Unfinished Business

I returned from the dead, a list in my pocket: wrongs to right, pleasures to reclaim, truths to confess, sins to own. Mostly I needed to know how the world had fared without me. Apart from my poor mother, a grieving ghost of her former self, it was as if I’d never lived. Never loved. Never mattered. A stranger slept in my bed, alongside my darling wife, in my home, the one I’d slaved to pay for, my manicured garden now wildly overgrown. I fed the list to the fire. I’d start over from the very beginning, wherever that was.

From Guest Contributor Elizabeth Murphy

Watching Grass Grow

Willow loved the flowers.

Yellow lilies sprouted from breaks in old, torn tree bark. Hydrangeas shot up from the ground so beautifully. Willow waited with anticipation and baited breath as grass grew. She watched every moment of it. As tiny white tips sprouted from the dirt, oh joy of joys, the beginning was so exciting! Then, the tiny blades raised up to the sun, and Willow screamed with excitement. She couldn't contain her joy. She watched impatiently as the leaves turned from green, to yellow, to orange, then brown. The moss grew over Willow's feet. Oh, to be a tree.From Guest Contributor Eliana Diaz

Eliana is an English literature and visual art major at UCCS. She is a feature artist in the 50th edition of Riverrun. She is a large fan of mythology, fantasy, and other make-believe.

Twisting Time

Twisting time. Watching all the quantum news, I ponder the latest statement about quantum religion. An attempt by corporations to combine the ideology of Hindoos into the quantum realm and do away with individual religions for a planet-wide religion.

Freaks me out three religions talk about this very topic. And the outcome is not good for humanity. The end result is a system of things or what people reference from movies as the matrix. Kind of wild to see the ending of humanity. The beginning of the terminator reality is just happening. Age becoming a battery. An end of humanity?

From Guest Contributor Clinton Siegle

The Mirror

The crack begins in the center of the mirror, spreads out, and creates four distinct sections. Each one reflects a different period of his life: childhood, young adult, middle age, old age. He sees the past and the future all at once. Like the mirror, he is shattered, torn in different directions. He has regrets, sure, but he wouldn’t be where he is today without those regrets and where he is isn’t so bad. Still, what if he could do it all over again? He reaches out and falls into the mirror and finds himself back at the beginning again.

From Guest Contributor Dan Slaten