The Waiting Room

My clammy hands make the number I pulled soggy. I roll the paper’s corner between my fingers until it looks like the twisted end of those poppers you throw at the ground. The chairs are ice cold and don’t warm up to me. Who am I waiting for to call my name? The slip is blurry. There’s no number after all. My skin is on fire. The paper disintegrates. Now I’ll never know when I’ll be called. The gift of creation is eating me alive. I really wanted to get that checked out. But I don’t think anyone is coming.

From Guest Contributor Madeline van Batum

Madeline lives in Colorado with her cat and hopes that one day she can go back to her home country of the Netherlands to finally meet the Flying Dutchman.

Splayed And Displayed

I went to a market of oddities and curios. One hundred vendors and their jars of preservation liquids, mounted heads, spell jars, and crystal towers. Shoppers passed me with arms full of worn antlers and venomous plants. I weaved my way through the crowds until I stood in front of a glittering wall. Iridescent wings pinned in shadow boxes lined up like soldiers against black stock paper. I never knew something could be beautiful and sad at once. The stage lights did not do justice to the splayed things. Floating over flowers in the sun is a much better sight.

From Guest Contributor Madeline van Batum

Madeline lives in Colorado with her cat and hopes that one day she can go back to her home country of the Netherlands to finally meet the Flying Dutchman.

Sofa Of Cycles

The sagging couch cushions are a trophy–evidence attesting to her self-discipline to stay situated.

She’s a chameleon in her contradictory custom office. An extension cord slithers around wooden legs, dressed with a black and blocky laptop vitalizer. The coffee table has been repurposed into a feet-book-pen desk, crowded with sacred guides to creation and the honing of creative crafts. No clocks tick, as time gives no counsel. Silence rears its head to the ears of the beholder, mouth perpetually packed by scribbles and click-clacks.

She forges life and death. A prolific puppet master.

Stay at home God of worlds.

From Guest Contributor Madeline van Batum

Madeline lives in Colorado with her cat and hopes that one day she can go back to her home country of the Netherlands to finally meet the Flying Dutchman.