Tag: fiction

aSoSS 45 | Bewitched

a-spider-on-state-street Leave a comment

Where are you from?

Virginia. DC area, Arlington.

I’m sure you get this question a lot, but do you live close to the cemetery?

Uh, yeah I’d say it’s about a ten minute drive…

EECS Building, 3:30PM, 11/21/2024

i met you for the first time as a stranger. we talked about the weather and your father and the new prodigy and the death of our favorite restaurant, like we were seventeen again and you had crawled through my bedroom window and into my arms. as if the world had not stopped spinning, a planet so big and full it hurt to laugh. as if i am not sitting on your gravestone, a quiver in my lip and a tremor in my chest, whispering to the soil to keep you warm in place of me.

You’re gonna be the best—oh look! The sun is out!

AADL Downtown, 12:00PM, 11/12/2024

it was a weed. i wanted to call it pretty but it was a weed, a dandelion beaming with the blush of the sun. quick to bloom, quicker to rot. against all odds it has conquered the impossible, leaves outstretched in heavenly embrace. what wouldn’t a flower give to be appreciated? if i had the chance, i would sit on the cobblestone and watch it grow. if i had the chance, i would name it after you.

There are a bunch of spots down there, it’s like Hogwarts!

Nickels Arcade, 2:00PM, 2/2/2025

after Marty Rubin: “lies bewitch us, if we want to be bewitched”–

i have inherited an incurable insomnia from you, in the way your absence keeps me up at night. sleep is a luxury you have stolen–you leave me with nothing more than pity, a memory woven in moonlight and encased in spider’s silk: i closed my eyes and breathed a prayer and you were there, my voice a siren, your mouth a shipwreck. there are ninety-nine names for God and yours is not one of them.

LOG_042_FJORDS

Traveler Leave a comment

Both warning and shelter at once, this fortress is one of several way stations for island hoppers navigating the icy southern archipelagos of 1c. The surrounding region is often covered in a dense fog and low-lying clouds thanks to lava-driven upwellings, and the occasional eruption can cause severe, localized storms, making the region one of the most perilous to traverse. Like most structures on 1c, it has a deep underground network for harnessing geothermal energy and a small cache of resources in the event that a visitor requires shelter from a storm.

aSoSS 44 | Freckles

a-spider-on-state-street Leave a comment

Nice nails!

Thank you, they’re for Valentine’s Day!

[…]

South Quad, 1:00PM, 2/3/2025

skip the middle man, shall we? there is nothing left to say; i have torn the dictionary apart searching for the words to give you. entrust to me your heart and let me cast it in gold, so it may be preserved for the world to admire. one soul to another, without syllable nor stress, for this is the gift of a language repossessed. temple to temple: we are mothers kneeling and mothers weeping, hands clasped and prayers unanswered. how can we be damned when we have each other? your eyes tell me it does not matter; this altar holds enough room for two.

I think about you a lot. What does that make us?

Alice Lloyd Hall, 4:00PM, 12/8/2024

i can feel the melody of your thoughts through the heat of your touch–an excellent conductor, in more ways than one–your pulse rippling but not breaking the surface, a swordfish streamlined against the ocean. everything we have to say has already been written above, a cosmic braille blotted by the sun. you wear the stars as a cape; i trace the freckles on your back, brush tears away from your cheek. don’t you see? a night sky splashed across your skin. a kiss made salty by sweaty lips, fingertips charting the seas you once commanded. you have been graced with ethereal beauty. in the nowhere there is only the rush, the crash, the silence.

I’ve got no one to cuddle with, [so] I’m gonna buy a body pillow…

Stockwell Hall, 12:00PM, 1/9/2025

a seed of resolve: i am going to love you to the moon and back. you protest weakly, the way a tired child insists on staying awake. do not set your words on me, for i know your tongue too well. i will wrap my arms around you and never let go, until the daylight bleeds into darkness and you fall asleep, the thump in your chest in line with the echo in my eardrum. it will take more than death to separate us. atrophy or infinity, whichever comes first.