Bill and Greg had worked as gravediggers for the New Horizons Cemetery for more than twenty years, but their feelings about the job couldn’t have been more different.

“Well, it beats digging ditches.”

“You may begin your journey,” she said.
“Wise One, how far must I drive?” he asked.
“Until the pollution of light dims into darkness and the stars shimmer free,” she answered.
“How far, Wise One, must I then walk?” he asked.
“Until the pollution of noise fades into the distance so that you can hear cicadas harmonize with the wind,” she answered.
“How long, then, must I stay, Wise One?” he asked.
“Until the pollution of your mind drifts away like smoke,” she answered.
“Then, Wise One, what must I do next?” he asked.
“You may begin your journey.”

From Guest Contributor, Karen Burton.
Karen is an MFA student at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri.

Dave wanted to see Rebecca one last time. He hated for something so meaningful to be left open-ended.

The next day, Dave was driving to Chicago.

The instruction on the bottle was clear: Don’t fall asleep or you will die!

Eventually she succumbed to the sweet embrace of slumber. When she awoke the next morning, her schizophrenia medication had finally taken effect and her delusions were forgotten.

Pushing too hard. Pushing too fast. Wanting something with such veracity that the world disseminates into popping bubbles. I have poured myself into us with too much speed; I am breathless. You are smothered. As the air escapes into a toxic atmosphere, I gulp your aroma into my lungs. I clutch your being until the oxygen releases into the air, and you die beneath my affections. My sorrow does not reconstitute you; my grief does not call you from beyond. Can you hear the lack, the absence of hope? Slow is not for the desperate. I drown in your absence.

From Guest Contributor, Karen Burton

Karen Burton is an MFA student at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, MO

They had him taped to the floor. When they were holding him down and placing one piece of tape after the other, he’d smiled. Faintly so as not to be noticed, but a smile nevertheless. They didn’t have enough tape to hold a person flat to the ground.

This would certainly be one of the worst ways he’d ever been killed.

The silence wrapped around us tightly, even as we fought against it. There we tears, the quiet kind, and anguished expressions. More than one person collapsed to the ground.

The sacrifices were necessary. The welfare of our entire civilization depended on them. But we each vowed this would be the last time.

The portal calls to me in the songs of ancient gods, but my feet are mired in the ordinary, the necessary, the mundane. The music pulls me forward until I feel as if I shall break into two pieces—leaving only half of me to enter the world that is next.

The melody shifts in key, and I am beckoned not to walk, but to rise. I understand that I do not need these frozen feet. I spread my arms to the future, and I streak upward. My boots remain in the mud, but I am whole. I can fly.

From Guest Contributor Karen Burton.

Karen is an MFA student at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, MO.

Thanks a million!