Echoes And Reflections

It follows me everywhere, the inaudible predator. Fixated upon a daily routine, mocking every subtle maneuver that I made. The thing glissades in a deriding dance upon my every step. A replicant of form cast under the luminosity of ever radiant sun.

Signified in our sinister, daily reflections. An entity of faux similarity and duplication. In such replication a truer self and profound verity obtained. Co-conspiring and willingness etched upon that imitation smile. The backdrop of the unstained silhouette and persona versus my tainted hand. A cheering entourage as the blade is always in my hand painted with crimson delight.

From Guest Contributor Brett Dyer

The Warrior's Path

The warrior sharpened his sword every day by slicing individual strands of grass. He started in the front of his house and worked his way, patch by patch, blade by blade, towards the back. When he finished the last corner, the grass in front had grown long again. Without pausing, he would get to his feet and return to the starting point, ready to start over.

In this way, his weapon remained sharp, always ready to draw blood. And in this way, time had nothing with which to compare itself to and became lost.

Such is the path to immortality.

Only Flying

It was not until it hit the blade of the worst rock, riddled with femurs and water skulls, that the river split open and found the leverage to jump out of its bed. It left comfortable moss, minnows’ gossip, and the sound of its own body rubbing past stones, on or around. It surrendered, leapt without choosing, a reflection in air of the path it had known before—the meadow, the factory, the wooden swing. The cottonwoods, black and white. It had become the ocean it had always wanted to meet, silent now, still on the same path. Only flying.

From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

Brook holds a BA from Vassar College and an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University. She teaches college writing and is the co-owner and chief editor of BluePlanetJournal.com. Her nonfiction, poetry, and flash fiction have appeared in Creations Magazine, Little India, Outpost, Nowhere Poetry, and The Syzygy Poetry Journal.

There Hangs The Sword

There hangs the sword, the one handed down from father, to son, to me, the symbol of my family, the defender of our home, the weapon that has slain hundreds, that fought for our homeland in the long war, and struck fear into our enemies, the blade that was retired but never allowed to dull, that was laid to rest but never sheathed, that was put on display as a reminder to all future interlopers this house will forever be vigilant, there is the sword even now, still hanging there, as I slowly bleed out on the floor below it.