Creative Writing

A trillion dead souls

“Stand amongst the ashes of a trillion dead souls, and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer.” – Javik (Mass Effect 3)

The sky is full of moving light. Not stars, but flares blooming in the sky, each incandescent burst of crimson a searing cry for help.

Lives and universes eclipsed in violence. We used to reach, hopeful, to the stars. Now weapon fire arcs between worlds, leaving trails of incandescent tears.

The hull of the station grins open. Meteoroid scars, as expected, when faced with stoic determination. But gashes bubbled with molten metal are the will for change twisted into something monstrous.

Inside, there is no gravity, but we all feel the crushing weight nonetheless.
In zero-g, blood doesn't fall, it clings.

I switch on the satellite comms looking for connection, any transmission not choked with fury and tactical snarls. Orders spat through teeth grilled in hate. I contemplate ripping the comms unit from the bulkhead and hurling it into the unjudging dark. Replacing the poisoned words with silence, with emptiness that might make space for something different.

On the viewscreen, a planet looms. It should be a jewel – swirls of blue and green, a cradle of life. Instead it’s ribboned with smoke and amber glow, the cold fire of calculated ruin. War, that ancient infection of humanity, metastasizing across the galaxy.

My air recyclers pressurize and release, a mockery of the steadfastness of breath. We were astronauts, explorers... but today, we are nothing more than soldiers tethered to a metal tomb. We drift, waiting for the next command, the next atrocity – caught between the dispassionate void and the relentless hunger of war.

On the observation deck, a young recruit clutches their stomach. Their first journey among the stars, and their baptism is one of vomit and despair. This was not in the brochure. This endless dark was supposed to be filled with wonder.

I steel my face, open the hatch, and cast aside my hope. Maybe someday, someone might find it again in a forgotten crater. Maybe they'll have reason to believe in real heroes with good hearts. In the inherent justice of the universe.

Photo by Jongsun Lee on Unsplash

Creative Writing

Writer’s block

Send me the language of stars.

Draw me with pheromone-spiced memories into unmapped woods. Ferns unfurl, unrolling slow, revealing perfect quills. Soft ravens cry tears of ink.

Flow out of my pen as I translate the ripples in the mirror.

In a flooded library, white walls molded and crumbling, sodden books come apart in my hands as I magpie translucent words and dissolve the rest. “Intrinsic” and “perpetual” collaged into new stanzas on waterlogged mahogany.

Spore prints tattoo my skin. I loop love words around them in handwriting only I can read. Sink my feet down through bright moss, osmosis flavours of millennia from the roots, draw it through my body and bloom it white-lit in my lungs to speak its story.

Let me weave strong intention in wrinkled hands, unhesitant. Let me conduit the endless as the lightest raindrops dust diamonds in my hair.

Photo by Mike Tinnion on Unsplash

Creative Writing

Worms

I shred letters from you into bedding for my worms.

Over months, heavy words break through writhing bodies in warm, damp dark.

Hundreds touch and consume the last tattered pieces of your lost love.

Nine months later I grow tall, proud stinging nettles with what's left.

Photo by sippakorn yamkasikorn on Unsplash

Creative Writing

Submerge

In meditation upon you I lost myself.
My toes curled into themselves and I fell inwards.
Filling with storm floods. Naked in dark water. Swimming with gills.
I breathe your air between wet lips. I am paper thin pale, you colour me red as I break my ribs to go deeper.
Entwined, we become both more and less.
Electrons energise, orbiting, exchanging. We are pure reaction, molecules of sex, coded so complex
I became intangible.
Indelible. The marks we lay upon each other. The vivid dreams of life together. We held hands tight trying not to tremble. Creaking loudens as water swells. Swallow screams as we submerge.

In black water our bedsheets become jellyfish wrapping stinging strings around my neck. Your eyes empty and you slip away as silver bubbles steal my breath.

Photo by Cristian Palmer on Unsplash

Creative Writing

Empire

Pixels buzz on dusty screens
Motors whirring in gestation
I built all of these machines
Calculating wrong equations.

In light it fell through tin roof rust
One raindrop sparks the crashing system
Night falls painting metal frost
Captures the corroding kingdom.

Then snaking vines constrict cables tight.
Weak walls collapse. And bursting in
Sunlight blisters unkeyed plastic.
Mold empathic eats synthetic skins.
Leaves blanket, dew coats nettles
bold with burning stings.

My empire was dead but it grew.
In the passage of years I may discover
In deep soil, a decayed resistor
And think back to when it was new.

Photo by Kiyoshi on Unsplash

Creative Writing, Recognition

MA Professional Education & Training Graduation

I am extremely happy to have attended my official graduation ceremony from UCL for my MA Professional Education and Training.

Thanks to UCL Institute of Education for putting on a wonderful virtual graduation ceremony to round off a fantastic Masters degree experience!

Attending at 3am over Zoom in my pajamas with a DIY mortar board made out of duct tape by my wonderful partner isn’t quite the way I imagined it would go when I started this degree, but it was a very heartfelt and memorable ceremony that I will remember fondly for always.

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