#creative prose

I was twenty-something, half-feral and fluorescent with jet lag, on a working-holiday visa that had turned into a pilgrimage of accident. London had been grey noise and lager light, so I took a train north, chasing a rumour of silence.

The carriage hissed through fir and granite. We passed a station called Hel, which felt like a private joke from the gods of marketing. The air beyond the window looked distilled as if someone had taken all the colour out of existence and left only its soul. I disembarked at Foss, a name that sounded like the hiss of falling water, or a sigh through teeth.

There was almost nothing: a café, a rack of hire-bikes, one postal worker winding down the road on a small red motorbike, Hermes in high-vis.

I started along a path that slipped into the forest, the way a thought slips into dream.

At first it was the kind of silence that’s polite. Then it thickened and it began to breathe. Somewhere in the canopy, magpies rearranged the syntax of the day. And then fear, that clean, ancient fear that arrives when you realise the world is vast and doesn’t particularly care if you exist. I sat down on a rock to negotiate with my nerves.

That’s when I heard them.

Not 'heard' like sound more like registered the trees. They were speaking, not in Norwegian or English or even metaphor, but in vibration.

The trunks were resonating with a slow, sap-heavy grammar. I couldn’t translate it, but it went straight into the bloodstream. It said something like: You are temporary. Be grateful. Keep still.

For a moment I thought of black metal, the corpse-painted priests of distortion, and understood they were only trying to imitate this: the forest screaming its own liturgy of life and rot.

The voice of the land was both terrifying and tender, like being stared at by eternity.

When the spell broke, I walked back toward the station, carrying silence like contraband.

The café’s lights flickered on, and Logos, the ordinary, measurable world resumed its paperwork.

The girl meets a boy. He is angry at the world, and she is, too. She is angry because the world is cruel to the small and weak. He is angry because he believes the world is too small and weak to accommodate him.

Coming to terms with being transmasc though? That was an entirely different thing. My gender felt weird. It felt queer. But masculine? No. I had no connection with masculinity. I felt just as uncomfortable with masculinity as I did femininity.

Or so I told myself—and others occassionally, when I wanted to emphasize my gender's queerness, its otherness, its void-like ambiguity; when I wanted to make sure they didn't just swap out one half of the binary for the other.

Looking back, I can tell something wasn't sitting right, something was nagging at the peripheral of my self-understanding. I remember finding a lot of comfort in butchness at this time. I am so thankful for butches for that safety in exploration, and the gentle nudging into queer masculinity.

But it wasn't really until dear friend of mine, new to my nonbinary-ness, began swapping the more feminine-coded compliments and titles for distinctly masculine ones—it wasn't really until then that my transmasculinity took root to blossom in me.

And you can spare me the essay; I can read my own words. "I wanted to make sure they didn't just swap out one half of the binary for the other." Hear me when I say that I could feel it in my soul that they did not do that. I could tell—and I know I am not the only one who can—when "handsome" was said queerly.

~It has been too long darling~

What is the symbol of a sensual woman?

It may be the presence of a Cuban heel on black silk stockings , seams traveling over the back of shapely legs like a path to the impossible heavens.  Or perhaps it is the end of a cigarette touching luxurious glossy lips made in dark red.  This was the picture presented to the eyes. 

A face turns right, an lips taking the inhale of her cigarette.  Back made bare by a hair-do held up by pins into a messy bun with a French flair.  Tendrils of black tresses falling off the hairstyle, a few in satin swivels that barely teased over the skin.  The femme fatale stands as a statue of desire, enticing fire to the eyes, holding a dreamy pose.  

Tip of a stiletto in black leather steps forward, she moves in a fiery sashay across the floor.

The wicked woman wears nothing, a bawdy perfection of bare skin, silk stockings, a waist cincher corset of black satin.  

One hand to a hip and the other one still bringing a cigarette to her lips.  Steps make a circular path like a delicate tango.  And you are the person taking this all in.

