Instead of a gentle chriping and pale blue sky, we would wake up to fireworks in the sky and enormous vibrations. If birds blew up as the flew into windows,the world could be a better place. Hell, we could be safer from terrorists as we would develop metals that the birds could not erupt. But then again, I suppose, those who wish to inflict evil on the world would find a way to create stronger and more deadly weapons. An entirely different reality would emit as the sweet tweets of birds turn into battle cries and horror. Perhaps the birds would be used as weapons themselves. Ostriches would be bred and forced to run straight into walls, canaries would be sent as gifts in delicate cages only to detonate in the arms of a hopeful child. Guts and gore would cover the city as feathers rained down from the sky and the ashes fluttered off the ground.

“Shhhhhhhhh”

The wind whispers,

Slowly wrapping its cold arms around me.

I try to escape,

But its grasp tightens.

Violent,

Yet soft,

It plays with me,

Tauntingly,

Turning my hair against me,

As if possessed by Medusa herself.

          Once upon a time is a phrase we use to tell a story, a legendary tale about something like the big bang, the dinosaurs and their extinction and many other things in life. Everything has a story behind it . "We are born, time passes and we die. So time must exist, right? The trouble is, it's tricky to pin down what time actually is.

           Why is time controversial? It feels real, always there, inexorably moving forward. Time has flow, runs like a river. Time has direction, always advances. Time has order, one thing after another. Time has duration, a quantifiable period between events for example a decade. Time has a privileged present, only now is real. Time seems to be the universal background through which all events proceed, such that order can be sequenced and durations measured.

          The question is whether these features are actual realities of the physical world or artificial constructs of human mentality. It seems we haven't understood what time is we've only made up many things of what we perceive it to be. People say that they feel time pass by but by what instrument like the sense of smell done by the nose or sight by the eyes do we humans use to measure time? The last time I checked we had nothing but the watch. Which leads  to yet another question "who made the watch? If it was at noon that the clocked first kicked what time did he/she turn the second, minute and hour hand to?" (I know it sounds crazy hehe) but please lend  me some of your "time". 

         "Don't be late. Arrive on time. Let's spend time. Time flies". These are phrases that we use to express it. 

         Huw Price, professor of philosophy at Cambridge University, claims that the three basic properties of time come not from the physical world but from our mental states: A present moment that is special; some kind of flow or passage; and an absolute direction. 

        "We can portray our reality as either a three-dimensional place where stuff happens over time," said Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist Max Tegmark, "or as a four-dimensional place where nothing happens [‘block universe’] — and if it really is the second picture, then change really is an illusion, because there's nothing that's changing; it's all just there — past, present, future.

        "So life is like a movie, and space-time is like the DVD," he added; "there's nothing about the DVD itself that is changing in any way, even though there's all this drama unfolding in the movie. We have the illusion, at any given moment, that the past already happened and the future doesn't yet exist, and that things are changing. But all I'm ever aware of is my brain state right now. The only reason I feel like I have a past is that my brain contains memories.

       So, time — the time we know since we learned to tell time on a clock — seems to disappear when you study physics, until you get to relativity. Which I haven't, this is just some good research. 

        "The essence of relativity is that there is no absolute time, no absolute space. Everything is relative. When you try to discuss time in the context of the universe, you need the simple idea that you isolate part of the universe and call it your clock, and time evolution is only about the relationship between some parts of the universe and that thing you called your clock."

          This is some confusing stuff and but it gets interesting. Julian Barbour, a British physicist, describes time as "a succession of pictures, a succession of snapshots, changing continuously one into another. I'm looking at you; you're nodding your head. Without that change, we wouldn't have any notion of time."

        "Isaac Newton," Barbour noted, "insisted that even if absolutely nothing at all happened, time would be passing, and that I believe is completely wrong." To Barbour, change is real, but time is not. Time is only a reflection of change. From change, our brains construct a sense of time as if it were flowing. As he puts it, all the "evidence we have for time is encoded in static configurations, which we see or experience subjectively, all of them fitting together to make time seem linear."

         John Polkinghorne, a quantum physicist and Anglican priest, believes that the flow and direction of time are real and relentless. It is a "mistaken argument," he said, to use relativity to assert that time is an illusion, "because no observer has knowledge of a distant event, or the simultaneity of different events, until they are unambiguously in that observer's past. And, therefore, that argument focuses on the way observers organize their description of the past and cannot establish the reality of the awaiting future." 

"We live in a world of unfolding and becoming," he said.

