The Mountain Inn

The inn seemed precariously placed upon the steep face of the mountain, held in place by a few well-placed beams and a lattice of weather-worn wood. To hear the building creak in the middle of the night was to quietly wonder if this was the day it was to fall into the valley below. Sitting …

Settling in with the Setting Sun

Her toes curled in her damp socks, drying in front of the little space heater beneath her desk. A cup of coffee-milk (to call it milk-coffee was to stretch towards fantasy) moved around her face: first to her left cheek, then her forehead, over to the right cheek, her lips, and then back again in …

To Nowhere and Back

The engine turned over at last, proceeded by a hoarse round of cheers. The New Year had come and gone huddled in the back of the old Honda, a burbling hookah and a crushed pack of old cigarettes (Quit smoking or quit buying, eh?) our only source of warmth. Our passing savior and her oversized …

Stranger in a Strange Land

I walked the steps that Aramais built,His bones settling still in the dampness of the dream.My mouth was hidden in dry wrappings of the dead,For the shroud hid that which Unspoken covet so.In my hands I carried the only weapons permitted,The pen and book,For those like me,Chroniclers from the Skin of the World,We avoid the …