Tag: fiction

I don’t know where we’re going.

I don’t know either, but that’s why we can figure that out together!

RoosRoast, 1:00PM, 9/7/2024

i can see it in your smile, your hesitation, that your head weighs heavy by the burden of unremembered dreams. do you still dream? it’s a silly question, but your breathing slows. yes. don’t you? somewhere, a siren wails. i resist a glance. i hardly sleep! a deflection, but you don’t press it. both of us are suffering from a deprivation of intimacy, a betrayal of the conscience. i take your hand and we set off together, chained by sentiment, sentenced to walk the earth alone: one of us carrying a burned map, the other a broken compass.

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No problem… don’t tell anyone this ended 18 minutes early and we can both get some work done, okay? Alright see you!

Traverwood Library, 1:12PM, 10/9/2024

time should be defined not by length but by density. with each rotation of the hand, a fresh layer of ink is superimposed on the brain–not erased, but written over; there is simply no space to contain our existence. the words form, stack, and topple. you are there but hidden, impossible to uncover. my tears fall alternatingly, like footsteps crushing fresh snow. the things i cry for, are they crying for me?

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[grabbing a box of kombucha] you gotta promise me you’ll drink one every morning!

Costco, 4:00PM, 10/15/2024

breathe deep enough and you can feel your belly brush your spine. is your stomach touching your back? the government lacks a measure of hunger, perhaps because it makes fools of all of us: our stomachs, our eyes, our touch. food deserts parch urban jungles. apartments pop up like mushrooms after the rain, grayed and wilted, porous, vacant. you stand up–the sand will swallow us and make soil from our bones–and walk away. the ache inverts my ribcage and gnaws at my tongue.

up above, the vultures wait their turn.

I liked how our teacher had a coordinated outfit! It was new!

Central Campus Transit Center, 10AM, 8/28/2024

summer comes and the house is not as i remember it. flies cling to the windows like barnacles. i bet a bird died in there, you say as we pass. it must have been heat stroke– but i already knew, i could smell the sweetness in the leaves. trees mourn too, did you know that? everything in the world mourns. the curtains are rustled by an invisible breeze; god’s not watching, there’s nothing to see. what’s buried won’t burn us. the clouds are sharp and shapeless, jigsaw pieces strewn across a coffee-cream sky.

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Fit check, how is it?

Nice, got on that Laufey… I know how to say it now, not loofah or whatever…

Alice Lloyd Hall, 5:00PM, 9/13/2024

it was there the day i left, a dust storm dressed in bronze, waiting for me at the corner of the station. you hid behind a newspaper dated a week into the future: soothsayer’s grin, reaper’s curse. i pretend not to notice but we are both done with pretending. the threat of eye contact forces me astray. someone shouts a name–not yours–and you turn. it wears your eyes and nothing else.

your memory is stagnant, a still pond. i forget your face in the swarm of gathering flies.

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My favorite pants has holes in them, just from wearing it a lot, and I’m going to patch it but I think this might be their last season…

Michigan Union, 12:30PM, 9/24/2024

it’s not there anymore, is it? the things you save until you can’t be saved. markers leak and stain the canvas; stickers dry and cut your nailbeds. you move out and your nails are painted and the world is over, yet the earth continues to spin. the antenna spits static and the radio hums to life. does the flower wait for the bee to approach before it blooms? kill the fantasy. fall in love with the present.

conscience of theseus: if you replace every thought in your mind, are you the same person?

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With another year brings another vibrant campus community! Rain or shine, the human experience perseveres. Whether this is your first introduction to aSoSS or we crossed paths last year, I’m so glad I could be a part of your day =)

Welcome back, stay a while // It’s been a minute and I miss that smile~

Here, sign it.

[Reading card] “Thank you for everything, you’re a great teacher and I’ll miss you.”

Angell Hall, 1:30PM, 4/19/2024

often we spend the ends in a state of regret instead of relief. in the corner of my room lies a box of blank paper: memories that could have been made, people that could have been approached, bucket list checkboxes that were discarded. i still carry the weight of the paper, but there is nothing to look back on. instead i am reminded that i could have picked up a pencil and created a masterpiece. why didn’t i try harder? why didn’t i? why? what grief lies behind a touch-starved heart!

so hug your favorite teachers and keep in touch with your friends. smell the sunshine and taste the earth on the air. plant flowers with your smile and paint meadows on your conscience. make the world a better place, even if only for yourself.

