the road to find balance eludes,

you search for shape,

and stumble on minutiae,

you delve into details,

and loose the expance.

a blot of darkness in the water,

a distraction for the escaping squid,

a pink petal fallen on the desk,

gives no clue, to the eager,

of the proceeding eruption.

She put her hand over her mouth to quieten her breathing. Peering through the cupboard door she watched as the intriguer rummaged through her possessions in search of treasure. His musky aftershave made her want to heave. Her quick decision to hide in the cupboard may have saved her life. She noticed his gun in his back pocket and gasped. He looked her way.

Today is my 14th birthday. At 9:00 pm this evening I will smoke my last cigarette. Then I will do what my heart tells me I must.

It has been a month since the start of the invasion, and still the people resist.

Everything is ready. I am ready - or as ready as one can be. I will dress all in black. And I have boot polish for my face and hands. I will be like a shadow in the shadows. I will take my rifle and the three molotov cocktails already packed into my school satchel. If I am caught out after curfew I will be shot, but this is my city. I know every building, every alley-way and back street. All of the bridges are guarded, so I will cross the river by boat, and make my way to the old town square. There are soldiers there, with tanks. I will blow up the tanks. Kill as many of the soldiers as I can. I will shoot until I run out of bullets. All but one. One I will keep for myself.

Whatever happens, I will not let them take me alive.

I have no family. There will be no one to mourn me. But, I hope, there might be someone who remembers how I died - defending my country.

It is the 21st of September, 1968. For me there will be no tomorrow.

We listen to Harmony Hall in the car

& I sing louder with I don’t wanna live like this,

but I don’t wanna die. There are no good words

for suicide. Sun pearls my arm, loose

on the car window. It’s spring & I won’t

romanticize dying, though I do want a way to say

I want to die without making anyone cry.

As I unroll the window I hold my fingers through the running

air & let March mother me, brush my body

tenderly. I didn’t mean to write a love poem

but the love keeps happening, despite

all my attempts to leave. No one notices

when I sing louder; the moment passes anonymously.

It’s okay. I look for language to name me.

Research shows that humans should engage in some form of physical contact at least eight times a day in order to maintain good mental health. Humans are a social species, so it makes sense. Touch deprivation is a real condition, look it up. It doesn't apply to me though, because I'm not human. I may look, sound, and act human, but I'm not. I can't be. I don't feel human, so I don't need touch like one.

This morning I woke up to a cough stuck in my throat. It hurt to breathe and my body felt stiff. I pulled myself out of bed and staggered to the bathroom. Bent over the sink, I immediately felt the cough hack its way out of my lungs. The force of the coughing reverberated throughout my whole body. When the cough finally subsided it left a distinct taste in my mouth. It was like a mix of iron, dirt, and freshly cut grass. I wiped the tears out of my eyes and looked down into the sink.

It's been harder to bend my joints lately. I'm not sure what it is. I'm too young to be having joint problems when I've always had a clean bill of physical health. Worse yet, when it rains they ache. They ache like they're going to disintegrate. I can't even bend them when it rains. I can't go to the doctor. If I go to the doctor they'll touch me. I'll get poked and prodded and prescribed pain meds and that will be the end of it. No, I can't tell anyone about this.

The wilderness is calling me. I hear it in the wind and I see it in my dreams. The wind whistles sweetly outside the window of my studio apartment. She's so kind, the wind. She caresses my skin so gently and pulls me towards an unknown. I don't know what she wants but her breath is more caring than any other I've felt; I trust her instinctively. I love her primally. I'll go anywhere she tells me to go.

There are twenty-three unopened voicemails in my inbox, and over thirty missed calls. I don't answer phone calls anymore, nor do I listen to voicemails. I feel nothing as I watch another call go to voicemail. My family has been trying to contact me all week, but I want to be left alone. I can't get out of bed to go to work either. My fridge is empty because I can't subject myself to suffering the ordeal of grocery shopping. I'm not hungry though, I haven't been hungry for a while. Physical hunger, I do not feel. I feel a different sort of hunger, I need a different sort of nourishment. The siren song of the wind calls me again. I need to go.

As I limp through the woods I wonder why the wind has brought me here. This forest feels special, it feels right. I run my hand over the bark of a tree and look up, the leaves in the canopy aren't touching. I read somewhere that this is called "crown shyness," I always thought that sounded nice. To be in the company of others who are near you but won't touch you. The pattern that the gaps make remind me of cell walls in the human body. A sudden pain grips my chest and works its way up my esophagus. Another cough. I stagger and stumble back to the edge of the forest, I know why the wind called me here. I'm the next to join the forest. I collapse at the treeline, hacking wood and leaves out of my lungs. My back, my spine it hurts. It's swelling. Something is sprouting, I can feel it. I am breaking free of my human shell. I am changing. It hurts. It shouldn't hurt but it hurts. Why does it hurt? I'm not human, it shouldn't hurt. I wish someone would hold my hand. I wish someone would touch me. It hurts.

It's like you're tryin' to get to heaven in a hurry

And the queue was shorter than you thought it would be

And the doorman says, "You need to get a wristband"

You got a lift between the pitfalls

But you're lookin' like you're low on energy

Did you get out and walk to ensure you'd miss the quicksand?

