It is blue because we did it. Bled the sky in faith that rain was what we needed. Once we realized death was required to create, we paid the price of hope. So, the sky is blue. An echo of the bruises of our existence. As every baby stretches skin and leaves a mark, so too we exist within sacrifice. So the sky is blue. And it's fuckin beautiful.

Hello, Writers and Dear Readers.

In today's video, I went ahead and shot it from my profile. Always good to change it up once in awhile. But I wanted to feature some of the new writers and give thanks to the ones I've admired, and I figured the best way to do it was from a writer, and not the admin, at least for this one. Here's the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93DI9TdR5DE

And.

As always....

Thank you for being here.

-The Prose. team.

I knocked—one rap, a pause, then four raps in quick succession—and he opened the door. He walked back to table and stared out the window. The table was the small hotel standard, the window anything but. The city stretched wide through the floor-length glass, dark with ten thousand pinpricks of light below. All the same, once I had latched the door behind me, it was the table that commanded my attention. I sat in the other chair and folded my hands.

He did not move. Seated across from him, I noted he looked upward, rather than down toward the buildings and streets. He looked to the sky. Whatever he hoped to find there, he wouldn’t, and it had nothing to do with the clouds.

When I cleared my throat, he finally turned. I raised my brow in question. He closed his eyes, but he gave the nod, and I slid the envelope of bills to my side of the table. He still did not speak, so I did a rough count. My rate is $25K. As I’d expected from our previous conversation, he gave me fifty.

Miscommunication is nobody’s friend, certainly not in my line of work, so I lifted my hand, two fingers. His lips trembled, his eyes filled, but he gave the second nod.

I tucked the envelope in my coat pocket and left him, so he could stare at the floor or the clouds or the city where he’d spend the next three days. A phone call would interrupt his stay. He’d have to book a flight home for the funerals.

For Christmas, my in-laws gave me a small photograph of an unknown, long-dead sixteen-year-old girl. It was an exceptionally thoughtful gift. It’s a memento of my writing in 2022.

Strictly speaking, it is not a “photograph” at all, since that term refers to an image printed on paper. They gave me an ambrotype, which is a glass plate with a negative image, placed over dark paper so viewers perceive it as a positive. To confirm my identification, I delicately pried the ambrotype from its red velvet-lined case. Called a union case, it is made of shellac and wood pressed together with an intricate design on the cover. The material was an early forerunner of plastic, patented by Samuel Peck in 1854. Between the case and the photographic process, I could date the gift approximately to 1860, just before cartes de visite printed on albumen paper became the new standard.

Three years ago, the ambrotype would have meant nothing to me. I knew nothing of photography, let alone historic photographic processes. But during the pandemic summer of 2020, I started writing a novel titled The Ghosts on the Glass about William Mumler, a 19th century photographer who claimed he could take pictures of spirits. In 2022, I finished.

I produced far fewer pieces of writing this past year than in ones. After joining Prose in fall of 2019, I produced a piece per week: short stories, poems, essays. I dabbled. Writing The Ghosts on the Glass, I periodically paused my novel writing and editing in favor of a few poems and short stories, but mostly I stashed ideas in documents and put them aside. When the novel is done, I’ll write some of these stories, I told myself, and late this summer, I did write two. I posted “The Last Paddle” to Prose almost immediately. “Servant of the Servants of God” awaits further revision before I submit it to an historical fiction journal to see what happens. I waited a couple months to finish editing because I’ve learned that time away from a piece freshens the eyes. I am still waiting as the year closes out because I’ve learned that novel writing is addictive.

I’m four chapters and 10,000 words into my second novel and loving it. It’s more historical fiction—the genre and the need for research suit me well—based this time on some local history. Before 2023 closes, I’m hoping to write another 40,000 words. I’m also hoping my first novel finds its publisher. I don’t want to inflict blow-by-blow announcements on the world, but I will say I am neither at the starting line nor near the finish line of achieving publication. When I have definite news to share, my Prose friends will be among the first to know. I think you’ll like The Ghosts on the Glass.

