Once upon a time, there was a little family named the Björns. Mama and Papa Björn loved each other dearly, despite their differences, and they raised Lilla Du, their daughter, to be proud of her own differences as well. They each liked their things in the little wooded home to be just so. Papa Björn […]
Tag: zerotohero
Fairest of All (Part 2)
Three weeks had gone by since my flight from the castle. They were three weeks of quiet, with no word of the outside world; Three weeks of gratitude, serving the seven laborers who agreed to take me in; Three weeks of anxiously watching the door, fearful of the day all of this would end. The […]
Fairest of All (Part 1)
Once upon a time in Midwinter, there sat a Queen sewing at her ebony windowsill. Snow fell outside, and as she looked at it she pricked her finger with her needle. Three drops of blood fell on the snow. The Queen wished for a little girl as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the ebony windowsill.
Nighttime in the Big Easy
The moon glowed in a liquid sky freckled with clusters of stars; a balmy puff of breeze did little more than rustle skirt hems and bring with it the scent of green. Scattered grit on the cobbled street created a crunch under meandering footsteps, as though the street were munching chips. Every so often the […]
Interlaced
My mother kisses my small, plump fingertips as I bawl over the blistering lesson I’ve just learned about stove-tops. For nearly a week after, my coloring book is erratic with crayon pathways independent of the firm dark rules that shape each drawing; after all, it is difficult to stay within the lines when my dominant […]
Last Dance
At the edge of the known and full-facing the edge of mystery stood Last Dance, Montana. The tumble of cabins and livelihood never had a population that reached into the thousands, except that one time in 1954 when Mrs. Levitt had surprise twins and brought the tally to a cool 1k before the old greengrocer had a heart attack and died […]
Punching Up
“Run free, Goliath,” his Owner said with fake solemnity as she released him to the wriggling ocean of dogs. It was surprising that the dog park’s thin fence wasn’t knocked down by dozens upon dozens of wagging tails and squirming bodies. Goliath’s Owner leaned against one of the only trees in the park as she watched her little French bulldog make […]
Our (Undead) Bodies, Our (Undead) Selves
NOTE: This project was my capstone for undergrad. I’ve tweaked it a bit and reformatted it for online use. Yes, I know, it’s really freakin’ long. Godspeed. Vampires and zombies are basically the same thing, so why do we view them so differently? As media consumption rises in modern Western culture, one thing has become abundantly […]
Ramble Review: Jenkins on “What Love Is”
What Love Is: And What It Could Be is a wild, cupid-dodging ride down the tunnel of love – when you reach the end, you’ll want to do it all over again. What Love Is: And What It Could Be, a 2017 title from Hachette Book Group, unpacks the meandering, many-layered musings of mathematics philosopher Dr. Carrie Ishikawa Jenkins as she ponders what love […]
The World Is Too Much With Us: Erika Sanchez, Mental Illness, and LatinX YA
CW: This post discusses violent accidental death, mental illness, and suicide. “There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why—when it did not seem worthwhile to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable […]
A. Rose Prose 