         To many physicists, while we experience time as psychologically real, time is not fundamentally real. At the deepest foundations of nature, time is not a primitive, irreducible element or concept required to construct reality.  The idea that time is not real is counterintuitive. But many ideas about how the world works that humanity had taken for granted have required a complete rethink. As Tegmark puts it, "There've been so many things in physics that we thought were fundamental that turned out to be mere illusions, that we're questioning everything — even time."

         What reality is depends on what time is. Is time irreducible, fundamental, an ultimate descriptor of bedrock reality? Or is our subjective sense of flowing time, generated by our brains that evolved for other purposes, an illusion?

         Many physicists and philosophers now suspect that time is not fundamental; rather, time emerges out of something more fundamental — something nontemporal, something altogether different (perhaps something discreet, quantized, not continuous, smooth).

      The alternative, of course, is our common intuition: time does flow, the present is superspecial as the only real moment, and the deep nature of reality is one of becoming.

        I cannot decide. I'm out of time thanks for reading and let your mind wonder and wander sometime. 

When I was born, they didn’t have a name for my condition.

“He’s normal,” the doctor said.

Back then no one was upset by his choice of words, even though it implied that quite a few people — including my parents — were not normal. The hospital interpreter looked at my parents and translated “normal” into sign language. Her right hand drew two small circles in front of the heart, clockwise, with two extended fingers, then moved down toward the stomach and touched her left fist. My father smiled. Normal was good.

*

There was nothing normal about my childhood. Unlike the other kids, who had been mumbling words to their parents since their first year of life, I only discovered spoken language at school. I heard it before, of course, on the street and on TV, but never truly needed to use it. My parents were my life, and life was quiet. Even when friends visited our house, nearly all of them were deaf, just like mum and dad. Before I was old enough to go to school, I could spend days without hearing the sound of a human voice.

My parents had warned me that school would be different, but nothing could have prepared me for their voices.

“Are you deaf? Huh? Deaf? Can you hear what I’m saying?”

They took turns shouting at my face, one louder than the other, trying to test the limits of my silence. All I ever did in response was shake my head. A universal sign for no. The only sign they could understand.

When I mentioned my struggles to dad, he told me I should speak up. I was normal, just like them. Why didn’t I shout back? I shrugged and signed back to him: "I prefer silence."

I was eleven years old when I found out they had finally come up with a term to describe people like me. I was a Coda: an acronym for child of deaf adults. I learned it first from a school psychiatrist, who insisted on seeing me after a teacher voiced her concerns. The psychiatrist tried to keep her notes out of my sight, but I noticed the words "social anxiety".

"Why don't you speak to your classmates, Tom?"

Looking down, I mumbled an answer I had rehearsed the night before. I had grown up use to silence. My native language was sign language, not English. Speech was foreign to me. I even disliked the sound of my voice, just like a native English speaker might hate his own accent when speaking French.

The psychiatrist stared at me as I answered, her pen suspended a few inches over her notebook. At the time, the first thing they used to do after a teacher complaint was diagnose you for something. A lot of my classmates were on Zoloft, Klonopin, Ritalin. They would show the tablets to anyone—even to me. It had become some sort of club.

My case was trickier. There was no pill to make my parents normal, and even if there was one I wouldn’t get anywhere near it. I hated normal. It was noisy, aggressive, uncomfortable. The best part of my day was hopping off the school bus, walking back into my house and quietly talk to my parents about anything else. Sometimes their deaf friends and their kids would come over, too. They knew better than to ask me about school. There was no place for it in my temple of loving silence.

“You need to find your voice,” said the psychiatrist. I mumbled something about sign language being my true voice, but she was having none of it.

“A speaking voice. Your parents are not the only people in the world. How are you going to speak to everyone else?”

I said nothing in reply, but a sentence in sign language crossed my mind. I had to clench my fists to stop myself from signing it.

“Why would I want to do that?”

*

The silent question echoed in my mind until my father’s funeral. His death was sudden for us, but his illness had been growing silently for a long time before it was discovered. Middle-aged men are usually not big fans of going to the doctor. Combine that with the difficulties in communication, the need to find an interpreter, and it's not a surprise that he took years to get his cough check and tell someone about his throat pain.

I was 14 when he died. I remember many moments from his funeral, but what struck me the most was how noisy it all was. The church was crowded. We used to go there every Sunday, but entered and left quietly. The language barrier stopped us from making contact. Very few of those people had ever said a word to us. Save for a couple of other deaf families, none of them were our friends. Yet everyone had come to my father’s funeral, along with the very few friends we had.

