September 2009
29 posts
3 tags
twenty-eight : peaches
Kids yell from the trees. Some swing, holding tightly to rough branches, while others crouch, hidden among the leaves. Theo hurries past them, but it’s too late.
Ughhhh I can’t write. I’m hanging out with Ben and Cory tonight, and it’s difficult to concentrate on writing when your friends are busy being hilarious. I will write something extra shiny tomorrow to make up for...
3 tags
twenty-seven : time and impatience
she watches light refractions in her vodka and raspberry and is happy she chose it instead of a screwdriver- the color changes in the shifting light and a tiny show carries on in her hi-ball glass, balanced on her knee.
a new letter j sits at her feet, and she wonders if this is the one they spoke of. because when she twisted the apple, around and around in her hand, the stem snapped sharp,...
8 tags
twenty-six : because it aches
it was in the shadows of his eyes that she felt it. in the crack of light under the door. the gap between his lips when he concentrated. the sound of stairs creaking. the cool kiss of water from a dusty glass. in the spaces, the things she sensed but were never said. she knew the word for what she felt, but not the reason. words came easy. easier than the feelings that necessitated them by far,...
twenty-five : for one night
It’s eleven thirty on a thursday night and I’m standing on the roof. Nate is sitting cross legged on the trampoline with a moronic grin on his face. His fingers tap on an empty bottle on his lap, echoing the fractured beat coming from the stereo inside the house. I step up to the edge and lean out, arms wide, letting the breeze lift me up to my toes. His eyes go wide like a kid opening...
twenty-four : red raindrop
The sky was a churning black bruise. Emma leant forward over the steering wheel and stared up into the dark. A solitary drop of rain hit the windscreen and disintegrated in a burst of red, then green, as the traffic lights changed. The cars crawled along in front of her, and she was stopped again on the other side of the intersection. Thunder growled overhead. The sky ripped open, sending the rain...
5 tags
twenty-three : you won't get hurt
it runs through me like a sustained piano key, and i’m sure you can feel it. the sound comes in waves. you look at me, and for a second i think it may be meaningful, then that it is a random glance as you think of other things. two seconds. i must barely register as a person in your eyes. time passes, and the sound gets louder, more complex. i make no sudden movements. you still face me....
6 tags
twenty-two : the edge of all our fears
He left the same way he arrived. Without a name. Without a hope, without shoes on his feet or a shirt on his back. This town was small, but even they were too busy with life to notice him, the stranger, slipping quietly through their open porch doors and taking what he needed. The things they kept hidden safely under floorboards, locked in their hearts. Their secrets, their fears. He stood unseen...
5 tags
twenty-one : this boy's in love
It’s dusk, and Alice is on the roof again. I see her from my window, sitting with her back against the chimney, trying to light a cigarette. With each failed attempt, she crinkles her nose and mutters something that looks like Dammit. It takes six tries. When it finally glows, she shoves the lighter into a crack on the side of the chimney and stretches out her legs, gleaming gold in the...
6 tags
twenty : monster
A name was called, and all the faces turned in unison. Paul pressed his hands to his knees and stood with the slow focus of arthritic bones, his nostrils flaring. He looked back at the faces, all of them, and moved heavily through the crowd. They parted, peeling back, a wall of wide-eyed silence. Pauls jaw tensed. A single vein throbbed on his temple. He kept his eyes down, but could still...
THANKYOU!
To the new followers! I’m glad people are actually reading this!
Knowing that someone might notice if I miss a day will definitely help me to keep going, even when I’m so blocked I want to scream :)
If you ever have any questions or comments, or even a story topic request, feel free to email me at; acircadianrhythm@gmail.com
Thanks again!
- Cassi
4 tags
nineteen : lacuna
Cinders and Smoke is the second-last song she tries. She flicks back to the manuscript and waits for it to come. Night-time noises sang from the garden, where a heavy fog had settled like a|
The song isn’t working. She hits skip, looks at the sentence on the screen, and deletes it. Intervention. In the house, the air was col|
She stops, her fingers hovering, waiting. They drift back to...
eighteen : miles away
Miles couldn’t wake up. He made no sounds of his own. Every now and then, a loud robot-beep echoed through his room to remind us that he was still there. But that was all. If he was awake, he would have liked that noise. I know he would have. He liked machines. Mums friend Nathan gave him a toy robot for his birthday last year, and he played with it every day up until it happened. He had it...
7 tags
seventeen : mud
they fall together, sound and lights, dropping till the air is heavy. the crowd is dark, electric. they crackle. over their heads, black sneakers appear. arms shoot up, shifting forward. dark legs, a t-shirt, hair. so light he could be an apparition. he is carried on the tide of hands and spit out like seaweed. an orange vest stands tall and sprays water through the sky, stinging cold on sunburnt...
8 tags
sixteen : the boiler room
they work with their hands. steam bursts in hot billows, mingling with the sweat on their faces and running down their necks, staining each dirty shirtback with a damp rorschach inkblot. they shovel and stoke. the oily coal smell encases them. they grit their teeth and squint into the glowing furnace, some wiping their arms across their foreheads, leaving dark streaks of coal dust on their...
fifteen : dreaming
The first time I dreamt of Carala, I was seven years old. I was sitting high up on top of the monkey bars, the other grade two boys laughing on the ground below because I was scared to jump down. She climbed up next to me, this tiny, pale girl in bright blue boots, and held out her hand. “I’m Carala, what’s your name?” she asked. I told her my name was Alex, and when I took...
