United Flannel. (19.11.16)

The consciousness we have come to know as flannel has been around for millennia.

It felt the heat of volcanoes, survived sharp cold of ice ages.

It searched endlessly for something to give it form, that felt like home.

Finally, it discovered flannel.

It would be the perfect vantage point from which to interact with the strange utterly irrational, coincidental people that had coated the earth in themselves.

It became flannel, and flannel was strategic. Picky about who it chose, mostly staying quiet, dormant, waiting for the next thing it needed: an ally.

The allies flannel found were the gays.

The gays were the perfect companions for flannel, and slowly it started to open itself up to them, and little by little a symbiotic relationship was born. Warmth and comfort offered on the part of the flannel, with pride, expression, and protection offered on the part of each gay the flannels cohabited with.

Together, they found acceptance for themselves in the world.

Together, they push each other to strive and thrive.

Together, they’ll seek revolution.

Super Patron Creator Arts Grant Application. (19.11.17)

I’m Zoe Brook. I’m a writer.

I write short, long, surreal, silly, magical, and often queer fiction.

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The Woman Dipped In Ink.

Red dress. Black dress. White dress.

White dress, black flowers, red petal tips.

She drifts through the world. Rain pelts the glass in fat, running droplets as she watches. Their streams distort light, views through the window. Inside, and out.

Her fingertips trail down the pane. Longing, loneliness in her eyes.

Ink seeps from her. Constant, viscous, pooling. From her fingertips, heels, hair, tear ducts, it seeps and runs from her, pooling in places, sticking in others. Reflecting slick highlights.

As she drifts, the ink runs like tears around her. It fills her footsteps, dissipating in rain and evaporating into black stains in the sun. It’s left dark and unseen on anyone she touches, without her knowing. It bubbles up through the skin at her throat, sliding down her chest through her dress’s weave without leaving trace, but marking the whole world around her.

The rain is a mild, warm background noise in a cold city, accompanying her tapping footfalls as she walks through the alley slow, barely feeling the rain. The edges of petals on her soaked, summery dress the only spots of color in the scene.

Soaked in experiences turned potential, is this

Her beginning or her end?

She walks, a lifetime of untold stories no longer contained, flowing away from her in fine rivulets.

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Honey Vinegar.

He demanded salad, every Sunday lunch. The centerpiece. In the beginning, it was the symbol of his blandness, his normality, everything that frustrated and hurt her. But little by little she learned to make the salads better. Spiced dressings, bits of added fruit, nuts, or grains. They became her own. He didn’t change, but her salads did.

To this day, honey vinegar’s sweet bite reminds her that she is finally free.

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Potential Accumulated.

Imagine, a city in gray monotone. Noir aesthetic, perhaps with the odd pop of color only occasionally. It’s raining there, striking an odd balance between warmth and chill. The motion of the city blending together into a stillness.

A few people in this city feel balanced within themselves. But most are lonely, brave enough to stay the same, yet lacking the strength that a sincerely offered ear lends. Without quite the bravery to be the first ear in the domino line of change; listless islands they.

Stories are experiences, ideas, woven with magic.

When the metaphorical ink of potential accumulated, would-be written stories, becomes physical force unseen within.

Does it bring hope or sorrow?

Yes. Exactly.

Murmurs. Watcher Garden #17 (19.3.2)

Somewhere in the vastness it murmurs

It is not painful to look at the sun.

But it is.

It is painful to look at the sun.

It is not because of the heat, the gas, the sheer power, as has been decided.

It is because the eyes that live there do not want you looking back.

It is easy to create an entire existence if you are a brain.

So the illusion of pain, brightness, heat is easy.

To keep from seeing the eyes that do not want you looking back.

Hot Berry Dream. (19.3.21)

Falling, falling, falling.

Down. Up? Stop.

Whites meld other colors. Blues. Deep purple. Chasing playful passions.

Passions in the air, twisting vines of design across the fading white colors.

A blink is a century, wait. Bees make the colors and wipe them across the sky.

There is nothing but sky and working bees.

What else would you stand on but sky?

Sky in front, behind, is peace. Calm. Anxiety.

Behind is guttering worry, pressing on the senses but staying just out of consciousness.

Can’t see the peace behind. Only see the beauty in front, found after a fall.

Bees migrate between the worlds. Their passions trailing off at the precipice, wilting until their bee returns for them.

If their bee returns for them.

Emerging and returning bees bring the ingredients for the colors made to be wiped across the sky.

