Poetry Memoirs Novels & Stories

It was weird to be here again after so long, it didn't feel like my house, I doubted if any place could ever feel like home. It didn't take me more than twenty minutes to give everything a place. Two of the bags were clothes, one box was filled with just books, spread over the two boxes since the weight would have been too heavy for one box, one half of a box was makeup and everything needed to take care of myself and one half was letters I had received in juvie. The last bag was only CDs.

"Watching strangers study our family's history as though it were any other historical case. I wonder if it ever feels like they're missing something, all the academic language and the careful frameworks, compared to what it actually felt like, living through it." "Sometimes," Elena admitted. "I think academic language is useful for understanding patterns, for building models other institutions can learn from. But you're right that it misses something essential. It doesn't capture what it actually felt like, sitting with my mother while she decided whether to trust a stranger with the truth. It doesn't capture the fear, or the relief, or the particular, hard-won joy of watching a buried truth

Bernice cried, "Mom and Dad are gone." "It's impossible!" Dylan exploded in anger. He denied it as he rushed from room to room, shouting, "You're all just pretending! When I left, Mom and Dad were perfectly fine. How could they suddenly be gone?" Bernice shook her head. "Why don't you believe me? Mom and Dad are truly gone. They were poisoned to death. The doctor said that they kept calling our names before they passed. We're not worthy of being their children." Andrew and Sally were the best parents in the world and had devoted everything to Dylan and Bernice.

My heart started to beat fast in my chest. How many times had she seen us at our worst? How much had we hurt her without even realizing it? Feeling overwhelmed, I turned to the next page and found a short poem scribbled in her neat handwriting. It was about stars, rivers, and memories. Reading her words, I felt a sense of peace and calm wash over me. It was as if Val was speaking to me through her poetry, reminding me of the beauty and wonder of life.

When it talks to you like you don't belong Or tells you you're in the wrong field When something's in your mitochondrial 'Cause it latched on to you, like— Knock knock, let the devil in Manevolent as I've ever been, head is spinnin' This medicine's screamin', "L-L-L-Let us in!" L-L-L-Like a salad bowl, Edgar Allan Poe Bedridden, shoulda been dead a long time ago Liquid Tylenol, gelatins, think my skeleton's meltin' Wicked, I get all high when I think I've smelled the scent Of elephant manure—hell, I meant Kahlúa Screw it, to hell with it, I went through hell with accelerants And blew up my-my-myself again Volkswagen, tailspin, bucket matches my pale skin

But now, the time felt ripe for reconciliation through written words since I can't trust anyone enough to pour out my heart. As I turned to the next pages, I encountered poems, each one narrating his tales of war. Each line I read stirred a mix of emotions, some lines carving a smile on my face. The words carried his distinctive poetic ardour, interwoven with cryptic messages. I remembered how he had tried to teach me the art of deciphering these poetic mysteries back then. I had always brushed it aside, claiming my innate qualities leaned more towards business than poetry.

It was a small volume of poems by a writer named Olaren the Younger, who had lived two hundred years ago at the edge of the eastern continent and had written about water and waiting. The book had been lost in the fire. She had been trying to remember the poems ever since. She recited two for me. The ones she could remember most of. They were simple. They were about a river going past a stone. They were the kind of poems a man read when he had spent his life ruling a founder pack and needed a quiet thing at the end of the day. I wrote the poems down. I wrote them on a clean page in my study. I added them to the drawer where I kept Mira's letters and my father's last note.