I saw pity in their eyes. Not the usual pity one has for a child who has just lost a father. No, there was something else. They pitied us — my father, my mother, even me. They probably thought I was deaf, too, and spoke carelessly in front of me. I could hear their comments from the front seats.

“Poor man. Such a difficult life.”

“It must be hard for the kid. First you have a deaf father, and now not even that.”

Their words made me wish I was deaf.

In sign language, it’s hard to be offended by a stranger. Whenever someone starts saying something hurtful, you can just close your eyes or look away. Communication requires full attention and consent on both sides. A hearing person had no such luck. I tried to explain it to my mother several times, back when the mean comments at school were just starting, but the concept was foreign for her. How could I feel offended by something I didn’t want to hear? Why did I choose to hear it?

Even though she couldn’t understand it, she knew me well enough to notice when it was happening. Right there, as we stood in front of our father’s coffin waiting for the minister to give him a final blessing, she let go of my hand for a second and made a sign to me.

“Ignore it.”

In any other day, I would have followed her advice. I wouldn’t have walked to the pulpit. I wouldn’t have grabbed the microphone. I might have looked at the audience, but I would never have said the words I said to them. I would have thought them, yes, but never said them.

“My father was a greater man than anyone sitting here today. We were lucky to have him in our lives. If you feel any pity for us, I pity you.”

At last, they were all quiet. I looked at their faces as many of them stared me in disgust, shrugged and walked back to my mother's side. If I had to hear them, they had to hear me.

my poetry

is heartless, chews

like gravel on your teeth,

tastes like your mother,

the cornmeal on her hands

when she tied you up 

in a burlap sack and tried

to drown you in the creek.

i know you want to.

ask, what's it like

to lay down and die?

how many spiders do you swallow

in your sleep? how many

have you strung out, washed

and ironed to fit your piece? 

do girls like you still feel,

can i pinch your skin

until it bleeds, pretend your body

is for tourists and it's a ghost town

once i leave?

you will not take credit 

for the nothing that i am now,

even though we both know

i make a killing off of the pain.

you break us, i build colossus,

then redact your name.

1. Woman of Matter

-Woman who will not share space, who does not remove her elbow from the arm rest at the doctor’s office while she waits to be told she is not to scale

2. Woman who Roars

-Woman who speaks over interruptions, who met silence and left it lying in the streets because she refused to listen to what it had to say

3. Woman who Needs no Shield

-Woman who learned self-defense from chopping onions, whose knuckles grew thick as metal from kneading dough

4. Woman of Curiosity

-Woman who always asks questions, who seeks answers inside the bellies of beasts

5. Woman Clothed in Strength and Pride

-Woman whose heels click and lips shine, who dresses above the knee because she is not ashamed of her thighs

6. Woman with Teeth

-Woman who bites back and draws blood, who scrapes knees and bruises ribs with her tongue

Our brains live

in magical places.

Deer prints in snow.

Sunscreen rubbed on

stiff red backs.

In nonexistent things

like mermaids

or mandrakes.

In cadences and rhythms.

Where we were

when we kissed

and listened to Kate Nash

in your kitchen.

Forts made of

wrapped arms

and cold toes.

In eyes hidden from sun

that gushes through

your closed blinds.

In evening air.

In equilibrium.

In coconut skulls.

i have kissed too many lovers goodbye to believe in the promise of forever. i have touched too many people for the last time and bid too many farewells in the chill of an airport for me to believe that you will always be here. my mind has wandered too far into the depths of ’i wonder where they are now” and i have wondered for too long for me to believe that you will come back for me. when you tell me that you love me, don’t promise me forever. don’t send me empty words and convenient vows because i have heard them all. when you tell me that you love me, tell me that you love me now; that in this moment i am the only person you see. when you tell me you love me, don’t tell me that you will never make the same mistakes as the last one when he was supposed to be the last one. when you tell me you love me, don’t follow it with superficial compliments about the things that you can see but can not feel. do not call me pretty, or beautiful, or lovely. don’t tell me that i turn you on tell me instead that i burn like fire. when you tell me you love me, realize that you are not the first one with pretty words and beautiful lies. remember that just like you, i breathe and i feel and i think and i dream and i remember and i hurt and i love. when you tell me you love me, know that i am clinging on to every word and syllable; know that i will hold these words so close to my heart they will begin to tattoo themselves onto my skin. 