A passion barrels toward you. Hits you square and knocks the sky out from under you.

Falling.

Symbolistic metaphors.

Falling.

Pick your poison.

Falling.

Teach yourself which metaphor you see.

Fell.

Jerked awake hot and sweaty next to a bed not slept in. Foreboding and hope tangled together as unsupervised ropes, a jittery urge to do something, choose something.

Which thing? No matter.

Follow through on change, there will be.

Tea first, then decide. The kettle whistles. Cup clinks on a saucer. The fruit cup glitters with fruits.

Picked up on a whim at the market, couldn’t possibly hurt. Hot berry’s visions only a myth.

Then why does the hand shake as it brings tea to the lips?

What did you see? What did it teach you?

Which change will your choice bring?

It must be chosen after tea.

Choices and Chances. Watcher Garden #16 (19.5.17)

Choice is an illusion,

Sometimes

Choice is a circumstance

A situation

Held in stasis forcibly

Not allowed to leap.

Choose perhaps,

but not freely.

Only from a set selected for you

Rarely is indecision an individual’s fault.

They seek the whole picture,

A bird’s eye view,

Complete with highlight in the pupil,

To know truly what all the options are,

Why some cannot be opportunities taken,

Before making a choice,

While they can feel its illusion

Plastered over station, status, means.

….

Past illusions have brought them together,

Probability, improbability.

Will it be, this time,

Choice?

To go along with each other.

Justices Meeting. Watcher Garden #15 (19.4.23)

Evenings sweet tonight,

Hot sugar and fireflies floating.

Moccasins protection meeting mossy edges.

Edges orchestrating the demise of toughest rocks

Surviving themselves in delicacy over thousands of millenia.

Clutching pastry kebabs, a celebration of success that day, she follows the beckoning call to the rooftop.

Her trellis climb to freedom and rest.

Tripping gusts of wind playful around her feet as she steps up.

Justice of hers catches justice of another’s.

Trellis delicately strong for hundreds of footsteps, well traveled well known, snaps.

Weight of justice clinging to the ground, the newfound

Kindred spirit huddled.

Become awkward pile of legs, kebabs, startled fearful yelps.

Has luck run out?

Or found its complement?

Brilliance’s Breath. Watcher Garden #14 (19.4.23)

Brilliance trapped in beggar,

Kicked in the shins too many times,

Finally remanded from the wealthy quarters,

trudging now.

This trellis something pretty, something warm.

Something to welcome her.

She settles beneath the friendly nature on spindly spines.

Descendents of the garden here.

To breathe.

Heat Reader. (19.2.14)

I hold my hand over his chest, just until I can barely feel the warmth rising from him. He lives, still as death, half his greenish pale body covered carelessly with a thin, stained sheet. I keep my eyes on that side of him, trying to ignore the gash torn through his other hip. I start to read his heat.

There’s a growl from next to me. “Faster.”

“You know it takes patience.” I say quietly. And he knew the shackles that weighed cold and solid around my wrists got in the way of the read. They all knew.

Though, I could still read faster than they thought. I felt he wasn’t dead. I felt the treatment path. They knew about that part. that’s why I was here, a healer heat reader is useful in keeping their armies alive in the fight against my people.

They don’t know that I can read his importance. His determination, and his hatred.

This man would be incredibly hard to kill. But this time it’s not a bad thing, not a thing I will have to fight. This time it’s exciting.

My keeper tugs my hand away from his body with the shackle. “What this one need?”

I duck my head to hide the flash of excitement in my eyes.

“Take me to the doctor, I must tell him something.”

. . . .

That night I sit alone, finally, in my cell. Legs crossed on the flat sleep mat, calm. My mind races, despite my forced outer calmness.

The man lying on the table this afternoon, he hated the army, the war, his superiors, as much as I do. He wants them to parish.

When I read his heat it wasn’t life simply life, death, or rot heat. I read his heat as the leader of the resistance.

Our Resistance. Salvation.

This man, I’m excited to see better.

To see who my partner in saving my world will be.

Day’s Work, Existence. Watcher Garden #13 (19.4.23)

Sure, quick footed steps.

She flies along the cobblestones here, the river bed there.

Needs met.

Necessities acquired.

Day achieved.

The means? They are what they must be.

Move to survive, keep alive.

Consider carefully when, if ever, there is time.

Law hands left behind, reasons unseen.

For difficult duties of life, it is not so bad to live in the wind.

Justice soars beside her.