Writing

A Toast to One of the Best…

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One of my longest known and best friends just died. I’ve known him since I was 5… I found out, sitting at a picnic table with a friend over my break yesterday evening… I was immediately and irrevocably floored… It’s not like I didn’t expect it. When he called the very last time he told […]


Too Much…

Hot & Mean

I’m too skinny, he says… But to that one? I’m much, much too fat… And she thinks I’m too loud, but her friend finds me too quiet… And I’m definitely too much on the whole… but still not quite enough. There are times when I’ve been handsome, beautiful even, when the mood strikes you… yet […]


The Transience of Life

Pygmy Skeleton Bride

The holidays they come and go and with them are reminders of all the people who I’ve seen come and go in this world… each holding a part of who I am in their special way.


Letters on the Wind: Alex

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Hey, Alex,

How’s the afterlife? Seeing that you’re new there, I doubt you’ve got it all down just yet… But I bet you’ve got a good bead on things just the same. Of course, those of us you’ve left behind are stuck here first wondering why. Then accepting the inevitability of what has transpired and, finally, knowing that this not some joke. That you are gone. That they’d seen pieces of this floating downstream for months. That they wish they’d said something, done something, been something in that final moment where persuasion might have actually been met with understanding. Where certainty still could crumble into something other than where we are now… But we didn’t. You did. That’s that.

I hope the trip was uneventful. (or at least uneventful in a negative way… I’m all for positive right now.)


Shopping on a Sunday Afternoon

Shopping on a Sunday Afternoon: All the pasty, pale faces, All the cheap tees and zip front hoodies… The oddly Christian ethic morphed into lame commercial culture… The everything that reminds me of you. You: With your white-washed suburban ideals, no more than 2 steps from poor, white trash. The bigotry you spew would condemn […]


Remnants of Anne

ScentTree

“That bitch owes me money,” he said gruffly as he took another swig from the bottle. A drop of the thin, yellow liquid slid down his chin before being wiped away with the back of a withered hand.

She hated it when he got like this. Belligerent, obnoxious old fool. These were the moods that got him locked up all those times. These were the moods that got mother smacked in the mouth and made her leave. These were the moods she dreaded. In his youth, these moods were lusty declarations of manhood, charging in warlike and ready to conquer. But he was old now. Old and spent…


Letters on the Wind: The Boy

fries

… I think of you often. The way you used to mean so much, yet gave so little. The way you drew me in, made me want to morph into something different, altered my perception, changed my soul.

Your heart didn’t know what your words did to me — Did your mind? I was a passing fancy — An object to enjoy as long as possible before tossing me off into the wind. At the time, you loved me… Maybe? Maybe — Maybe just snippets of me. Now, years later — I simply don’t know.

Long after I ceased to exist for you, I still remember what you felt like. Your scent. Your swagger. You… as you appeared to me in your tortured glory…


Invisble, Part 1

Mother

“I’m leaving,” she called to the empty house. Her words bounced off the cluttered furnishings like a high-bounce ball carelessly tossed by an invisible hand. “Invisible,” she thought. “I am invisible.”

It was a blustery morning as she started the many blocks to school. Not cold enough for snow, but cold enough to feel barbed ice crystals riding the wind to cut through her gloves and scarf as a knife cuts skin. Somewhere in the distance a wind chime played on the breeze until it came to some sort of violent end and clattered to a stop. Her pack felt heavy on her shoulders. She was alone. As she lumbered along, she told herself it was better this way. Alone is safe.


Scars

Scars

Scars

By Hollie A Miller
Featured on Thursday, April 26, 2012
by the Johnson County Public Library in honor of National Poetry Month


Burn

Frog

The sun rose again today,
Contrary to last night’s “End of The World.”
I should be comforted by this…

I watch her rise above the horizon,
Fiery tendrils reaching across the sky in a blaze of defiance
Against my anything and everything.

Why does she choose to mock my mood?
To squash my worries like ants on the pavement?
Discrediting me with the simple act of rising.

She just beams, sometimes a little too brightly,
Sweet radiation cooking my skin, making me sweat.
Making me burn.


Emotional Landscape of Make-believe Girls…

hair

There once was a photograph … not a happy family picture, or a sunny landscape. It was not of a fuzzy puppy or a bright shiny car. This picture was of a girl… not your normal everyday picture of a girl, but a slightly slutty pin-up style photo. The subject wasn’t young nor was she old. Her eyes were beautiful, but sad. Her look desirable, but far from perfect. Her hair, attractive. Her clothing, what there was of it, fitting. She was an attractive girl … not commercially attractive – too many imperfections… But still, attractive.


My Confession to You…

fishcurl

Sometimes, at night, I wait for you.. as if you’d come…

I think of your face, your eyes… Your lips. The way your voice sounds or how you smell…