JessaMar

I'm holding tight to a shard - it cuts, I bleed but I grasp it harder afraid it will slip away as other shards have. Someday, I will gather all the shards back up and make a mosaic; I'm designing it already in my mind. But I was never good at making art that looks like something so for now, I keep the shards around like that box in the attic of bits and bobs. I will wait to know what their shape is, believing they must have one - for if they are shapeless, so am I.

Connie had always been given to nostalgia, even for things that she hadn’t actually experienced the first time. Swing music from the 1940s, old farmhouses, rotary telephones, and fashion from the 1920s or 1960s: it all resonated for her as strongly as the TV shows from her own childhood. She met Phil at a friend's cookout, and didn’t expect that they would hit it off. He worked with computers and spoke eagerly about the latest gadgets; Connie used modern technology willing enough, but she didn’t find anything exciting about it. But Phil didn’t look askance at the hat she wore, and when she talked about her favorite songs he immediately looked them up on his phone. Then he pulled out a bluetooth speaker so that they could listen together, and she was tickled to see that it was fashioned to look like an antique radio. When the virus hit, it was easy enough for Connie to embrace new old-fashioned habits: baking bread, fermenting food, and narrowing her focus to the things she could

The power flowed into him, filling his lungs, spreading out in his blood like oxygen, and settling into the marrow of his bones. He felt himself smile in a way that he hadn’t since he was a boy learning to cast his first spell. He had devoted decades to the study of magic, but now - now he was magic. A glow lit the trees around him. He couldn’t be sure if it was the setting sun, or if the glow came from his own skin. A beetle crawled on the ground nearby, seemingly unconcerned with what it had just witnessed, but yet its movements were in time with his heartbeat. A bird in the sky flapped its wings to the same rhythm. A breeze plucked at his hair and clothes. He began to dance, slowly at first; he followed the wind, and the wind followed him. He moved faster, twirling and leaping, until even the fallen leaves were dancing around him. When he stopped, all was still. He smiled again, and raised his arms to the sky. The first stars were visible. He watched them for a long

Our toolbox is mostly hammers, so we decided that our problems must be mostly nails. And as we had a harder and harder time solving our problems, which we'd labeled as nails, we kept buying more and more hammers. Now, some people say we should get rid of some of the hammers and put something else in our toolbox. And others say, "But then what will we do about all the nails?" And, "What do you have against hammers? Most of them are just trying to do their jobs." In fact, no; they are trying to do the job of a screwdriver, or a shovel, or a tweezers. It isn't the hammers' fault - we are the ones who filled the toolbox. And, "We should focus instead on making sure the hammers are well-crafted and sound, so that when we swing them the head doesn't fly off and hurt someone." In fact, yes! When there are actual nails, we need a sound hammer to reach for. But no matter how sound the hammer, we are still hurting people if we use it to take out a splinter.