She shows you a moment of vulnerability. A relaxed pose - a sweet smile. Then she walks away from you, elegant stride and swaying hips. She stops in front of a tall window and she leans back against an exposed brick wall. You are both inside a loft in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

Universe: Original - One-shot CW: Poverty Words: 320 Context: Had a sudden burst of creativity and used a prompt from 2021 Homestead's Fall prompt Week. The prompt was split into 3 parts -- Theme: Loss & Abundance; Color Scheme: Pastel tones; Quote: "Pray for the rain" / "Unlearn every step you take". I think I managed to hit all of them with this.

'Pray for the Rain' – that's what my Papa always used to say. Anywhen times was lean, he'd smile, bright eyes in a soft worn face, and say, "Pray for the rain for me, Daliah."

Course, he didn't always mean it literal-like. Sometimes the rain was medicines. Sometimes it was the pastor's wife with a casserole she'd made extra, 'on accident' she'd say. An accident enough for us to live on for a week, if we was careful-like.

Sometimes the rain was just rain. Looking out at the fields, dust and heat filling our lungs, I'd pray and pray and pray so hard. I'd look heavenward – to the clearest, bluest, emptiest sky you ever saw – and think, 'I'm here. I'm asking nice-like. Just one little cloud. Just one little drop. Please send us the rain'. To this day, I still ain't sure if that was what prayer is, but I'd do as I was told, and I always prayed when my Papa asked me to.

Sometimes it didn't work. Sometimes we licked the dust off our plates and sometimes we lived with the cough that rattled so bad it sounded like the Devil was playing xylophone on the inside of our ribs.

for something,

for reason,

for a simple purpose.

day and night,

I yearn, yearn and yearn.

hold me close, sing me to sleep,

I don’t know if I’ll ever regret falling in love with the sea.

everyone knows what happens when two forces of nature meet near the shore. what happens after is scary and beautiful and powerful all at once. many humans dare not speak of it, but it doesn’t hurt to be shunned by a species that is unappreciative of the natural beauty of love.

sometimes I lose myself in the black depths of her eyes, and I have to pull away before something electric in my blood spreads through her waters and whips wild in the wind of our love. on the days when she looks like the sky before it breaks, the salty sea breeze tang of her lingers on my lips for days and because of her I’ll never forget the what the sea tastes like.

I am haunted by the soft battering of her words against my walls, the ones that are made of hard rock and crusted over with stubborn barnacles and dried-out seaweed. her waves tear each shell down one by one, prying them clean off the rock and leaving me open and raw.

I scream with an electric rage that gets lost and forgotten amongst her quiet waves. I’ll never get used to having someone who doesn’t flinch when I bare my teeth. she smiles at my turmoil, and caresses my skin until I float to the surface for air again.

she is a force to be reckoned with, and the deeper you go the more darkness you will find. she is filled with quiet anger, and you will know what that feels like once you find yourself drowning in the deep. the waters out there are cold and foreboding and the silence is so loud there it will make you want to tear your ears off. therefore I warn you not to mess with her, for if I don’t paint your skin purple with sparks, you will lose your mind in the depths of her anger.

I wander the world, tearing across the sky with wild abandon, and she will be everywhere that I go. I will never leave her side, and for that I am glad. her current brings beautiful things to me, and she travels the earth with me. we scour the lands, but we rule over the skies and waters without a care in the world.

I am dying inside. Day after day and night after night, the leaves fall but it's Summer and they shouldn't be. There is colour, oh god, so much colour. Rich earthy tones and fiery reds but it is Summer! This is wrong, I scream, all wrong! Upside down and side to side, I am pulled in every which way but which way is up.

I struggle to breathe, the leaves fall and they cover me and they suffocate me. I am drowning in a river of fire and grasping and grasping but all that is left are dead trees, empty branches. Dead leaves and a bare ground but it is Summer!

I breathe but crackling memories fill my lungs and I'm choking on a childhood of story times and camping and firelight. I try to light a torch in the dark but there are no batteries and it is noon and I can't see and it is Summer!

I walk and fall and graze my knees and the blood drips down, falling onto green grass and daisies and I fall down and don't get up. Butterflies and hummingbirds fly past, but I am still and my roots grow through my body, shredding it apart and I become one with the Earth and I am gone.

Finally,

it is Summer