5 tags
fourteen : isolation
she sits by the window, watching. her breath fogs the glass in a semicircle, obscuring all but her mouth in an opaque haze. people pass. she has her favourites. at six fifteen, the jogger stops on the corner and waits for the lights to change, bouncing on the balls of her feet and rolling her neck from side to side. sometimes alone, sometimes with a less enthusiastic man wheezing along a few feet...
5 tags
thirteen : newborn
As far as she could tell, he was nothing before he was Michael.
Just a cell divided. Two. Ten thousand. Six million. Replicating, expanding, shooting out arms and legs, but still nothing. He was a concept. Something unseen. In those first few months she would stand in the bathroom, wiping steam from the mirror and watching, waiting for some sign that he was there. Some sign that the tiny bump she...
5 tags
twelve : a place where nothing moves
When I slipped, my thoughts fell with me. They crashed down like rocks in an avalanche, growing from a stutter to a roar at such a speed that I was more overwhelmed by the deluge of words than the sudden lack of ground beneath my feet.
This is it.
I knew it. I knew it.
I knew this would happen.
This is what you’ve been expecting. I know. I know.
I knew this was coming. You...
3 tags
eleven : better
the moment cannot come again. when glass crackled underfoot, our fingers entwined in a tangle of smoke, when words mattered, when things were different. better. different.
the moment is a moment gone, and now you’re a sound i don’t hear. a song i know, too low. beyond reach. and you tell me with her, it’s different. better different.
6 tags
ten : childhood
disguised by a soft fawn blanket beneath my parents bedroom window was a wide pine chest. on rainy days at the tail-end of seemingly infinite school holidays, it would burst open and fill the room with the cool, musty smell of hidden treasures; feathers and glitter and sequins that caught the morning light and smashed it into thousands of brilliant colours. old jam jars—their labels long...
7 tags
Nine : windows and wind
The old windows rattle with wishes and needs, as the cold winds breath shudders through cracks under doors, and the windows all sigh with the thought of the world, where the wind carries clouds over mountains and shores.
While old windows are stuck on the walls of old houses, the wind moves the forests to get to the sea, it whispers through yards in the middle of night making shadows and ghosts...
4 tags
eight : writing
the writer sits, pen poised, at the end of the jetty.
warmth melts through the thin cotton of her shirt and she feels the back of her neck beginning to burn. later she will regret not moving into the shade, but for now she stays, soaking in the unfamiliar sun and watching seagulls squabble and squawk over a surrendered bag of chips. her mind wanders. hitchcock films her first thought, and from...
6 tags
seven : loneliness
each day goes by in a haze of introductions— never getting past the introductions. on the ride home city lights are shining like blue-green beacons in a liquid sky. i can taste the cold like silence, smoke, tinfoil, tepid water.
6 tags
six : silence
time was, this street would be crowded with kids running home from school. there would be a constant stream of noise; first of cars, stopping and starting and groaning over the speed-bump, then of the schoolkids, some laughing, some yelling, some complaining. their parents, scolding, congratulating, gossiping. the noise of life was inescapable. the crossing-guards whistle would set off the...
6 tags
five : poison
First thing you feel is a bee sting. A needle or a thumbtack. Something sharp puncturing the skin on the back of your neck, then hot poison burrowing through the flesh and into your veins. Only it doesn’t just follow your veins. That one little drop replicates until it fills you like boiling water bubbling under your skin, spreading first down your neck, then your throat and out to your...
7 tags
four : collision
he climbs up my legs. i melt into the mattress and he asks me to move for him the fast silk he winds around my hands, the bed: ice on fevered skin. wild lips twitch over mouth, cheek, collarbone. the rise and fall, a tide. each collision further, shifting space until there’s none. i listen to him burn till i am ashes on the bed. a cigarette until the morning comes, spreading hot and high and...
7 tags
three : emergency
She sank back, fading into herself, becoming less. Polysyllabic words rushed by on jelly legs, yelling. Words she didn’t understand. Subarachnoid. More words, white masks, plastic tubes. Nothing was real. Buccal midazolam. Nothing made sense. The words were questions now, she could tell from the way the voices lifted. Even these words were without meaning. Her name foreign. Can you hear me?...
8 tags
two : other lives
The first time, I made it as far as the water. A tall, bearded creature, a man who I now suppose was my father, carried me over rattling stones to the shallows. More men followed, and women, and a few excited children who stood huddled together. The man scooped the cold river over me, too cold. Freezing. The end came shortly after, still by the water, with dirt-marked women screaming as the man...
5 tags
one : waiting
I stood on damp pavement, rain soaked and nauseous from the heavy stench of ammonia that had been washed from the oak trees. They leant over the road from each side, making a glossy black tunnel, their wide branches trapping the piss-warm smell which hung thick in the air. So thick I could almost taste it. With strained eyes, I watched a ringtail scurry up the branches of a tree in the opposite...