Blue is a breeze blowing wisps of hair across my cheek. Red is juice running down my chin as I bite a sun-ripened strawberry. Green, the scent of freshly cut grass, blades rippling and tickling the soles of my feet. Purple is the fading warmth of a summer’s evening. White, a smooth window pane on an icy winter morning.

I feel these things because I was born deaf, and my vision melted away soon after. I sometimes imagine fleeting specks of color from my first glimpses of life, but those memories exist only in the moments between sleep and waking.

From Guest Contributor Megan Cassidy

Megan is an author and English professor currently teaching at Schenectady County Community College. Her first young adult novel, Always, Jessie will be published by Saguaro Books this spring. Megan’s other work has been featured in Pilcrow & Dagger, Wordhaus, and Gilded Serpent Magazine. For free excerpts and deleted scenes of Megan’s work, check out her website or follow her on Twitter

The craft eased through the continuum corridor, leaving old worlds behind.

The primate flinched.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

Melissa, Greek for Queen bee, settled on soft grass. Her flaxen hair complementing an array of colorful flowers; crimson roses forming a perfect circle, stunning pink azaleas beckoning busy insects, clusters of lilac hyacinths and scatters of yellow, white and red chrysanthemums. Her lined hands picked lazily at the daisies strewn across the well-maintained green carpet as she listened to the animated gulls chattering overhead. To be part of nature was relaxing and relaxation healed. The river’s lively current swooshed at the banks beyond. She was at peace, just like her beloved Jacob whose dreary grey head stone overshadowed her.

From Guest Contributor Kerry Valkyrie Baldock Kelly

Jesse saw his blood staining the grass behind him as he was dragged across the lawn. At least he thought it was his blood. He’d taken such a beating that he was starting to worry about Mr. Jordan’s fists.

Tonight, Mr. Jordan was in one of his moods.

Every morning, the grasshopper hopped from one blade of grass to the next eating as much as he could. Winter was approaching. In order to survive, he would stuff himself so much that he’d have plenty of nourishment to last until spring. He didn’t want to end up like his cousin, who paid the price for his laziness.

The moral of the story is never bite off more than you can chew.

She was no ordinary cow. You could tell immediately by the indecent way she chewed her cud. She almost licked her lips with anticipation. She understood it was wrong, but she chewed anyway.

And there she was, the infernal bovine, munching the grass in my front lawn. Damn her.

Michael– the commander of Heaven’s armies, the prince of holy light–was the most powerful of God’s angels. He was also charged with maintaining God’s lawn.

Michael eventually gave up. “From now on, it will be God’s job to cut you down.”

The lushness of heaven extends as far as the eye can see. The sweeping idyll possesses an organic quality only the most punctilious artisan could ever manufacture.

But even in Heaven, the grass does not cut itself.