THE NIGHTINGALE, THE PEACH TREE AND THE ARCHERS by junewralley, literature
Literature
THE NIGHTINGALE, THE PEACH TREE AND THE ARCHERS
There was once a young archer who bought a rare white nightingale with a large red spot on her chest in the market one day. Upon seeing her new owner, the nightingale sang happily, flapping her wings excitedly as the young archer took her small cage.
"I've had my last day in that noisy market", the nightingale said to herself. "I'll make my new master happy by singing all my best songs!"
Unfortunately however, the nightingale didn't know that the young archer was a rather foolish and cruel person.
A lovely bird, the Foolish Archer thought, smiling slyly. This is just the perfect one for my target practice!
Thinking that she would be broug
the things they should have told us by CoffeeStainedMemory, literature
Literature
the things they should have told us
see, no one really warns us about growing up.
they leave out things like heartbreak and gossip and broken people you could have saved but didn't.
it is this: the girl who holds her wrists and sits alone and tells me no child should ever grow up being afraid of someone who should love them. Her eyes are fierce, and something inside me is screaming but the clock ticks and the moment is past. i pretend i can't hear the pieces of her shatter as they hit the floor.
the next time we speak there are new shadows beneath her eyes and her shoulders hunch as if somehow she could fold into herself and disappear. maybe it would be better for us both if
and here we go again by faerie-elfmaiden, literature
Literature
and here we go again
Because you're so used to this now the late nights, the once-in-a-while sweet text messages, all of it that you end up missing it when it's gone for even a few hours. You're so used to falling sleep at 2 AM in the morning and smiling as you fall asleep because you know you know just what will be waiting for you as soon as you wake up.
It was a passing thing at first, a pastime, more or less. It was your way of filling up a hole that had been building up for months, a hole in your life and in your heart, your mind adds softly, always in your heart that you'd been trying desperately to cover up. It was
One day they all just stopped.
The clouds in her chest dispersed and she couldn't let her fingers spin delicate stories like she once would when her heart felt too heavy. She could still imagine all the scenes that would leave her throat tight, the highways that sliced through forests and oceans that weren't as beautiful as everyone kept telling her. There was a kind of distance that she couldn't ever comprehend. Lovers complain about having mountains between them, and of waking to dial-tones and message banks. No-one ever tells of the loved one who is around the corner, barricaded by nothing but their own darkness and heaviness. There are
this isn't progress, because you're irreversible. by paperheartsyndrome, literature
Literature
this isn't progress, because you're irreversible.
You were never meant for me.
I knew it in the most obvious manner. It was in the way you had a subtle sort of comfort in your own skin a quiet and humble confidence while I struggled to make sense of the prints on my fingertips and the way one of my eyes crinkled in the corner more than the other when I smiled. You felt safe with yourself while I was always warring with my own reflection. Half the time, I didn't know who I was. A quarter of the time, I still don't. You would call this progress if you were here to see, but I just call it sad.
When you miss something for long enough, you start to forget the exact way that things
Original Story: Prologue by BookWurm15, literature
Literature
Original Story: Prologue
I don't mean to brag, but I am apparently very good at faking my death. It's easy, really, if you're good at staying still for extended periods of time. It's even easier when the realization sinks in that if you move, if you blink, if you twitch, if you breathe, it could be the end of you; the real end.
I think the worst part was being carried. When you're being carried, you have to be even more careful; even if you stiffen up, they'll realize that there's a conscious being in their arms. It's tough. Hate to sound narcissistic, but I give myself props for making it. They're funny, the extents a man will go to not to die.
Taking in the smell
The first time he dies, you find him in the bathroom. His legs are splayed flat on the floor, his head fallen forward. Blood leaks along the off-white wall behind his head, and the gun lies loose in his limp hand. At least he had good aim. Your bare feet are cold on the slick linoleum; it's too fucking early in the morning for this. You step back into the bedroom, crawl back under the sheets. You tell yourself: tomorrow morning, you will wake up, and it will be different.
You tell yourself: tomorrow, it will be better.
*
In 1522 A.D., the expedition led by Ferdinand Magellan finally links the East and the West, rolls the flat map o
This Time
In this version, we are victims.
The hospital defines death. It smells like iodine and powder, stale hope and blue steel. Just because it's clean now doesn't mean the blood was never here, scalpels poised above bruised and swollen skin. It's here where people die, here where they learn to fear what they cannot control. The air in the hospital is empty; how can you possibly breathe? No wonder they run tubes up your nose and down your throat.
I hate the wires taped to you, inside you. I don't want you to be monitored like this, don't want them staring at you, at us. They see you as a patient, mark you down as just another