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[littleapocalypse]

Apr. 14th, 2024

"Salt and Cut Grass" - j.s

I built false walls around me to keep the ghosts from flooding in. Instead, I had designed a box for my fears to dwell and fester. I live now in a room where the walls are always closing in, but they never arrive. Where my breathing is always laboured, and my vision is always blurred. I feel the weight of all the nothing bearing down on me.

But I have heard of a world wherein towers are not to loom above you, but for you to climb. A place where the self is one among others, and not a burden to be carried. Where the eyes do not look at you; they look ahead. And we all move along.

There’s a world out there where the air smells of salt and cut grass. The door is open. This is the first day of my life.

[littleapocalypse]

Mar. 24th, 2024

"Warmth and Light" - j.s

She walked in like a wildfire, but all I saw was warmth and light.

Filling my home and washing over my fields.

Before I knew it, she had consumed the floors, the walls, the ceiling. The boards sang with her flame and piled pillars of smoke that stretched up to hide the sky.

But she was unsatisfied.

She reached out, grabbing branches and bushes, pulling in all that I had. She ate away at the grass that I had failed to tend, and climbed onto the beds I had only just planted. She tore away at the seedlings, who had barely tasted their first sunlight. She destroyed any flower now in bloom, and displaced the insects from their homes in the earth.

Then she left, as easily as she came.

Now I throw words to ashen ground, praying that they bring her back.

But I know that she will never return. There is nothing left for her to take.

[littleapocalypse]

Apr. 7th, 2024

"I Feel Everything" - j.s

I still feel it.

Sometimes I feel it itching. I try to use it to open doors and to turn pages. Other times, I reach with it to take my cup of tea. It’s pitiful when I reach with my lips to empty air.

Every time, there is a moment of realization. Of remembrance. Then a weight grows in my chest, and a pain forms in my throat, and I can no longer function in that moment. All I can be is what I have lost.

I am not broken. I am not damaged goods that can be mended or covered up. I am incomplete. I am missing parts, but I still go about pretending to be whole. Pretending that I don’t feel the empty space there where something once was.

But I still feel it there. I feel everything. Sometimes, I swear I can feel you holding it. But you’re not. And you never will. Never again.

[littleapocalypse]

Mar. 10th, 2024

"A Waning Defiance" - j.s

My dearest daughter,

These words will never find you.

My pulse grows gentler with a waning defiance. I shall not go in peace, but in anguish. I find this more fitting to a man such as myself.

I had never thought for a moment of the lives I had taken, just as this unnamed man would have stricken me and moved onward.

Is it selfish of me, then, to go with regret?

I choose, then, to be selfish.

You had begged me, and I believed myself wholeheartedly when I promised to return. I swore to come home to you.

In a moment’s clattering of steel to my chest, I have learnt today that I am a liar. And you will never know the spirit with which I went.

You may grow to hate me, and I will never hold that against you. But in this world and every other, I will always love you.

[littleapocalypse]

Feb. 25th, 2024

"Trembling Husk" - j.s

I’m sorry, mother, for what is about to happen to you.

A shell will be led through your doorway. It will look like me, though a bit more tattered. You will see me in its face, but I won’t be in its eyes.

Here in these forests, I have left what was left of me.

I have seen my friends, my brothers; falling to their knees, crumpled at my feet, blown away in the wind.

I have chosen to run.

I will run, and run, and I will shed myself with each foot fall.

I may never speak again. You will never know me again.

You will not receive me. Please do not mistake this trembling husk at your doorstep for me. It is no longer me. It will not tell you stories. It will not tend the garden. It will not show you that it loves you. It will not know how.

It is only the cage that holds me as I fall apart. Please, do not fall apart with me.

[littleapocalypse]

Feb. 18th, 2024

"A Scarred Sky" - j.s

The heaving faded into shallow gasps and I felt my remaining breaths slip away one-by-one.

My mind swarmed with recollections of time I had wasted, never considering that I would someday run out.

But here, alone, I was finally running out.

And laying here, beneath a scarred sky that split the trees as they sang with rustles of cool air that battered the unyielding flame that would just barely lend me its warmth while my fingers turned to ice, I saw for the first time.

Had the stars always been so bright?

I spent a whole life here with you, beneath your shelter. Yet at the end of myself, only now do I realize.

I’m sorry for not seeing you sooner. You were so beautiful all along.