Submissions by SilverInkblot

A girl once told me she was conceived by the ocean. "By" not "beside" – her skin was the color of new seafoam and you could follow her green eyes into the deeps and drown there. She had a soft, papery voice that sighed in and out and dark hair that cascaded past her shoulders like dried seaweed.

She was born along the sea strand, where the ocean met solidity and pounded it into tiny grains.  Perhaps she was delivered in a clump of seaweed or crawled her way out of a pink conch shell and learned to swim before learning to walk. She carried an air of calm serenity...

Your clockwork appendages
were cold to the touch.
The industrial complex of your mind
was grating gear against gear
where the unoiled
works kept clacking away; your atrium
was a tick-tocking machine
that counted the hours while the rust settled in.

The mainspring spiraled round
your mechanical heart tensed
so tightly it showed in your face,
in your quivering hands,
your troubled eyes;
the unlubricated escapement never released,
oxidized into place
from ages of neglect.

The joints of your fingers corroded
with...