Alice Smith

“I wake reaching for you,
fingers curling around nothing,
closing on air thick with absence.
You are not here, but my body does not believe it.
It still flinches at the shape of you,
at the memory of weight no longer there.
Somewhere beneath my skin,
you still exist.”
― Mason Carter, Saltwater & Smoke: Poems of Almosts, Goodbyes, and What We Leave Behind

“Mira smiled faintly. “The gift, in its primal form, wasn’t about price tags or debt. It wasn’t a transaction. It was a gesture of solidarity. A way to form relationships, bind communities together, extend trust beyond bloodlines. Where commodities isolate, the gift unites.”
― Mason Carter, Her Name is Anarchy: a novella

“She stepped closer, close enough that the faint scent of coffee and something like cedar and ash clung to the air between them. Her tone was gentle, as though placing stones in a stream, guiding the water without disturbing it.”
― Mason Carter, Her Name is Anarchy: a novella

“Jullian crossed his arms, almost defensively, but there was no heat behind it. “Animals have morality? That still sounds… primitive. Like pack survival instinct. What does that have to do with our laws? With people who give up their lives for strangers? That’s not instinct. That’s… irrational. It’s like a failure in the cost-benefit logic.”
Mira bent down and plucked a weed growing through the cracked cement, fingers patient. “That’s where something beautiful begins. Reason refines instinct. It doesn't erase it. When we act against our social nature, our mind remembers what our body once knew. A pull toward others. An ache when we ignore it.”
― Mason Carter, Her Name is Anarchy: a novella