Adults

Freckle-specked skin on the back of her hand with a wedding band and a solitaire diamond. On the fingers before hers, turquoise stones on silver. Before hers, plain gold. The hands of my mothers, working, fixing, making, smoothing, soothing. My thumb traces the skin of your hand and there I see ten fingers, pink nails, and freckle-specked skin on the back of your hand. Mine just like theirs, yours just like mine.

Destined for cosmos while walking through mud, our minds long to float aloft while hands cling to soil and rock. Once upon a time, we sat at the sea’s edge watching waves with wonder. Now we gaze up, eyes tracing constellations as our toes are seasoned with dust. Starlit breadcrumbs beckon to earthly souls chained within flesh and hearts that beat for solid ground. Still, we yearn for the stories the stars hold.

Fear once told me that art was a dangerous road called Starving Artist Way. So, I studied spreadsheets and sent emails instead. Now a phantom haunts the rafters and she is ravenous, clawing thoughts with sharpened fingernails and gnawing on bones. The artist rages to be free. “Neglect made me this way," she laments from her cage. A starving artist, yes, because I have starved her. Watch now as I set her free.

A little girl named Susan lived in the countryside and her days were filled with burying her nose in library books. Books were her comfort, escape, and place to dream. With each turn of the page, she embarked on fantastic reading adventures, traversing galaxies, and exploring the magic of books. Imagination soared in her hands and painted her world with wonder and curiosity as the absorbed the words on each page.

Priti's scuba mask fogged with each labored breath as she finned deeper into the eerie depths off Sandy Hook. Her research team had detected bizarre bio-readings in this unexplored trench. Something pale and colossal emerged from the gloom—a gargantuan relic of a long-extinct species. She reached out to study the behemoth's barnacle-encrusted hide. Suddenly, it convulsed, and Priti's blood turned to ice as a massive eye cracked open, fixing her in its ancient, intelligent gaze. Bioluminescent markings along its flanks began pulsing in a coded pattern. First contact had been made.