Icarus

"Utter despair, impossible to pull myself together; only when I have become satisfied with my sufferings can I stop."

"Without pausing, he took up his knife in order to sacrifice the poor boy and was just about to slit his throat when he felt a hand grip his arm and heard a voice in his ear shouting, What are you doing, you wretch, killing your own son, burning him, it’s the same old story, it starts with a lamb and ends with the murder of the very person you should love most."

"So the lord is vengeful, Yes, I think he is, said abraham quietly, as if he were afraid of being heard, nothing is impossible for the lord, Not even error and crime, asked isaac, Especially error and crime, Father, I don’t understand this religion, But you have to, my son, you have no option, and now I must make a request, a humble request, What is it, Let us forget what happened here, Well, I’m not sure I can, father, I can still see myselflying, bound, on top of the pyre, and your arm raised, the blade of the knife glinting, That wasn’t me, I would never do such a thing when in my right mind, Do you mean that the lord makes people mad, asked isaac, Yes, he often does, almost always, replied abraham"

"I killed one brother and the lord punished me, who, I would like to know, is going to punish the lord for all these deaths."

"The ways of the lord are inscrutable, not even we angels can fathom the workings of his mind. Oh, I’ve had enough of all this nonsense about the lord’s ways being inscrutable, answered cain, god should be as clear and transparent as a pane of glass and not go wasting his energies on creating an atmosphere of constant terror and fear, god, in short, does not love us, He it was who gave you life, My father and mother gave me life, they joined flesh to flesh and I was born, there’s no evidence that god was present at the act, God is everywhere, Especially when it comes to ordering people to be killed, why, the death of just one of the children burned to death in sodom would be enough to condemn him outright, but for god, justice is an empty word, and now he’s going to make job suffer because of a bet and no one will hold him to account."

It's simple enough, i killed abel because I couldn’t kill you, so, in intent, you are dead too, Yes, I see what you mean, but death is forbidden for the gods, Oh, I know, but you gods should still take the blame for all the crimes committed in your name or because of you.

God said, Life is meaningless while language often means too much.

Love will cut you and then ask you to carry on singing.

-Come to the slumberless to the Land of Nod,

Traci Brimhall

She is a cool girl.

She finds your horrendous jokes 'funny.'

She Is fun to hangout with but not the kind you take on dates.

"A baby boy was born in a small village. He had pale skin and large eyes.

While raising the boy, his mother naturally came to the realisation that he had no feelings whatsoever.

All he had was the desire to eat, like a zombie. So his mother locked him up in the basement So that the villagers wouldn't see him

And every night she stole the livestock from her neighbors to feed him. That's how she raised him in secret.

One night, she'd steal a chicken. The next day she'd steal a pig.

A number of years passed by like that.

Then one day, an epidemic broke out. It left the remaining animals dead, it also killed many people. Those who survived the epidemic left the village. But the mother couldn't leave her son all alone.

And to appease her son crying of hunger, she cut off one of her legs and gave it to him. After that, it was her arm. She gave him all her limbs.

When she was left with nothing but her torso, she embraced her son for the last time -to let him devour what was left of her.

With his both arms, the boy lightly held his mother's torso and spoke for the first time in his life.

"Mom, you're...

So warm."

Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse of boats: boats of prisoners, boats cracking under sky-iron, boats making corpses bloom like algae on the shore. Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse of the bombed mosque. There was the apocalypse of the taxi driver warped by flame. There was the apocalypse of the leaving, and the having left- of my mother unsticking herself from her mother's grave as the plane barreled down the runway. Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse of planes. There was the apocalypse of pipelines legislating their way through sacred water, and the apocalypse of the dogs. Before which was the apocalypse of the dogs and the hoses. Before which, the apocalypse of dogs and slave catchers whose faces glowed by lantern-light. Before the apocalypse, the apocalypse of bees. The apocalypse of buses. Border fence apocalypse. Coat hanger apocalypse. Apocalypse in the textbooks' selective silences. There was the apocalypse of the settlement and the soda machine; the apocalypse of the settlement and the jars of scalps; there was the bedlam of the cannery; the radioactive rain; the chairless martyr demanding a name. I was born from an apocalypse and have come to tell you what I know-which is that the apocalypse began when Columbus praised God and lowered his anchor. It began when a continent was drawn into cutlets. It began when Kublai Khan told Marco, Begin at the beginning. By the time the apocalypse began, the world had already ended. It ended every day for a century or two. It ended, and another ending world spun in its place. It ended, and we woke up and ordered Greek coffees, drew the hot liquid through our teeth, as everywhere, the apocalypse rumbled, the apocalypse remembered, our dear, beloved apocalypse it drifted slowly from the trees all around us, so loud we stopped hearing it.

How cruel it is,

To lie here in silence

Enveloped in darkness and the sound of your breath.

I have nurtured this longing. Tended to it like a precious flame In the hearth of my chest.

This is not the casual Head on shoulder At the base of a tree.

Not the carefree closeness Of brushing hands

When we point at the sky.

Nor the tumbling pile of laughter With pointed elbows and Kicking feet.

No.

Mere inches separate us, Filled to the brim with my Unspoken words

Our unspoken words.

The lingering glances, That divine sparkle in your eyes And the confident smile that Molds your lips.

You catch me staring, But it is all I can do.

Even now in sleep, Your fine hair curls Perfectly around your ear, Shining like the gold of kings.

Moonlight hits the bridge of your nose, The arch of your brow,

And my hand begins to reach on its own.

With trembling fingers and measured breath I thumb the line of your jaw, Skin like the marble of statues.

Your head turns

Just slightly towards me,

Your soul acknowledging

The flame burning in my chest, My throat.

In this moment

The eternal rotation of the stars Stops to stare.

In silence, I smile, A secret shared between your heart,

The universe,

And mine.

A whisper,

'Even in sleep

You are most beautiful.

To me.'

He loves history. He wanted to write a biography of John Quincy Adams. I, shamefully, knew almost nothing about John Quincy Adams, So I went online and bought every biography of him I could find. One day, he called me, claiming that we wouldn't work out long term. He said that he loved me but that we had different interests. "What does love mean to you?" I asked. "That's an impossible question" he replied. I, however, find love to be quite simple. Love is the stack of biographies on my nightstand with a bookmark near the end.

-Julia Nicole Camp

We stand together by the creek in my backyard

Watchin' the stars fall one at a time.

A third of the sky is black now.

Your hand is in mine.

" I thought it'd be... wilder than this," you say

"four horsemen, trumpets and earthquakes, waters turnin' to blood ya know?"

But there are only the fallin' stars.

"Least the weather channel warned us about it." I say

"Glad they predicted somethin' right for once."

My doomsday neighbours are loadin' the back

of their dirty ol'-pickup- suitcases stacked under the cardboard boxes of books and silverware, stacked under large whitewashed crosses.

My parents didn't pack up, neither did yours.

"If there are angels walkin' down the streets, I wanna see 'em." your ma told us over coffee.

" I wanna know if they really got lion teeth and a hundred thousand eyes."

The stars are startin' to fall faster now,

So the sky's near half-empty.

I wonder where they go, if they crater lawns and smash apart other people's houses,

If they're really Angels come to deliver us into higher places with their calloused hands.

"Betcha twenty bucks, Gabriel brings his stupid damn harp." I say

The doomsday neighbours have started their truck-

Engine's moanin' like a sinner in hell,

And one of their younger girls leanin' out a window sings

'Some glad mornin, when this life is o'er.

You laugh,"Betcha fifty he'll wear that stupid damn tunic, even if he's got six wings and four arms."

There's shouting in the distance, so far away

We got to strain to hear it, so far away it could've been the babblin' of the creek just the same.

"Think it'll hurt?" I ask as another three stars shudder and fall away.

You grip my hand tighter. "Hope not."