Somehow, it’s already Friday. This is a beautiful thing, as it means we get to hear all about another Proser in our Friday Feature. This week we have one of the most prolific Prosers on here, known and loved by many of the lovely community we have on here. You probably know her as Soulhearts, but you're about to learn much more about her!

P: What is your given name and your Proser username?

S: Soulhearts is the name I have used on all my social media. I was one of those folks that did not trust the internet when I first learned to use it (maybe that was 6-7 yrs ago) haha, don't judge. I can honestly say I am not from the techie generation. I never really divulged my real name and wanted to hide behind a pen name so the name Soulhearts stuck. But because Prose feels like family, I shall break my anonymity and introduce myself. My name is Madilyn De Leon and it's nice to meet you all.

P: Hey, Madilyn! Where do you live?

S: I live in a little corner of a country called USA , a city called Burke in the state of Virginia.

I know we have some Prosers from Virginia so ‘Hello’ to you guys! #represent

P: What is your occupation?

S: I am a stress absorber. I tenaciously bear all the stress I receive from spoiled and entitled customers everyday. Lol! Can you guess the occupation yet? If you guessed retail then you are right. I am a manager in retail for quite some time now and thus have witnessed all the blemished facets of people you wouldn't want to see. I am not complaining though. I like what I do, I just don't agree to the adage "the customer is always right" because most of the time they are not. Sshhhh! This is a secret ok? I don't want to get fired for saying this hahaha. Seriously, customers need to treat retail workers with more kindness and respect. Like the way you yourself expect to be treated.

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

S: Can I say writing is a twin that I cannot be apart from? A conjoined twin attached to my hip, heart, mind and soul. Sometimes it's like a shadow that disappears at night only to come back in the morning. I loved reading when I was younger. Started at elementary with the Golden books, Enid Blyton, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, then on my teens with Sweet Dreams, Silhouette and Harlequin Romances. Lol. :) So eventually in High School I was exposed to literature and fell in love with Poetry. Loved the works of the great classics like Shakespeare, Eliot, the Browning's, Burns, Frost, Dickinson to name a few. So from my love of reading, I guess is where my love for writing flowed from. Unlike most of you my dear Prosers, I have not written anything in my life besides maybe a couple of assignments needed for English class back in high school. My writing adventure started around three or four year ago on an app called Heyku (name changed to Ku soon after) I saw it being promoted on Facebook and the name Heyku got me interested because I loved the poetic form Haiku. So I tried it and became one of the pioneers of that app. It was an app where you can only write three lines with a limited word count. Not restricted to writing just Haiku though, the format just looks like it's Haiku because of the three lines. That was where I started religiously writing and posting three lines every day. It was a very friendly community. So very much like Prose. I've met so many wonderful and talented writers there. Some of them are now Prosers too. Their encouragements and precious feedbacks has made my pen more confident through the years. I wrote at first not for anything else but to help me cope with what I was going through at that time. 

Now it seems like my writing has a bigger purpose. I always felt so out of place and overwhelmed with the talent I see around me. After all I do not have a degree in writing nor am I an author. But the universe is slowly letting me feel that yes, I can write and that I can inspire others through it. I am proud to say that my Three Lines has made its way in print to Grace Black's Light Lines anthology book for Three Line Thursday, a micro poetry at Into The Void Magazine's 2nd issue, and a poem in another poetry anthology book titled Luminous Echoes. Indulge me in these for these are great achievements for this little fish lost, swimming in a big ocean of words. It's still surreal to see my work in print until now. I only have gratefulness in my heart for the people who saw something good enough in my writing to put it in print.

P: What value does reading add to both your personal and professional life?

S: Reading I think is like salt to a meal. Without reading a person becomes hollow (personal opinion) the meal would be tasteless, bland. Reading brings you to places you have not even seen nor imagined, it lets you experience life in the perspective of other cultures and philosophies. It cultivates a better understanding of people and the world because you expand your horizon and learn to empathize in the process. Reading feeds the brain and makes one a well-rounded individual.

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

S: I could not say that I have a current literary venture, but who knows? Maybe someday a poetry book of my own. Something I have never really considered or imagined until now. As for my future posts, I shall continue to listen to my pen and let it steer the direction of my writing. My posts will still be mostly micro poetry. This is what I love and what I think do best.

P: What do you love about Prose?

