#daily exercise

Dispatches Of Splinters Of My Mind Entry 28: The eclipse never moved. They never do. Movement belongs to the living. Eclipses wait. It hung above the labyrinth like an enormous unblinking eye, its black center swallowing the sun while a thin corona of silver fire illuminated the stone below. The light was wrong. It cast shadows without revealing their source and painted every wall in shifting…

Episode 2: Hello, I’m Mangus Khan, and for the next few minutes I encourage you to walk into Madness with me. There is an hour the clocks don’t talk about. Most people sleep through it. Babies dream through it. Lovers roll closer together without knowing why. Somewhere, bread begins to rise. Somewhere else, a life quietly falls apart. Three o’clock belongs to neither yesterday nor…

The little Chihuahua took her place on the porch just before sunset, the same way she had every evening for as long as anyone in the county could remember. She settled onto the weathered planks, ears standing at attention, her tiny chest rising and falling with quiet determination as she watched the gravel road disappear into the horizon. The old farmhouse had grown quieter over the…

There are places the world forgets because there is nothing left worth remembering. Then there are places the world forgets because someone worked very hard to make certain they were never found again. Blackstone Quarry belonged to the second kind. The quarry had been abandoned for nearly sixty years, surrendered to rain, moss, and patient silence after a vein of granite ran dry sometime in…

Quiet Fire — Entry 29: At exactly 6:17 every evening, he set a second place at the table. Never 6:15. Never 6:20. The ritual had long since escaped conscious thought. His hands simply knew what was expected of them. The fork rested a finger’s width from the plate. The water glass was filled halfway. The linen napkin was folded into the same crisp rectangle she had always managed with…

Daily writing promptWhat’s something you used to worry about but don’t anymore?View all responses There was a time when I worried there simply weren’t enough hours in the day. Like many people, I believed the more I could cram into those hours, the more productive I was. We celebrate being busy, glorify multitasking, and wear exhaustion like a badge of honor. I used to buy into that way of…

Chapter One: The First Crossing The river possessed the peculiar stillness found only in places where the world seemed to be holding its breath. It carried no scent of salt or fresh earth, no chorus of insects stitched into the air, no birds arguing over branches overhead. There should have been life here. Rivers were supposed to announce themselves with movement—with frogs hidden among reeds,…