Looking for a new place to begin

Feeling like it's hard to understand

But as long as you still keep pepperin' the pill

You'll find a way to spit it out, again

And even when you know the way it's gonna blow

It's hard to get around the wind

(c) Alex Turner

I am drifting on a bed, dwarfed to a sliver by those grey boisterous waves.

My dreams are shattered. Well, after all, I'm alive, I'm not imprisoned (my hand treacherously prompts me to type in "yet"). For the first time in a while, I went to a yoga class this evening. I was frequenting them before, but then the coach had to stop teaching yoga, and the whole thing was put on hold. She and her husband are flying to Turkey tomorrow. The borders seem to be closing; I've heard of some planes being forced to return to Russia on what seems to have been completely spurious grounds.

I spent the last six years working for a global company. I wouldn't think of myself as not intelligent. But I guess I'm not smart. Had I been wiser, what...what would I actually have done?

Okay, I always felt passionate about chemistry, since the age of nine. I couldn't have thought of another field. I was fascinated with science. I was genuinely willing to become a scientist.

The sanctions imposed after the reunion with Crimea (folks, you know, there's the omnipotent secret agent reading what I'm typing in) hit the economy hard, the currency collapsed more than twofold. Pursuing a scientific career was off the list. Finding a decent job proved to be difficult. I had to work at a coke oven plant for more than half a year after my graduation (my GPA is 4.8/5, mind you). Only then was I lucky enough to land my current job. Had it not been for some of my connections, they wouldn't even have heard of me. This is not to say that I was stupid or shit. I believe I knew chemistry fairly well.

The following three or four years were marked by prosperity, albeit relative. My salary wasn't as exorbitant as that of, say, IT specialists, but it was more or less decent. I was fairly well-off. The benefits were also good. A leased vehicle with virtually free gas, free meals, affiliative style of management. I could do my work whenever I wanted and nobody cared how much hours I clocked up. I would go to some plant at 9AM and leave at 12AM. Something along those lines.

They sent me off to the Netherlands five years ago. It seems like a fucking dream. That twenty-three years old me. A cosmopolitan and debonair Russian on a business trip to Europe. Everything seemed so promising. It seemed like my perseverance would help me carve out a decent career and land a job in Europe.

Three and a half years down the line. December, 2019. I'm selling my own flat to move away to a better one. I have some savings, at least, enough to arrange everything. The monthly installment was hovering around $200. I was earning around 900. Well, with all the perks and lower cost of living in Russia, it's decent. I was performing well, and I was expecting what seemed to be my well-deserved promotion.

Then came the pandemics. Hiring and promotions freezes were soon to follow. So be it. I had some things to enjoy. I met a woman that was to become my wife one year down the line. I tended to my work. I developed a tool that I thought would help company make profits. Well, they said that I was smart, that it was solid and what not, they finally gave me a promotion. Everything seemed to bear a semblance of normality. Granted, I wasn't as well-paid as some IT guys, I was location-bound (unlike them), but I felt pretty content. Like, I don't have aptitude for IT. I was always doing what I was good at. A translation hustle on the side popped up, and I wasn't slow to seize it. These five months were nice.

And now that the floodgates are open and the shit is inundating. The side job is gone. The primary job is uncertain. Our contracts won't be reviewed. They say, our compensation is calculated in $ and then translated to the local currency once per year. Now that the ruble collapsed, my real disposable income followed the suit. This is non-negotiable. Added to this are the sanctions, troubles with logistics et cetera.

Long live the great general Jaruzelski,

Long live the unsurpassed comrade Fidel Castro,

Praised be Nicolae Ceaușescu,

Let's give our kudos to Mikhail Gorbachev!

Forever we all, all — pilgrims in Korea!

I hope we will stay afloat and swim ashore.

Dearest Writers:

Over the past 12 months, members of our community have expressed their desire to publish a book but lack of traction with agents or publishers. Our mission is to see members of our community succeed and fulfill their dreams of becoming published authors.

Enter, The Prose Press:

https://theprose.com/p/press

In collaboration with one of the fastest-growing educational companies, we started The Prose Press to give up-and-coming authors the platform to successfully write and publish their work.

Over the next few months, we will be inviting aspiring authors to submit their work and start their publishing journey with The Prose Press and share key pieces of their journey with you – their learnings, conversations, milestones, and excerpts.

If you are interested in turning your working manuscript into a real book, reach out to us.

Thank you to our supporters and community members for making this possible.

https://theprose.com/p/press

Cheers,

Prose.

Bitch please. You want PC? I'll give you Mac. Fuck it, Big Mac. Fuck you, MACDonald's. And fuck you too, Billy G and Stevie J, you guys were insecure as fuck and took it out on most of us. Bitch please. You want vanilla? Well here's neopolitan, freeze-dried, because my head is in motherfucking space. Save face. I have a memo for you. Yes, YOU. It's all one place and it's all the original face, like Stuart said.

Bitch please.

They lay to rest

behind mirrored doors

Buried in a box

collecting dust

along with the

butterfly acoustic

blood stained shirt

and hoard of empty bottles

They scream

Begging to be

remembered

and cried over

They speak of

love and sorrow