Without Sugar

Hi. It's been about a billion years since I posted anything. I feel like my style and voice has developed significantly since my last post. So here's a thing I wrote entitled "Without Sugar". Let me know your thoughts.

I watch my people,

stumbling in this corner of the sandbox

where the weeds grow.

A messy meeting of atoms

feeding on words and feelings,

lapping each other up like cats do milk.

No bodies for the brimstone

to bother, a smokey existence

with no blood to hold brandy.

Regret steeps this smoke,

a black tea without sugar,

and I sip and muse,

save us from our souls.

Melt this place.

Give us lungs to drown with.

Teach us how to swim,

and to die.

Lion Tamer

One day she batted her fake lashes and told me that she hated writing. And I just smiled that smile we make when someone speaks on a subject on which they understand very little. How sad that she didn’t realize that words aren’t just letters and sentences aren’t just words. That words are lions, and pens and tongues the whips cracking in fluid succession. That real readers hold their breath because they can feel the steam of the lions’ beating body boiling out onto their tucked noses as their brains balance between the beasts’ golden lips. And that the ringleader, with the snap of a single syllable can lock the jaws on exposed gray matter, can wake the apathetic, can remind us that we’re human.