suspending our cells. We rose together and we fell, loss ebbing like the slow seconds sliding their way through bone and dream.

The subject of this week's Friday Feature is Lucie Parker, known here as @lucieinthesky.

She grew up about an hour north of Manhattan, New York. But where is she now and what does she do? we asked.

"I just recently moved back to NYC from DC to be a research analyst with a group focused on effectively and efficiently reducing crime in the city. Although that's my official job title right now, I'm still figuring out what I want my occupation to be," she said.

P: What is your relationship with writing and how has it evolved?

LP: Since before I can remember, I've been writing. My parents preserved books of mine made of scrap paper stapled together telling the story of a young girl (or "gril" as I spelled it then) and her adventures. I remember binding my very own book in elementary school and going to an after-school creative writing club for kids with my neighbor.

As I got older, I found myself spending less time on my creative side and more time on math and science. They didn't exactly go hand in hand, but I always found myself turning to writing when I was going through something big. When my grandfather died, my coping mechanism was to draft a seven page biography of his life from my eyes. I spent days researching his accomplishments and, in doing so, learned even more about him and myself than I previously did.

Writing remained an emotional outlet for me throughout high school and college and into the time after graduation. During these times of great transition and sometimes turbulence, it was always comforting to know my pencil and paper were there waiting for me.

It wasn't until I discovered Prose. that I even considered sharing my writing. My trains of thought and imperfect poems reflected the innermost workings of my mind and revealed some of the most personal things about me. For awhile after joining, I didn't post a single piece and just absorbed all of the wonderful content.

When I realized that I had entered a community of the most supportive strangers I would probably ever meet, I decided to give it a shot and haven't turned back since. It's definitely opened up my writing in an entirely new way and I know it will continue to evolve from here.

P: Briefly discuss the value that reading adds to both your personal and professional life.

LP: Reading had always been a huge source of inspiration and knowledge for me. When I find a book that really resonates with me, I can't put it down until I'm finished (and then I always wish that it would go on forever). Recently, I've been exploring my spirituality more and more, and have consequently been collecting books faster than I can read them.

Professionally, I'm often reading academic papers on the latest economic insights and techniques, and rely on them heavily to advance my own understanding.

P: How would you describe your current literary ventures and what can we look forward to in future posts?

LP: Most of the writing I do now is very free form and somewhat abstract. A lot of my attempts to create rhyming poems and more realistic stories end up sounding forced to me, but they're both genres that interest me greatly.

I've had a very vague concept for a novel in the back of my mind for a few years now, so that's also something I'm working toward.

P: What does Prose. mean to you?

LP: I was lucky enough to be able to join Prose. early on and have since witnessed it grow into something much bigger than it once was. From a handful of users to more posts per day than I can keep up with, Prose. has evolved into a space where everyone is met with loving support and guidance, myself included.

It's rare to find a form of social media today that inspires creativity on a daily basis and remains free of negativity. Also, having met almost everyone on the Prose. team, I'm always in awe of the hard work and dedication that goes into creating such an awesome platform, and it makes it that much more special to use.

P: Where else can we find you and your writing?

LP: Currently, most of my writing either takes place here or in the numerous notebooks I have lying around my apartment. I am on Instagram @lap819 and Facebook, and, technically, I have a Twitter account (@lap819), though it doesn't get much use these days.

__________________________

This #FridayFeature blog series is designed to help you get to know your fellow community members better. Would you like to nominate someone for interview? Have a question you’re dying to ask of someone on the platform? Send us a private message here or visit our contact page to get in touch: theprose.com/p/contact.

I have this sleepiness in my heart

And this longing in my eyes

I can feel my throat trying to scream

And my jaw tensing up

I am heavy

I am fragile

There are fragments of galaxies lodged in my ribcage

And pieces of lovers stuck in my arteries

I am falling

And I do not know if I am falling asleep

Or falling in love

I am just hoping that wherever I land

Will be enough

To finally fill this aching emptiness inside of me.

-AshleyAnne

I stand, alone.

Waiting, watching

Consumed, by the fog.

As the voices, whisper

"Come, come, over here.

We won't hurt you.

We promise, dear."

Taunts, of the imaginary,

Living, in my mind.

As time, steals memories,

One second, at a time.

He's four on the floor

A legend in his own eyes

Burnin' rubber soul

Street Rod of a man

His rear view magic muscle

Tattooed in the tread

Of smoke and mirrors

Like a great illusionist

He thinks he's driving

"you've got to learn to love yourself,

regardless of your flaws,"

she says,

while chopping the rotten pieces out of strawberries

and peeling the skin off potatoes.

she shuts the blinds so the light leaks

won't pour into the kitchen.

i want to ask her

if she wears long sleeves

on purpose,

if keeping the bathroom light on

helps her sleep at night.

but i know she won't understand-

sometimes you're oblivious to what you don't have to fight.

-

inspired by this quote: "Learning to love yourself is NOT THE SAME THING as being taught to cut the soft spots out of fruit."

Undress me.

Take the world off my shoulders

And the stars off my collarbone so.

Remind me what it feels like to be weightless.

Remind me how lovely it is to be vulnerable.

Remind me how precious it is to be wanted.

Undress me.

Peel off my scars

Unwrap my wounds

And watch in awe as I bleed freely.

This is proof that I am still alive.

Remind me that life is beautiful.

Remind me that I am beautiful, even without the galaxies that reside inside of my lungs.

Remind me that I am enough.

Undress me.

Tear off my skin

Remove my muscles

Break my bones.

Remind me that there are still places in me that are strong.

Remind me that even if I am nothing, I'll always be someone.

Remind me that I have been loved.

Undress me.

Let me feel life between my legs.

Remind me that I have the energy to continue.

Let me feel the electricity shoot from your fingertips and through out my entire body.

Remind me that I can take on more that I think I can

Remind me that I am capable of completing this journey.

Redress me.

Kiss me on the forehead.

Reassure me that I am beautiful

And that my beauty will carry me

When I can no longer carry myself..

-AshleyAnne

Leonardo Da Vinci said,“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”

This is true for every short story I ever wrote, whether it was published or not. The published pieces, upon subsequent reading months or years after the fact, reveal things I would change today. And the rest – many, many of them – either failed to find a home, or I wasn’t able to finish them for a number of reasons, usually that I’d lost faith in the central premise the plot was built around and preferred to work on something new.

It’s one thing to give up on a story, and a very different thing to give up on a novel. A novel can take a long time to write, usually at least a year. That’s a lot of time to have nothing come of it. However, I do believe that any time spent writing is worth it, regardless of the outcome, especially if you learn more not only about writing, but about yourself as a writer.

...

Tune in to The Official Prose. Blog later today for the full article by author and guest blogger Anne Leigh Parrish at: blog.theprose.com/blog.