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The Comfort of Monsters

Beowulf casts me through the past, not to mythical Scandinavia but to my childhood with a different book in hand. Sitting on the beige carpet floor with my legs crossed, a book of monsters splayed across my lap. Each page and chapter was dedicated to a different monster that lived in the world. I got it for my tenth birthday. Since then, the large pages were slightly bent from the number of times I flipped back and forth between them. On each left-handed page, the names were in big letters: Chupacabra, Jersey Devil, Yeti, and of course, the European Dragon. A four-legged monster with scales, wings, large enough to tear a tower from a castle; the same kind Beowulf would die fighting. On the other page, a disgustingly detailed rendering of its anatomy, muscles, veins under the skin. Skeletons gave way to organs with labels for the stranger pieces. An annotation pointed to its underbelly and advised its readers the soft spot to strike. I studied feverishly the shapes and names so that I w...
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Color of Parting Skies

 I. Dad says, "It's as true as the sky is blue." When white clouds arrive to paint the sky, above the wedding tables where I hide, they change the light, the color, and the hue. When cold rain flies in, it will grey that truth, like the colors I'll wear down a wedding aisle. When the sun rises, it explodes the light from dark to white, blue, pink, and others too. This I want to turn and dispute his fact and catch his sky-blue eyes, steady as storms that hurtle across the world, drowning rafts, airplanes, and islands in unknowing wrath. I would be next in its path to be torn, so instead, I look away, "Okay, dad."
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Broken Blade

The warrior sails through tide and turns so she could take her blade, broken in two, back to the base of the volcano. Her boat settles against the soft island sands along a familiar pathway. Here, the island grows endlessly from the constant flow of lava drifting across the floor. The path back is a little longer than she remembered. The warrior carries the two pieces in a wrapped cloth cradled across her arms. She rests them gently where the lava forks a circular path around stone. With reverence, she steps back into the constant rising hear of the elevated plateau and holds her hands up towards the volcano's top. "This, child, is broken beyond repair. Cast it into my flames and let it sink into the earth," the volcano says. Its voice a rumble of the earth, a popping of a flame, a slow certainty of the world. The voice echoes all around her like the gentle touch of wind. The warrior clenches her hands together and shuts her eyes. That is the answer she was expecting, but...
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Sun

When we translated light waves to sound waves, the first thing the Sun said was, "Turn it off." I thought we were supposed to celebrate the moment that we made contact, real contact, with something as immense and stunning as that burning ball of gas we orbit around. Nobody said anything in the control room. I didn't say anything because I didn't want to be the one to bring up what clearly echoed through the speakers, to be the one to point out that our message was not well received. The silence stifled me. I couldn't live with such a simple answer, not after all the work and research and resources that I invested inside of this. "Maybe, it's telling us to turn off something else we have," I said to everybody. We all turned to Samson. His eyes squint against the display of that yellow and orange ball of fury as though it was a face. They shared an intensity. Only one of them blinked and told us, "Ask why." The message is translated immediate...
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Weeds

A farmer walked through his field, upon all the verdant green that rolled across the horizon line, content with its beauty. Until he saw a single weed that sprouted from the ground, a disgusting blight in an otherwise perfect field. So, he leaned down and tore it out. Its roots popped from the earth with the sound of torn fabric. All that remained of it was a barren spot on the ground where once it stood. Satisfied with his work, he continued his day tending to other pastures and slept soundly. But, then the very next day, two more weeds sprouted in that greenery. Furious, he knelt down and ripped away the weeds by the neck before scouring for more hiding from plain sight. He wielded a white jug of chemicals. Poured so lavishly that the scent of citrus choked the field, but he could no longer smell it. The farmer would only be reminded of it from the incessant itch along his ankles as he returned home for the night. Even more weeds grew by the next morning. The farmer balked, baffled, ...
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What Remains

If only there was an easier way to forget Carey Stratford. Before that night lit by pillars of light and flame, we had two presidents. One along the west coast, the other on the east, both picking apart the states like children bickering over a spider’s legs. They carved their ownership with drones and tanks and bullets and borders and threats of mutually assured destruction. As our station was loaded up with nuclear armaments, I joked there would be a West Dakota with the other security officers. A few laughed. Ms. Stratford did not. Her first name was disallowed ever since she quit; she cast her gun and tag back to the station. “I want everybody to know exactly where I stand,” she said as she rode the wave of resistance and pulled the tide behind her like horses about to stampede. Ms. Stratford was a disruptor, an organizer, somebody who would grab Eden’s flaming sword by the handle to open its gardens to the world once again. Ms. Stratford became a threat. Did she see God’s ever-bur...
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Nightfall

Though the sight of these snow struck hills are beautiful, nobody could forget its danger. Nobody knows this more than the exiles. Banished to the edge of the maps, they flock in the night to survive. Brenna sits on a high perch tower with weapons nearby. An owl returns to its spot along the wooden tower’s low wall with a new piece of prey, an unfortunate mouse, between its claws. “Share?” She asks. The owl promptly ignores her. It is not her owl, after all.  “Odin doesn’t know you well enough for that, Brenna.” A second owl says as it perches next to her. It unfurls its wings, feathers transform to fingers, talons to feet, owl to Cyrene, the exiled druid among them. “Takes time for an animal o get used to you. Even if it is comfortable being around other people.” The two, and the owl, on the high perch keep their eyes watchful for dangers that stalk the night. Brenna, distracted, could not take her eyes off the village itself. If it could even be called a village.  “Why do we...
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