Alice Smith

“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

“You were a language I learned by ear,
syllables pressed into the curve of my neck,
intonations traced along my spine.
But love, I have forgotten how to conjugate us—
the past imperfect, the future conditional,
sentences unraveling into tenses
that no longer hold.”
― Mason Carter, Saltwater & Smoke: Poems of Almosts, Goodbyes, and What We Leave Behind

“Yes,” she said. “Truth is what survives verification. Different tongues may call it different names — honesty, fidelity, justice, love — but when you strip language away, what you have left is material behavior. Action. Roots. The rest is perfume and poetry.”
― mason carter

“It should weigh nothing.
Just wood and air,
a shape meant for sitting,
a space meant for filling.
But somehow, it carries more than I do.
This chair—
your chair—
still leans slightly to the left,
still remembers the way you sat,
one leg tucked under,
hands resting lightly on the arms,
as if you were always about to leave
but never quite did.”
― Mason Carter, Saltwater & Smoke: Poems of Almosts, Goodbyes, and What We Leave Behind