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The end of the year is upon us! Here are a few more collected fragments from the semester that I did not get the chance to use. Enjoy your summer and remember to look and listen for modest wonders–life is too short to walk with your eyes glued to the ground.

Until next time~

If you were a windup toy, you’d be cranked up to the max right now!

Pierpont Commons, 5:30PM, 2/6/2024

I’m good at slogans, in middle school I used to sit in the car and recite all the slogans I heard on the radio…

Target, 10:00PM, 2/16/2024

I think this bus has a jerking problem!

Yeah I think I had it the other day too.

I remember you saying something like that…

Blake Transit Center, 11:00AM, 2/19/2024

She will attend to any name as long as I call her Cookie… she’s so big! I wanted a chihuahua and [points to Doberman] look what they gave me!

Green’s Antiques, 2:00PM, 2/28/2024

That’s the only non-Newtonian fluid I know.

What about Jello?

Pierpont Commons Murfin Outbound, 7:00PM, 3/7/2024

It’s a bread place, and you’re getting noodles?

It’s a bread place, and you’re getting soup?

It has bread in it!

GG Brown Laboratory, 11:30AM, 3/9/2024

Would you rather have super intelligence or lightning speed?

Super intelligence.

So a hundred times smarter than you are right now.

Oh… never mind then. I want the super speed instead!

Central Campus Transit Center, 7:00PM, 3/14/2024

I’m going to the bathroom. If I’m not back in ten minutes, get a plunger!

Duderstadt Library, 7:00PM, 3/21/2024

It’s for kids with cancer, they don’t have hair so they make wigs for them, and I go in and donate my hair.

Yeah, hair is a commodity for those patients.

My hair is valuable too, ‘cause I’m a redhead. Rare hair color.

City Hall, 2:30PM, 4/3/2024

Fish can’t jump.

Salmon?

No one’s keeping salmon in a fish tank!

Traverwood Library, 3:30PM, 4/3/2024

[referring to how late she woke up] I can only have one bad day so I have to be on top of it today.

Well, I’m young and stupid, so I’ve got more time to waste.

BMV, 6:30PM, 2/28/2024

two voices, mine and yours.

—and why should i? you’re chasing your dreams while i’m chasing my tail, spinning in circles, dizzy from embarrassment. too proud to look you in the eye. it was always a game, wasn’t it? get off the playground. swing and miss, face-up, the sky salting the wound with its mosaic of stars–

my alarm rings. every morning i notice how there is only one voice, how it only speaks when spoken to. i don’t know who wins; i never do. if a thought had a mouth, would it scream?

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I need melatonin to sleep. If I don’t take melatonin, I get nightmares.

Mosher-Jordan Dining Hall, 6:30PM, 3/29/2024

i am greeted by the clothes deforming like plastic in the sun, an uncanny valley of furniture molded around the faces, your face, no face at all. i unbutton my shirt and count eight scars splayed across my chest, as if a creature had climbed the ladder of my ribcage from the inside and latched on to my heart. i feel the irregular beats now, a warning that my pulse does not pump alone. i make my breakfast in silence and look at the window. i see a single spider sitting in its fractured web, watching. waiting.

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I’ve made so many mistakes since having him… he’s five months old and doesn’t like to sleep, which means I don’t get to sleep either.

AADL Downtown, 12:00PM, 4/20/2024

it seems humans are born with the innate sense of death. sometimes i equate the resistance to sleep as the resistance to death and i wonder whether a child would make the connection as well. we cannot recast reality in our sleep; we cannot extract truth from our visions. our dreams lie with the size of a single breath. perhaps death pays a visit every night and pulls against the thread of the universe. pick a card, pick a side, pick your brain. the dice clatter against the floor, but when i open my eyes there is nothing there. we are all alone in the night, sleeping among the silence and the spiderwebs.