Someone else did. I published a few short pieces and created my website this year, but whenever I look back on my writing in 2022, I will most remember the conclusion of the George Saunders contest on Prose. I did indeed get to send him 25 pages of my writing, the first section of The Ghosts on the Glass. I assumed I would get a brief paragraph of notes, and I crossed my fingers for some sort of general compliment; I got so, so much more. Mr. Saunders turned out to be just as thoughtful and generous as you’d hope from reading his work and listening to him speak. He gave me fantastic, very detailed advice for those 25 pages—and he liked them. The man who wrote Lincoln in the Bardo read 25 pages of my writing and said they were good.

That’s my mountaintop. I’ve learned enough about the publishing industry in the last year to know that nothing is certain, and many would-be books die during submission. I believe that The Ghosts on the Glass will find the right editor at some point; for that matter, I’m optimistic that my work in progress will, too. Regardless, I’ve written something genuinely good, and I have a multi-page email from one of my favorite writers to prove it. I keep a printed copy tucked in a notebook, on a shelf in my usual writing room. I read it again, sometimes, when I need to believe.

at what point are you just SAD

like eating ice cream out of the trash can

at 2AM and logging into Facebook

to comment on politics and Fran's

new status about her eighth grandkid

at what point are you just ANGRY

like looking at their text and just

shaking your head because

it's three months too late

for them to not even apologize

just victimize

at what point are you just TIRED

like I'm working for someone else's dream

sitting in rush hour traffic on a Tuesday

four more days until I can pretend I'm free

at what point are you just DONE

was it their absence or lack of presence

in a full-blown conversation

that led you to block them

that led you to understand loneliness

my writing could be

described as

a hot girl at a party

no one has ever told her

she is annoying

or untalented

her ego unchecked

so she cozies up to

some poor party-goer

and talks forever

about her pretty nothings

until he makes some excuse

to leave the scene

leading her to believe

she is merely unknown

when she’s just drunk

calling herself misunderstood

intoxicated on fumes

and bad poems

I like an ax. I like the heft of the head, and the smooth ergonomics of it’s shaped hickory haft. I like the power conveyed when one is cocked overhead, lightly balanced, playing you like a fulcrum. I like the speed with which one falls, the weighted head using gravity for assistance.

An oddly shaped knife is all it is, forged for chopping. A billet of iron, or dense steel shaped and forge welded to a sharpened steel bit for penetration, and an eye pushed and punched through hot metal by a leathery-skinned artisan wielding a ball-peened hammer.

And with it the iconic images of Honest Abe building a cabin, George Washington owning up to the Cherry Tree fiasco, or even Lizzy Borden, who might have just been a crazy woman, or whose Poppa might have been a mean, mean man… history has left us uncertain as to which.

Either way, Lizzy undoubtedly shared mine and Abe’s love for the versatility and practicality of a good, old fashioned ax. Her daddy must have gained a newfound respect for it’s abilities too, right there at the end.

i think of you in your favorite sweater

and weep. i’m in the local coffee shop,

by the way, and feeling like a creation.

like something that was made to survive

the end of the world.

i’m too peculiar to go out in an ordinary way

but i’m not selfish. i’ll take what i can get.

(the sweater has two holes,

one in the right wrist

and one across the collar.

like a lover took a knife

and put them there so that you might breathe.)

i’m a disaster in slow motion, the kind

you have to step back from to notice.

a wave the ocean rejected, behemoth

and hungry for a taste of humankind.

i want to view this from afar and above.

i want the lemons on cutting boards,

the infectious peals of laughter,

the radio-wave sun.

i want you, whole and returned to me,

like an artifact from an ancient civilization.

i stormed because i believed this to be the only way to devour.

i grew blue-hot under the tormented moon.

(the sweater is blue, and knows your scent like a dog)

in the coffee shop, they don’t take to weeping lightly.

take your existentialism elsewhere.

they play soft music

make mute conversation.

so i order that drink you like.

that i always pretended to like too.

you and your rickety holiness.

patron saint of tidal waves and sweaters.

most days i feel like a thing spinning in the rafters.

left to find my way to the ground after the party is long gone.

and all these strange stares, animal.

this, at long last, is an exhalation.

all the things i have wanted to say.

loss became a hole just beneath my left atrium.

like breathing could hold you there.