LUNA

Prompt: A Genie offers you one wish, and you modestly wish to have a very productive 2017. The genie misunderstands, and for the rest of your life, every 20:17 you become impossibly productive for just 60 seconds. “Well, it was a nice day.” You kiss your sweetheart gently on the forehead and sigh as the last remaining seconds of 20:16 tick away. “See you at 8:18,” you say. Then it happens. Every ounce of fatigue or hunger leaves your body. The face of your beloved is perfectly still, their expression exactly the same. The ticking of the clock on the wall has stopped. Once again, it’s 20:17. You stretch your arms and walk to the table with the homework for the three doctorates you’re working on. The work is mentally stimulating and enjoyable, but it’s finished far too quickly. You check your pocket watch and see that not even one hundredth of a second has passed. You knew it was too soon to be able to see any movement on the watch, but you can never quite help yourself from looking early on every 20:17. Time to move on. You clean your home, do your budget, then go outside and fix a noise that your car was making earlier that afternoon. (Oh how you already miss afternoons.) Then you go back inside, boot up your computer (which magically speeds up to keep pace with you as long as you’re in contact with it) and check for any new orders. You’ve set up a website for the small business you started called “Magic Elf Services.” People in your area can pay a modest fee on your site to have different tasks and odd jobs done by “The Magic Elf” at 8:17pm every day. It was a little slow to get started, but word has spread and these days you have a steady stream of clients. The money that comes in from the business is nice, but you’re mostly grateful that it gives you a clear list of things to do. You print off your updated list of clients, step outside, and start making your way through the neighborhood with your to-do list. There’s the apartments down your street where several neighbors have hired you to tidy up, do the dishes, and mop the floors. You do the windows too, just to see if they notice. There’s the large house across town that paid the “Magic Elf” to clean out the gutters. After the first dozen jobs are done, you manage to stop looking at your pocket watch. As near as you’ve been able to determine in the past, 20:17 seems to last for approximately one normal year. But it’s not exact. For one thing, it’s hard to keep track of “time” when everything but you has crawled to an almost total standstill. For another thing, time seems to move differently depending on how “productive” your behavior is. One time you tried to spend all of 20:17 sitting at home in your pajamas, but that was getting you nowhere, so you eventually gave up and got busy. (Though you defiantly stayed in your pajamas the whole time.) During 20:17 your body doesn’t get tired, hungry, sick, or injured. You’re essentially tireless and immortal for the duration of the “minute.” So sleeping or eating away your boredom has never really worked for you. One of the houses on your list forgot to follow the instructions and leave a key for you to get in. At first you figure you’ll just send them an email telling them to pay more attention and that you’ll do the job tomorrow. Then you decide to go home, get your locksmith tools, and come back. After finishing up all the jobs on your list, you go into several other homes and small businesses in the area, performing tasks you hope they’ll find helpful, and leaving a hand-painted business card at each one. (The business cards don’t contain your real name just in case somebody thinks “The Magic Elf” should be subject to breaking and entering laws.) Speaking of laws, you head down to the local police station to pick up your case file. You’ve been in contact with a detective who’s been investigating corruption within their department, and your ability to investigate unseen and get in almost anywhere between the ticks of the clock has proven invaluable. You see that they’ve also added five missing person cases to your file this evening, which certainly raises your interest in the job. You make your way through town gathering evidence, and start making your way to the outskirts of town. Since you happen to be out that way (and you’ve already solved three of the five missing person cases) you decide to swing by the stone castle you’re building and do some more work there. The castle walls stand about 20 feet right now, but you know they’ll be much higher when you’re done. You’re far from any roads and pretty safely tucked away, so for now it’s your little secret. You’ve been excavating and moving all the rock yourself, which has been much easier than you first expected since your body doesn’t get tired or sore. You’ve also got a nice system of tunnels going underneath the castle, and you dig and build more of that network for a while. All that time spent underground has left you feeling rather lonely, so you walk back home to see the face of your sweetheart. Their facial expression has moved ever so slightly since you last saw them, which is a comfort to you. Looking at them gets your imagination going and makes you dream up a story you’d like to tell, so you sit on your couch, plug in your laptop, and write a book. After you finish editing the last chapter for the third time, you finally allow yourself to look at your pocket watch again. Three seconds have officially passed so far. It’s gonna be a long 20:17.

