Sesquipedaliaphile

The road before her rippled, blurred, splashed clear just to become rippled again. The squeak-click of the wind-shield wipers set against the cacophony of raindrops as she drove down the beltway. "A hundred 'n twenty thousand?" the man had asked, his voice cracking on the final word, "We don't have that kind of money anymore. You know that. R&D's been slashed by five percent every year since 2008; we're lucky the whole department hasn't been gutted." "I know," she'd responded, her eyes trained on the man's left cheekbone, "but I also know that he's the only reason you've produced anything in the past decade." The man had turned and looked

She stepped out of the rain, the girl did. Her hair was straight and brown and, drenched, hung to her waist. She tasted like petrichor and ozone, and in the gloom of the dawn rain her eyes glimmered with the promise of lightning. For what purpose she found me I know not; she came and vanished in a quarter hour, and no one saw her but I. Perhaps the next rain she will return, in the early morning spring showers.

Sometimes he would arrive home covered in chalk dust, his fingers leaving white streaks on her perfectly manicured counters. She would sigh and wet a dishcloth or a napkin and wipe each of his fingers clean while he sat, ovine. Then she would send him off to shower, and would wipe down the counters again. As he returned to the kitchen she would hand him a skillet and a styrofoam container with chicken or beef and go vacuum the chalk sprinkled liberally on the beige of their bedroom carpet and the white linoleum of their bathroom. She had tried a Roomba once, but he had taken it apart and now they have a robot lawnmower frightening the neigh

If the sun was a man I would curl inside his arms And he would keep me warm And my blood would be Happy Until winter If the wind was a woman She would dance around me And I would turn to Catch her But I'd be clumsy Stumbling And she would blow away Taking my breath And  My blood

I soared back from beyond into the past. The darkness dragged against my shoulders until I burst from within it and plunged invisible into the pond. The pond was murky brown and the water moved before me as I pushed to the floor. Were it not for the heaviness of water above me I could still have been in the dark, so weak was the moonlight that tried to penetrate the algal covering. I ascended through the water then and breached the surface by the shore, water sloshing ahead of me as I climbed out on forearms still strong. I became visible and considered entering through the walls of the house before me, ghosting incorporeally where no matter

The individualist says "It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not." The martyr says "It is better to be hated than to hate, to love than to be loved." The histrionic says "It is better to be hated than ignored." The troll says "It is better to be hated (as long as you're anonymous)."

Your face at the window For one moment And then we were in the car Driving through the night Faster and faster, Blowing through limits and laws and even gravity Our faces buffeted by wind From windows thrown open The music pounded and pleaded From melancholy to soaring Swooping up, diving down We stopped to let the night air in To watch the clouds and hear the voices Of a thousand tiny companions in the overgrown grass We drove onward, faster, Lifted up out of reality Transcending simple time And for one night, we were immortal.

Patiently With gloved hands and wet fists He scooped the powdered ice And rolled it across the ground Building size and slowing speed Until it rested on the ground He then gathered another ball And rolled it until it was Like the first But smaller Then he made a head A third ball of snow With buttons and carrots Then he leaned against his creation And slept soundly and safely and not alone The sun rose high that day And the sky cleared And temperatures climbed He woke up with red cheeks To find himself with his head On the damp grass His hood all soggy The snow had vanished Into the sky, into the ground And once again

Secrets are fuzzy Closely kept companions that Keep you warm at night

It was December 21, the shortest day of the year. The night before in had rained, which almost never happened in December near Boston, so the snow was off the ground and the roads has drained of ice. Margot Ellerbee was on her way home from work at the McDonald's, driving through the dark. She stared at the road ahead blindly, thinking about how her stove at home was too much like the fryers at work and how she wished that she could get herself to cook because it was cheaper but she didn't ever seem to have time and so she would be going to Taco Bell. Her headlights caught a glimpse of something on the side of the road, white and rather large