How are you today?

The one question seldomly asked,

I fear I do not say.

You better not be fine.

It's literally

the answer often chosen

to escape the so many

variable that could be

hurting when the equations

are evenly arranged.

I can't tell you what to say.

'Cause I do not know

if the questions are well framed.

Sincerely from the bottom

of my heart,

I hope today

was not like every other day.

Being sad is to expect things not to change.

When they do change,

hope showers it rays

with a smile on your face.

I should have known..

I should have known you had not changed..

Everyone was right. But I loved you, Ruby.

Well, I thought I did. I can't say I do anymore.

I thought you were pretty for the longest time. Ever since middle school.

But I was blind, deaf, numb, ignorant, and oblivious.

I ignored everything you had done and all the torture you caused.

I defended you when I knew deep down inside..

You were the one who had always been in the wrong.

I thought I was happy....but then I realized, we were never an actual couple. We just acted like we were. We never went on dates or hugged.

You only chose me because I was small. Easy to manipulate.

You thought of it as a joke..and I fell for it.

Was this payback for all the years of pranking me and my brother did to everyone?

That wouldn't make any sense though, none of our pranks hurt anyone. They were just fun pranks..like throwing pies to your face or snowballs being thrown at you. We never meant any harm and everyone knew that. You knew that.

You and Lillian will always be the same. No one will like you. No one will be with you.

Not even the weak and small like me. Not anymore.

I wrote this to you for a reason I don't even know.

But you did not win against me, Ruby Ashfield.

You don't even deserve that last name.

You're just like your grandfather, or your uncle when he was younger.

The Ashfields were monsters until things changed. And then you brought all the suffering and pain back.

It was just a silly crush. But you made me fall. And you abused me. But I never gave up on you. What an idiot I was.

I hope you're happy now..you're all alone.

Traditionally, the word “ye” is pronounced like “the” or “thee,” not “yee.” The reason for this has to do with the invention of the Gutenberg printing press .

In the Medieval Ages, paper had not been invented. Instead, Medieval scholars utilized parchment, a very expensive yet longer-lasting form of paper. In order to save space on parchment, medieval writers would do one of two things when writing the word “the.” They would either write the E above the H, or they were put an accent above the word.

However, when Juanes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1400s, you couldn’t do that. This is because the printing press utilized formerly-engraved letters that could not be manipulated, only copied. To save space using the word “the” on the printing press, printers would replace the word with “ye.”

If you are like me, then this is unfortunate news, because I really enjoy using the word ”ye” when it makes the “yee” sound. But, if you are also like me, then you do not like to break grammatical rules, so, unfortunately, whenever I use the word “ye,” I am really saying “the.”

#nonfiction

the flower in my garden

never watered

never trimmed

was just an ordinary plant

until a stranger uprooted it

and placed it in his shades

nurses it into the most envied

flower in town

how blind could I have been?

©️Duncan Alidza

#lovelost #blind #unnoticed #brokenhearted

I have tattoos.

Too many.

They can't be seen.

We all get tattoos,

because we want to remember something.

For the rest of our lives.

I don't want to remember.

I want to forget.

I want to lose myself a million times.

But the tattoos around my goddamn heart,

are reminders that never seem to fade away.

I hold multitudes of ideas

with paper hands,

each a spectral amalgam dyed in

the fleeting, busy shades of life:

innocence, experience,

my weary-youthful brand an

artisanally awkward blend of both...

Ideas,

waiting for pendulum pens to realize,

and gift relative permanence to their

scattered echoes.

Ideas,

like an evanescent sand,

searching to find the small of

the hourglass and

make a grand(ly clumsy) escape.

To soar away with the color of

ideas; to taste the night beyond

self-wrought bars of radio silence,

white-noise-dipped thought.

For now...

Ideas rest dormant in the depths of

smooth hands.

And I’m here...

Waiting with

trapped breath, for age to

perch at trembling fingertips

and vein its way through my

gasping system.

I wasn’t re—

And then...

Waiting for neglected ideas

to be tapped;

and to spill carelessly-awry from

the fissures of my core.

Years softly evaporate.

Ideas rest restlessly,

electrically shiftless,

erratically dead.

The neglect decays all it touches,

and what once danced on

an irregular smile and painted a child’s

powdery laughter collapses on itself

and tumbles, resigned, into a black hole.

Ideas rest dormant in the depths of

cold hands.

Now unable to be realized.

#fiction