She offered me a fruitcake at Christmas, before Christmas I guess, and said... if you want one. The oven is broken and we’re getting a new one, they took eight hours to bake.

And I said of course I want one, I just didn’t think I was worthy of a fruitcake...

“It’s only a fruitcake.” She replied

And I said you can’t make seven with love and one with hate, and if you are going to make all with no heart at all then what was the point anyway? So there is no such thing as only a fruitcake, and

I will take one. Thanks.

#poetry

"It's just not consistent."

"What?"

"I mean, I get the mythos of it - don't carry metal through a fairy powered gate - but I mean, I'm wearing my metal armor and carrying my metal weapons!"

"Ah. Maybe your armor and weapons have magic runes on them that counteract the fairy magic of the portals?'

"...okay, but then why not just let me make a magic stamp and I'll stamp my unrefined metals with runes and carry them through the gate? Huh? It's just not consistent."

*LOL* "Right, I'm sure everybody thought of branding their metal for rune gate travel, obvious loophole."

"I mean, what, they're like 'oooh, fairies can't allow metal, noooo metal is evil' and then they thought, 'oh, but your metal is in a weapon, that's ok!' - like what are these fairies thinking?"

"I think it's game developers, love."

"Noooo! Scary metal! Go smelt it into something sharp or we can't let you through!"

*ROFL*

It's too much

Too heavy, too soon

I cannot be with someone

Who stresses me

Mentally and emotionally

Someone who makes me think

Someone that makes me deviate from logic

I just got out of it

That dark dark place

Deep deep deep

In my broken broken darker mind

I just got away from that choking feeling

Worked that huge lump down my throat

Digested it in my stomach

I just got away

From that need to clutch at every part of me

Cut some parts off, drown some in acid

Stop living

And just take a perpetual time off

I just walked away from that habit I couldn't help

Of crying into the morning

Shedding tears for forgotten reasons

Wishing I could just fade away

Be gone

And then going to bed

with an empty heart and head

When I should be waking up

shutting my eyes

No plans and no aspirations

As if it's certain that I won't wake up

Ever again

I just locked my demons in a cage

And I can't let them out

I'm not strong enough

This time

I won't make it

So I'm sorry

But

I can't be with you.

Carly fixed my bowtie. "You good? You seem a little distant."

"I'll be fine when I get out there," I replied.

"Well, they're waiting for you," she said, standing on her toes and giving me a kiss. "Go break a leg."

I left the dressing room and headed for the stage. Everything was quiet. The stage was dark.

POOOF!!

A cloud that glowed blue appeared on stage. Lasers shot through it, dazzlingly dancing through the dust.

I walked through, my hair slowly becoming peppered in blue. "Evening, fellas and… fellettes. Welcome to Pen to the Paper Six's announcement! We had some good ones…

"In third place, we have fudo's 'hot sauce over dried pork.' I loved the rhyme schemes. It was great.

"In second, we have Danceinsilence's 'Which Way to Go.' Chilling, intriguing, well-written, and creative only scratch the surface of why this made second place.

"In first we have an entry that I believe is very, very, underrated. Whisperer's 'The Seasons Personified' was masterfully crafted and it shows her incredible ability to personify inanimate objects/abstract ideas.

"An honorable mention is 'I hate summer' by crazyquiller. You made me laugh.

"GLD's post, 'Never Saw It Coming' was a beautiful read. I'm always looking forward to your posts.

"And, finally, blobfish's 'Clock' was an interesting read that I enjoyed from the beginning.

"Thank you, everyone, for entering! And congratulations to our winners!"

Tomorrow morning, he was going to get rid of that clock. Who needed an actual clock on their wall anyways? That’s what digital clocks are for. So that you don’t have to listen to that insufferable ticking the whole night while you’re trying to fall asleep.

He turned over for the millionth time and fumbled his sheets in exasperation. He had spent an hour running embarassing scenarios from his past through his head, and now he had a stupid song stuck on repeat.

That’s when he realized the clock wasn’t ticking anymore.

Not that he was complaining, but the clock wasn’t that old. At least, not old enough to have broken already.

He sat up.

The clock wasn’t there.

He didn’t hear a crash, so it couldn’t have fallen. He slowly got up and walked to the wall, running his hand over it.

So it really was missing. He wasn’t sure what to think. This was creepy.

The room was chilly all of a sudden. Was that window open already? The tiredness must have been messing with his head. He was too disoriented to try to figure out where the clock had gone. Maybe it would be back in the morning.

He slipped back under the covers, and when he looked back up, the door was gone.

He was sure he was dreaming now. He shut his eyes, because this wasn’t real and he didn’t want to waste his time in their creepy world anymore.

He opened his eyes after a while of laying there. He had to be awake, he had never had a dream this real.

The room was gone. He was suspended in darkness, only him and his bed.

His eyes shut quickly again, and thoughts went swirling in his head. The confusion was too much. He didn’t like how real this felt.

When he worked up the nerve to open his eyes again, everything was back to normal. The room was all there, complete with the annoying ticking clock. He had never been more thankful for that clock.

He sighed into his pillow. He had just wasted another few hours and he had to be up soon.

Wait.

A few hours?

That wasn’t right. That had only felt like a few minutes. The clock couldn’t be right.

He sat up and held his head in his hands.

The moment was endless.

He slowly lifted his head up and let himself open his eyes one last time.

He was looking at himself, in his bed, floating in a dark void.

“No!” he tried to scream, but his throat was too tight to utter a sound.

He started moving backward, as if a hand was slowly pulling him away. He thrashed and clawed into the nothingness, but the bed with his body soon became a little speck in the distance.

He was gone.

Death The Fear Of Many,

Thought as an evil by every,

Yet cannot be escaped by Any.

