Bobbi Jo

“2001, NOKIA CELLPHONE
His first cellphone was slipped
into his hands on September 12th,
2001. The cover was the American Flag.
“It’s just... in case of emergency,”
his mother whispered to him.
As if the world had not ended,
had not evaporated already.
He still goes to school.
He hears myths on the bus about Hussein.
He donates his piggy bank to Fire Station 86.
In it is a 20-dollar bill and purple
pieces of toy soldiers.
He wonders if the soldiers’ hearts exploded.
He wants them back in the piggy bank.”
― Palmer Smith, The Butterfly Bruises

“Sad is like a big ocean, and you can’t breathe deep down. You can float on it, you can swim a little, but be careful. Grief is drowning. Grief is deep water.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Howling Dark

“Augustine once said that if there are such things as the past and the future, they do not exist as such but are only the present in their own times. The past, he says, exists only in memory and the future only in expectation. Neither is real.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Empire of Silence

“To love is in part the attempt to become a creature worthy of love.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Howling Dark