That vibrant scarlet striking against the snow like a bell ringer striking a bell, reverberating through your body, taking up your entire being. She entices me with her beauty, but her thorns tell me not to touch. The wind sings and she dances with grace. Her perfume is like the smell of the green earth that reminds you you’re alive. I love her beauty, I love her fragrance, I love her grace. I would like to take her to my wife. If she could see this rose the way I see it, then she’d understand the way I see her.

From Guest Contributor Kyla Syner

“Be seen not heard,” they’d say. Even as I dreamt my voice was void. I found myself questioning; was I even being noticed? My arms were flailing, begging for someone to lay their eyes on me. Their blank stare told me all I needed to know. I was nothing at all. I sauntered to the garden and rested my head on the bed of soft blooms. The leaves wound and bent until they filled up my throat, my ears, my eyes; beauty had taken over. I was pulled into the damp soil. I was now definitively neither seen nor heard.

From Guest Contributor Kenna Elliot

One night, the sky’s illumination changes and Harland sees the galaxy open up. The stars fade away as hundreds upon thousands of brand-new ones are born. The light reappears, and he watches as, one after another, the familiar stars disappear again. After a new dawn, the sky will shine with the beauty of new creation, as new forms of life will emerge, be nurtured, become powerful, and change the course of history.

Life is good.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

I met you at a time when the star of you was careening downward. Though in descent, due to illness, your radiance shone in your discussions of the band Rush, the literature of Chesterton, and your absolute love and skill at cooking. You were afraid of being an imposition, not realizing that giving me a chance to help you—during our fateful trip—was my chance to brush against your beauty, your deep, feeling heart. I am selfish; I want more. But I must wait, as your star has again swung into ascension, brightening this world even upon your exit.

For Tony Rome By Keith Hoerner

It was his first and last voyage to sea. An escape ship. His duty; to scrub the decks. He watched as jellyfish gathered around the keel, unnoticed by the experienced sailors. A simple extra hand. Days passed, or months.

She called to him, and the dragon uncoiled. Drunk with thirst and madness he dove into her arms, and the dragon swallowed him whole. Only the birds’ song remembered him.

From Guest Contributor Valkyrie Kerry

Odd remembrances haunt my lazy brain unbidden at odd times. Family legend has me nearly drowning after falling out of a boat when very young. The woman who is now great grandmother and widow that I made out with in my car sixty years ago. A small clothing store that I walked past in West Portland fifty plus years ago. Now there is a freeway where it was. I think it was small, isolated and named Mode O’Day. The traumatized beauty that abruptly rejected me while in college. Did she ever care for me, or was it completely one-sided?

From Guest Contributor Doug Hawley

The naked model sits, head bent, arms and hands relaxing. Her beauty is undeniable with pure white skin and long toned legs.

My love. The lady who stole my heart.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Walking through the park’s garden, the fresh scent of grass and flowers soothes me. The leaves are slowly blowing in the breeze and the chipmunks race around the path.

This is why I’m thankful for the beauty of life.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

The king delighted in varying which crowns he wore. One day he’d wear a crown of gold; the next, a crown of silver or of iron, or even a crown eccentrically fashioned from barbed wire. When he wore the latter, he was always surprised when blood ran in rivulets into his eyes. The queen, meanwhile, hated anyone who might be thought more beautiful than she was. She frequently sent assassins throughout the land to eliminate all possible rivals. That sound isn’t thunder, people would say, but an assassin rapping on the door of a cottage until his knuckles are raw.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of The Death Row Shuffle, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

Walking forever through corridors of art, that’s the fate I sought. If I were doomed to resurrect, as everyone was, why not wander eternally around beauty?

I’ll create art too.

From Guest Contributor Eric Robert Nolan