I’m still working on this one (this is rough draft number five), but it’s beginning to take shape. __________________________________ Cancer, the silent killer. By the time you see the symptoms, it’s too late. Blood in the urine, bile behind the eyes. Jaundiced skin stretched over calcified bones; you watch the organs fail, one by one.…
Thirty-one. Thirty-one always seemed like the right age to die. Not too old: people will still mourn your youth, the beautiful years of life you had in front of you. Not too young, though. Not young enough to have “barely begun to live.” If you’re too young, you don’t know what you’re giving up. If…
Photo Courtesy: http://tonyfoto.com/ ________________________________________ Dear Child, You did not have a name. It’s not that I didn’t have dozens – hundreds – picked out, of course; it’s just that naming you would have made this all too real. So I will call you child, and hope you don’t find it too condescending. This world is…
Very few people can pinpoint the exact day their life turned to shit. It takes years of alcoholism to destroy the liver, so you can’t nail down the day it all began. It takes at least a few months for a gambling habit to bankrupt you, so you can’t draw a circle around the date…
There’s something about a glass of wine (or a bottle) along with a sweaty workout that gets the blood flowing. And blood flowing leads to writing, writing, writing. ———————— You were the lie I told myself, The truth I made myself believe. My careless mind let down its guard To a heart that would deceive.…
An Index of My Failures A I am not able to forget. I am not an artist. I am not an athlete. B I am not beautiful. I am not blossoming. I am not brainy. I am not brave. I am not brawny. C I am not crafty. I am not creative. I am not…
In Spring 2013, I attended a Short Story Writing Workshop through the Urban Rethink Foundation in Orlando. The teacher, Jamie Poissant, was great: attentive, patient, and passionate for his craft. In less than four hours, I took a nine page story (that felt like it needed to be a novel) and trimmed it down to…
Victoria Elizabeth Ann 