I can really appreciate rainy days. Sometimes the sun is too harsh Or the snow too bitter. Give me days where the clouds, like my eyes, Are overcast and the fog, like my shoulders, Hang low. Something about bleak colors Cold earth, speckled windshields, That I embody. Melancholy Sympathizing with Worms drowning in puddles Lacking the energy to save them. Empty bottles kicked beneath feet Only to be forgotten and left Sinking in the mud Indifferent to life and death. On days like these I imagine Mother Nature as A girl in a hoodie Walking through puddles Headphones in Music too loud And probably a coffee in hand Not to warm or wake her But because caffeine is a drug Required to keep herself moving. On days like these Stillness is equal to death Physical or mental the lines blurred Not unlike the horizon in the fog. On days like these I can’t tell Mother Nature and myself Apart.

we’re still my favorite ghost story / even if neither of us died / when we wanted to / but the red still drips / the blue still seethes / i never looked good in purple / but the morphine is steady / i’m a quiet unraveling / you don’t know how to break / with an audience’s eyes on you / i sleep and / the static crackles / you sleep / and the wind settles over us / and the sky is more forgiving / than i ever learned to be / and i bet she’s real pretty / and her fist never curls / and the witch weather never hovers / i bet the sun is always shining / and you’re never wishing this / turned out a different way / i should have thrown out / the broken hourglass / the sand is stuck and / i know how it feels / i bet the moon holds grudges too / how could you not / when you’ve got everybody’s secrets / in the palm of your hand / how do you spill out over a sleepy town / and expect everyone else to / clean up your messes / if i’m always spilling my guts / maybe i should just carry around / the dustpan / i’m a ghost town / and you were just passing through / you’re a ghost town / and i liked an unsettling silence / if you’re forgiven / does that bring me any closer / to getting off my knees / you know how the alcohol burns / i know how the sleeping pills cloud / i want to know where the ghosts go / when they can’t stand to be the one being / haunted http://caramel-in-her-coffee.tumblr.com/post/149059244511/were-still-my-favorite-ghost-story-even-if

the man keeps a flower, one that he picks after Harry gets up, in his breast pocket. he brings it home and it’s not wilted, so he sticks it in a book to preserve and press it. as he gets older, he goes back to that book - one on history, focusing on wars, and sees exactly where he put it. in the section about coming home and the joys of victory. he thinks about it every day until he meets Harry again at that white kings cross station, holding that flower out to him. http://caramel-in-her-coffee.tumblr.com/post/149066705616/averypottermormon-maedhrys-harry-disappears

one time he and i were sitting in bed and i said “where do you feel stuff?” and he said “what do you mean” and i said, “here is anxiety” and pointed to my bottom left rib where the spiders start. he pointed to his throat. “it’s here for me.” i keep anger in my breastbone, he holds it in his hands. i feel sadness on my shoulders, he feels it in his lungs. we play this game until we come to love, and i realize that i am terrified (jugular vein) of what might come. what if it is not the same. what if he feels it somewhere else, what if it is just a flash fire, not the slow burn, what if it is congealing in one place instead of radiating, i try to change topics, flight response (sternum) he takes my hands in his and puts them over his ribs and says, “everywhere, everywhere, like a sun is trying to escape me, like i am being consumed and you are filling up where used to be empty.” i say, “don’t be ridiculous humans are 99% empty space,” i nervous laugh (spiders down spine), he holds his gaze with me. “everywhere,” he repeats.

