Is it strange that I mourn the breath
that I held in my chest just yesterday?

Dull and throbbing as it left,
breath escaping into June air that shouldn't be so cold.

It's awake still.
Waiting, tapping on my windowpane,
begging for yesterday's safety from the rain
that threatens to wash it down the drain,
away from the lungs that held it.
Felt it leave as all others had,
its brothers and sisters expelled to the air that made them.
These breaths that stain windowpanes
until the rain washes them away.

Why has just this one come back?
Why that puff of breath?
Does it hold more of me than all the others?

A piece ripped free and flung away to aerosol,
screeching from the other side of glass
that its end will be mine,
that unless I let it back inside
I'll die just as sadly,
as the stain washed from the windowpane.
A smudge rubbed away and forgotten just the same
as hundreds before it.

Do I listen to it?
Should I?
This muffled screeching warning from the other side of-

Oh. There's the rain, come finally.
Shining down the windowpane
​in silence.

I did it again.

I stared at the screen for what felt like moments
blinked a few times at the bright light
and maybe shifted a little in my seat.

Now the sun has gone down
the stars have flared to life
but none of them seem familiar
and there's a high-pitched keening
gurgling laughter from outside my door.

I'll just watch a couple more YouTube videos...
hopefully things will be back to normal once I'm done.

I don't know how long I fell.
For months or miles, it's hard to tell.

But amidst my tumbling I felt the eyes of more celestials
than the simple sun and moon.
Beings everlasting, burning brighter than mortal minds can imagine
immune to the troubles and struggles that subsume us.

I could have fell through entire worlds and not known
for though I felt gazes and my own unyielding, fetid motion
blackness was the only constant
and so in stygian abyss I lost myself, wanting only permanence.

A calm ocean breeze
settles over a landlocked state

goosebumps rise
on bare arms
when brine drips with petrichor
down saguaro cactus flesh
and seagulls squawk overhead.

Welcome to Nonsense!
We're a town well-known for our production of Gibberish,
a tasty treat made specially for all creatives and insomniacs.

But don't forget our other attractions!
Take a stroll through the Impossible Gardens
or go on a jaunt through the Mind-Bending Towers.

We guarantee that we'll throw you for a loop
and give you a refreshing break from the day-to-day hassles of your normal life.

In fact, when you go back
you'll find everything that seemed confusing will now have new clarity.

Come back soon!

Swimming through
the muddled madness

plucking pleasant-sounding phrases
from thin air

even if what comes of this endeavor
is gibberish

at least the words have a home
and I'm not sitting here
silent and stagnant.

Words lay silkily,
criss-crossing my skin in new
unknowable tales.

What do you do
when your mind is blanker than the page in front of you
but you've set yourself a deadline?

Well, if no fantastical creatures
are spilling out of your fingertips today,
I guess it's time to write another piece on writer's block.

That terrible travesty wrapped in frozen thought
turning your brain into an evil popsicle
that's going to mock you
until you find a way to thaw it out.

I'm currently trying basic friction.
If I type enough words onto the paper
it'll disappear in the heat
of keys being pressed over and over again.
That's how physics works, right?
For now, humor me
and just smile and nod, please.

I'm doing all I can here.
So if you actually made it to the end of this
congrats!
This was a steaming pile of random rambling
but at least it's something.
Which means, I win!

It took the wizard ages
to capture both the spark of lightning and the brilliance of the sun
inside a small glass jar he could carry around.

None of the others could understand its importance.
The genius of light encased in glass
as if the gods themselves had given him a personal sun of his own.

But everyone else fussed about with their potions
or enchantments of weapons and armor,
content to use torches and candles,
what they had always used.

They told him his invention was a useless complication,
that it had no place in a world of magic.
But he'd show them all.

He knew that if there was one group who would accept this achievement
and probably reward him handsomely,
it would be the dragons.
And indeed,
they were mesmerized by it.
Not only its light-giving properties,
but also its shape and clarity
and how it bent the setting sun
around its gently curved edges.

I saw the golden-handed man again today.
He was sitting on a park bench, alone,
all ragged and grey.

I'd been to afraid to look before,
and so had missed so clearly
the look he always wore.

A gentle smile beneath kindly eyes
and wrinkles that crinkled and creased.
And it pained me to pass him by.

So when I left work for the day
I went back there and explored
this man who'd been so ostracized.