Godsfall Chapter 1: Call to the Gods. by D-E-M-Emrys, literature
Literature
Godsfall Chapter 1: Call to the Gods.
The priests had said prayer would save his mother, so Osar prayed for a year and a day. Dawn til dusk, beseeching shadow and sunlight. Oft late past the darkening hour he’d bowed his head and grovelled, bargained, begged. He had devoted himself to Dionas the Golden God. But Dionas hadn’t heard the prayers, or worse, refused to answer them. Even the gods couldn’t cure cancer.
Osar wrenched another weed from the overturned earth.
And for all of his devotion what did he have to show for it? A grave dug by his own hands and a dead woman to fill it. The Golden God might have been the city’s patron and its father, but O
She ate her French fries as if she were high society. She cut each one into small pieces with her plastic fork and knife, then pierced one with her fork and dipped it into her side of ketchup. Then she raised it to her mouth and nibbled it. When she went to take a drink from her small Coke, she did so with her pinky raised and only drank in small sips. She set her drink down gently, as if it were a delicate china cup she was afraid of breaking.
I looked around and sighed. The burger joint reeked of humanity. Grease hung in the air like humidity, and there was tension between everyone, as if all the customers were negative magnets repelling e
bitter hug of mortality by orangecloudsraining, literature
Literature
bitter hug of mortality
so you sit there,
your awkward little hands folding awkward little birds,
as if you could inhale your own paper wings.
so you sit there,
and you think
about you watching the people and the people
not watching you.
and i whisper darling,
darling the only thing you're good for
is reading walt whitman out loud
to your used-to-be-white walls
until your throat chips, and your eyes dust over.
and you just shift your weight
and shake your head
like something
buzzed in your ear.
Something in my brain
I am told
is broken, dysfunctional. It leaves me inept
when left to deal with language unspoken,
the intricacies of smiles,
the unclear line between malice and mirth.
It may have been the shot
given by the doctor
meant to protect but somehow doing harm,
and ignoring
the Hippocratic oath.
Or so say my parents, their organization,
so they may be exonerated.
They liken me to
Ted Bundy, H. H. Holmes,
and Einstein. Because a sometimes-flat
affect is
abnormal,
and it makes people uncomfortable.
Especially when it is not maintained.
At times I am too broken to understand
and sometimes I am not broken enough
because my pu
You take what you can get. You always find a way to make do. Your mother taught you that. Your mother drank wine through a straw. When you were fifteen, you watched her take down your father's hunting rifle from above the fireplace and shoot your dog, your best friend, that got run over by your neighbour's truck and had to be put down. When you were fifteen your mother held you as you cried about your dog, your best friend, that got run over by your neighbour's truck and had to be put down. She didn't say a word as you did but when you were fifteen, you caught her weeping in the middle of the night to your father, who apologized that she had
on watching the night close its eyes on you by sense-and-stupidity, literature
Literature
on watching the night close its eyes on you
1. I will not tell you
you are pretty.
How can the halls and angles of such honest humanity
be so pinched between sounds as elementary as these?
2. You need not be two stringent boughs of syllables
nor weave your viney bones abreast these five petty letters,
whirling in the fire of the river
Styx.
Do not attempt to peel yourself layer for layer,
leaving all the disgust behind.
Do not tally your body six &