S: What's there not to love? Prose is a haven of ridiculously talented individuals. Not just talented but kind hearted individuals. The community is very supportive. It is a conducive environment for anyone who wants to read, write and or get better at writing. There is something for everyone. You like Fiction? You got it. Poetry? Horror? Erotica? Haiku? Follow the portals you love to get the content you want to see on your stream. I also love how this app has a vision. It is continuously evolving and trying to get better. The team is very responsive to any issue. I was lost when Ku discontinued. Now I am happy to have found a home in Prose!

P: Is there one book that you would recommend everybody should read before they die?

S: It's hard to recommend just one because there are so many great books out there. But because I have to choose one then "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran is a book that I always carry with me. Not carry in my purse ok? Lol but like E.E. Cummings Poem "I Carry Your Heart With Me" it is always in my heart.

P: Do you have an unsung hero who got you into reading and/or writing?

S: If there was a person who made me think that I could write was an English teacher back when I was a junior in high school. She praised my work in front of class. It felt good and it was something that I have never forgotten. I titled that piece "A Rainy Day". It was a short poem about the rain that included frogs, the wind, trees... until now, nature is still very evident in my work. I am alone in this reading and writing life. Not one in my family has the same interest. No one can relate to what I do. So I'm thankful I have Prose, here I find kindred souls.

P: Describe yourself in three words!

S: Passionate, Sincere, and Adventurous. I asked friends to describe me and common answers were Bubbly, Creative and Kind.

P: Is there one quote, from a writer or otherwise, that sums you up?

S: Here's a few lines regarding love in Gibran's The Prophet, Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; for love is sufficient unto love. When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God." Try to read at least what the book say about love. It is truly beautiful.

P: What is your favourite music, and do you write or read to it?

S: I don't really have a favorite music to read or write to. This doesn't mean I don't like music though. I actually love to sing. I write best when it is quiet. Writing for me is meditative. I need silence to push my pen to bleed. Some favorite songs of mine are Stevie Nick's Landslide (i'm getting old, sentimental) when I hear this. Lynyrd Skynyrd's Freebird takes me to the sky with its killer instrumental/ guitar playing, makes me head bang! Hahaha! I am dizzy after every time.

P: You climb out of a time machine into a dystopian future with no books. What do you tell them?

S: Come let's ride this time machine back and change the past, find out why the books are all gone.

It will be a sad world without books, without libraries, without shelfies.

P: Do you have a favourite place to read and write?

S: It would be my room because that is where I usually spend time after all the hustle and bustle of daily life, I write when everything else is still and quiet.

P: Is there anything else you’d like us to know about your social media accounts?

S: Follow me on Twitter and Instagram. I am also on Lettrs. Forgive me if I don't reply to friend requests on Facebook. You can always message me here or on Twitter and IG. ❤

What a marvellous interview with the lovely Soulhearts. We feel good. Do you feel good? So now you know the drill. Follow. Like. Comment. Love. Do it all and get in touch with us in the usual ways should you wish to take part or want to nominate someone you’d like to see featured here.

Everything I know about being a man I learned from the mountains.

From late nights spent in sleeping bags on rocky hillsides,

writhing, while earth's jagged edges jammed themselves into

the softest corners of my body.

In the morning, Dad would ask how I slept,

I'd lie and shout "Great!"

silently hoping sacrifice would make my soft spots

craggy and rough, like slate or slag.

I'd stand, awestruck, in the shadows of titans,

swallowed by their legacy,

marveling at their unyielding, unforgiving, truth.

Mountains, while stern and cold,

are steadfast and reliable.

At the very least I know that when I fall asleep at the foot of a mountain,

it will be there, same as always, when I wake up.

Everything I know about love I learned from the beach,

from forgiving sands ruled by the sea.

The ground here is soft and inviting.

The beach welcomes all strangers to its shores,

and it makes room for every part of me. 

At night, the tide rises and sweeps away the sand.

When the contours of my body are washed out to sea,

the sand still waits, supple and suggestible,

to enfold me in a surface both alien and familiar.

The beach dares me to dwell here,

promising me a permanent place on its shores,

but sandcastles crumble.

The beach is always at the mercy of the sea.

There is a reason that the mountains and the beach rarely meet,

no polarity can endure its opposite for long.

Yet, here I stand, composed of two poles,

daily they grind against each other

while I strain to avoid the atomic repercussions of their inevitable split.

Growth is friction and fractures.

What is sand? If not the shattered remnants of the mountainside?

What is the mountain? If not grains and gravel subjected

to the metamorphic touch of heat and pressure and time?