Death A Blessing Truly,

From the suffering of a meaningless life, there is to see.

#poetry #life #motivation #inspiration #quotes.

©Alipoetry, All Rights Reserved.

An icy expanse of concrete against your cheek. The grating drone of a staticky radio. Distant whispers in spanish, clipped.

You force your eyes open. There are bees in your head- no, not bees. Wasps and yellow jackets, zooming around and injecting their barbed stingers into your skull. You know that you drank too much, but you're not sure when.

You raise your head, sit up. Your body feels like it's moving through liquid.

There are three walls here. The fourth border is not solid, so it isn't one.

But you can't exactly walk out.

The fourth wall comes in intermittent stripes. Metal poles.

You're in a jail cell.

You don't know why, can't know. It must be hidden in the black space, the lack of memories. On the edges of the black space, you see yourself leaving the hotel room. The lovely, safe, hotel room.

If your memory is telling the truth, that was two days ago.

The guard is sitting on a stool, with sleepy eyes and a droopy mustache. You get to your feet, rattle the bars. The reamain upright, challenging you, mocking you.

A frog climbs out of your throat. "Why am I here?" You shake the bars more, fervently, but now in a struggle for attention.

His eyes meet yours, confused. Then a dull light bulb lights up behind his eyes, shatters.

" Asesinato."

He then returns to his daydreams, to his offhanded oblivion.

You have no idea what he said. Along with your memory, your spanish phrasebook is somewhere, tumbling into the unknown. You should have learned spanish before your trip. But instead you limped down here, knowing only english, on a crutch made of twigs.

You think of reasons you could be here, rely on your own twisted creativity. But nothing emerges. Those who commit crimes do it to fill holes in their lives. You have none. You don't need money. You have friends. Your hole had been filled a long time ago, with an extra shovelful of dirt on top.

You try again.

"I don't understand. What am I in here for?"

More annoyed, this time. "Asesinato."

Even repetition doesn't bring any meaning, doesn't bring it out of the dark. After a stilted pause, you speak a stock phrase, the only one you remember: "No hablo espanol."

He understands. He gets off the stool, and hurries down a hallway.

Your throat is filled with sand. The headache is still buzzing, and the buzzing has intensified. With anticipation.

He returns, with another man in tow. He is younger, with a sort of constant anxiety radiating off of him. Yet when he sees you, the anxiety melts off, replaced with disgust.

"What do you want to know?" he spits, lip curled.

"Why I'm here. I can't remember anything for the past two days. And all the guard kept telling me was 'asesinato'." Somehow, not even knowing the meaning, the word seems toxic on your tongue.

The man's eyes are on fire, stoked with anger. He acts as if he knows you. Despises you.

"Well, let me translate. 'Asesinato', my friend, means 'murder'."

Crawled over the floor of the prison cell,

sweat pearls ricochet off the floor.

No date, no time, I lost my mind,

after forty-eight hours with tequila and wine.

Dear prison guard, what happened last night?

Did I go to far on the poker table in the end?

The drugs my friend, I pushed deep down my throat,

as the party kept on going until the sunrise I felt.

Guns and girls in the middle of the room,

my memories turn alive,

as if it still was last night,

where I was still confident and fine.

I look down my hand, a dry-blooded wound,

two fingers lost, and scar above.

I panic, I scream, the guard turns to me,

but I was already gone, oh lord have mercy on me.

We thought of creating

A world, together..

With my violets

And your blues.

Nothing’s left of us,

Just a shattered constellation,

Blinking pain,

Useless tattoos.

To build with you,

I broke myself.

I’ll pick up the stars now,

And go back.

I'll start from the nebula,

Not from the black hole.

I was nine years old when I murdered my friend, Nessie.

She had died fast, her body thrashing on the ground. I stared, awestruck. The only sadness I’d felt was when it was over. Destructive me.

I was ten years old when I killed Finley. He died the same way as Nessie, his body thrashing on the ground, squirming. It was a really interesting sight. And I've kept it a secret, because I'm pretty sure no one would have liked to hear that I had killed two of my good friends.

Finley and Nessie are buried together. I didn’t have that much space for them, because they were... well, they were really big. I used a shovel to sink them into the ground, and then I prayed for them.

I did the same thing when I was eleven to my other friend, Feefee. She died the same way, and I began getting bored of killing. I went out to bury Feefee that day, but then, my dad my stepped outside.

“Athena, will you take out the gar-” he’d started to say, then stopped when he saw me. His eyes grew big.

I was dragging Feefee out onto the lawn. My dad’s eyes grew even larger, if that was even possible, and his eyebrows bended over so much that they crossed. He looked ready to choke, and I couldn’t blame him. Dragging something takes a lot of effort.

“What is that your carrying?” He asked, his eyes now bulging out of his head. He closed his eyes. “Oh God, tell me I’m dreaming, tell me this isn’t real.”

He told me I had a lot to explain. And I did, later. I told him about Nessie, Finley, and Feefee.

Nessie, Finley, and Feefee.

In my life, I’ve murdered three.

Fish.

_____________________________________________________________________

Title: Murdering three

Genre: Children’s books maybe

Age range: 8-11

Word count: 258 words.

Author name: Elie (just first name for now :) )

Why it is a good fit: I'm not sure if it's a good fit based on what you're looking for, but I just thought this would be a fun contest to enter!

The hook: That the three that the Athena’d killed were fish... instead of humans.

Target audience: Most likely children, I think?

Platform: N/A

Education: Middle School

Hometown: Somewhere in New Jersey

Age: (I originally put my age here, but I think I probably shouldn’t. Anyways, I’m in Middle School- some people call it intermediate school, but they’re basically the same thing to me)