the story starts with a window. it’s late and I’m waving. the people I love come back home (one by one or altogether, it doesn’t matter). airports aren’t a sad thing anymore. every plane lands in my backyard and I get back what’s lost. I throw a party to celebrate the way my heart’s acting like a heart again. the flowers stop wilting because they want to stay alive to see this. the long dead plant comes back to life because it’s heard the news. the bad stuff never really happened. we dreamed it all. ate the wrong kind of thing before we slept or something like that. we dance without music because the wind’s enough. a thousand people walk on a sidewalk and they watch their feet, making room for the thousand ants. the diagnosis melts on every doctor’s tongue because the cure has already been found. and I’m not scared of anything, and I’m not tired anymore, and I’m not thinking about the thousand lives I could have lived because the one I’ve got’s enough and even the broken winged birds get their flight back. and no country loses itself to a war and no mother stops being a mother because a war couldn’t keep its hands to itself and every city stays a city and not a city’s ghost, and there’s nothing to mourn. nothing to mourn and the sky is a trustworthy thing and when it rains the whole world blooms and nothing is buried under a whole lot of yesterday and tomorrow is a believable thing. and love hasn’t ruined what it can’t save and this poem stays unwritten because it’s not needed, and nothing is needed, and we forget every word for loss and we live like that forever, where love’s not a small thing and our hands are still big enough to fit it.

hey if you’re out there and you’re listening hey have you ever had that feeling when you’re leaving a concert and it sounds like there are cicadas but there isn’t a tree in sight hey have you ever ordered something to eat and the moment it shows up you don’t want it hey have you accidentally brushed hands with a stranger and looked back have you ever checked the drawer in a hotel to make sure the bible was still there hey have you ever turned the music off and hey hey listen hey have you ever wondered what it’s like to do something perfectly just one thing hey do you ever see things play out in your head long before they do but silently hope they don’t hey have you ever lived a lie have you ever said do or die but didn’t have you ever slept on the floor when your bed time travels hey have you ever wished the violins in your head would give it a rest when you’re down and out have you ever been down and out hey does it ever feel like the punk songs had it right like you cook for two alone like the matching tattoo you got by yourself like the places you said you’d send a postcard from and who you’d send them to hey have you ever cared hey do you care could you care hey this is a bed of nails you asked to sleep on this is the part that can’t happen again the part everyone took pictures of that everyone framed and gave to you on holidays thinking you’d want to remember forever this ruined it this ruined it for good hey have you ever pulled away from a kiss thinking you’d left something behind have you ever left something behind hey do you still day dream hey what’re they about hey have you ever run your fingers over a place where someone used to be have you hey have you or someone you love been exposed to that feeling of http://caramel-in-her-coffee.tumblr.com/post/148679585316/untitled

PROMPT: You’re in charge of assigning every child on Earth the monster under their bed. One child in particular has caused every monster assigned to him/her to quit. You decide to assign yourself.

I am not a careless person. I cover my tracks, monitor what I say, look before I cross the street. At least, I do now. When I was 20 years old, I walked home reading a book. I was so engrossed that I failed to notice the heavy metal vehicle moving at my frail, human body at 40 mph. It swerved, I stopped, no one was hurt, no one died. They never do. It was only when I took the cookies out of the oven that I noticed the mark on my arm. I knew what it meant. It was my duty to report to the authorities to be murdered. If I didn’t, anyone who saw it would kill me on sight. I didn’t want to die. I was only twenty years old! I hadn’t even finished college, much less gotten to all my grand plans and ambitions (never mind that I didn’t have any. I had time to plan out the rest of my life later. So I thought.) I burned my arm on the cookie sheet. The scar covered the black mark somewhat, and I put a bandaid over it. The people at work didn’t question it. After some time, the burn healed. The mark remained black over the scar, bigger now. I tried carving it out with a knife. It was winter now, and long sleeves were the norm - no one would notice my injury. The mark remained, the bloody lower layers of my skin black as death’s robes. From then on I wore long sleeves. When I went to the doctor I covered it with paint and hoped they wouldn’t notice. They didn’t. I was lucky. The mark grew. I was in trouble when it reached my wrist. As soon as it covered my hand I would be discovered. I ran. Soon I will be nothing but a shadow in the night. Perhaps some of the stories they tell of night creatures originate from people like me. Those who escaped, their marks covering them, even the whites of their eyes turned deepest black. In a way, we are no longer human. Isolated, undying, immortal, betrayers of nature’s most fundamental law: all things must come to an end. If I outlive humanity, will I ever die? When the sun goes nova, will I still exist? When the universe ends, will I endure? Or is death simply a shortcut to that end? When the last star has gone out and matter has been erased, will Death greet me with a weary sigh, saying “where have you been? We’ve been waiting for you for an eternity.” At that point, will I even remember who is waiting for me?