Chloe in Kenner, Lousiana #181 (Love)

I heard a cat calling out in agony and fear and hunger in the alley behind the Dollar General and I went back inside to buy it something to eat. It nuzzled my hand as I fed it and I felt the sharp pain of sorrow and the almost unbearable loneliness of sympathy. Feeding isn't saving. Saving requires a more drastic sacrifice from both parties. Then I understood our love, Alex and I wondered if the earth is my home and if the melancholy in our palsied hearts called us toward union or distinction. (Morgan Garrett)

Leo in Aurora, Colorado #180 (Transcendence)

I closed my eyes when I was driving last night. I took my hands off of the steering wheel and my car veered off the road and into a creek. I got out of my car and was waste deep in that freezing black water and for a moment I felt a kind of rabid peace and liberation that I'd longed for but never known. I looked up and saw planets and stars and universes and the whitest eternities full of purity and divinity.
God. (Morgan Garrett)

Analucia in Saltillo, Mexico #179 (Love)

I've washed your filthy feet. I've cleaned the vomit off of your face. I've peeled you out of your pissy pants. I've dressed your wounds. I love you and you don't love me. I love you and I'm sorry for you. Bearing lovelessness is the great tribulation, perdition and illness and I see the broken human animal traveling through the desert for thousands of miles hungering without knowing what could ease their hunger and slake their thirst. I love you. (Morgan Garrett)

Janice in Wheeling, WV #178 (Self Evaluation)

I'm not getting any younger. Looked in the mirror and saw an unfulfilled old lady longing for something but being so divorced from herself she doesn't even know what she needs. My boyfriend and I eating at some sit down chain restaurant on Friday night, coming home to watch TV and drink some white wine. Going to the beach for vacation every summer. Keeping my house clean and my yard trimmed. Watching my weight, exercising and eating healthy. If there isn't more to this life, then it's not worth living. (Morgan Garrett)

Elmer in Dwarf, KY #177 (Violence)

We was drinkin with this slimy old man we met a Ducky's in a Super 8 Motel room. He offered ta buy the liquor; hell, if someone's buyin we're drinkin. Prolly thought he was gonna have a fuck and suck with my girl an I, buy our assholes an mouths with a little Wild Turkey 101. We was all sittin on tha bed getting perty tight an I had this feelin come over me. I watched him leerin at my girl's crotch, had his hand inchin tward my thigh. I had this feelin come over me. All the men in this world jes wantin to fuck and fuck forever. He got up ta piss an I unplugged the TV and follered him. He was lettin loose a that foul stream a piss an I lifted that TV up an caved in his skull with it. He dropped to tha floor an I kicked him in tha face with my work boots until you couldn't recognize him. Came to myself, sent my girl out inta tha night so's she wouldn't get in no trouble and then called the cops.

Someone like me's not fit ta live with decent people. I took two bucks from his wallet and went to tha vendin machine; got some Barbecue Chips and Strawberry Faygo to snack on while I waited fer tha cops. (Morgan Garrett)

Jason In Hialeah, Florida #176 (Self Evaluation)

Castle in ruins and soldiers at the gate. Poison in my belly and a knife in my heart. When I feasted, I starved. When I drank wine, I thirsted. When I died, I rose like a phallus into some kind of frighteningly authentic everlasting life. (MOrgan Garrett)

Anatole in Ely, Nevada #175 (Self Evaluation)

God will speak today. He will speak through my falsehood, my vanity, my throttled body hanging from the limbs of a birch tree. He will speak about the fallen creature called man and He will free his tortured servants from their mortal bodies. (Morgan Garrett)

Jordan in Yellowknife, Canada #174 (Self Evaluation)

Euphoria and Nausea. My blood is poison. The buzz and shriek of insects. Light from the Summer throbbing on leaves and the prairie grass climbing toward oblivion. (Morgan Garrett)

Adamo in Genoa, Italy #173 (Transcendence)

And everyone who's ever been alive is there
in the Holy City of God
The burden of bodies
and life lifted
No one swimming
or fighting the tide
Tenderness without shame
or fear of man

(Morgan Garrett)

Eliza In Laoag, Philipines #172 (Hyperreality)

Tufts of your hair
reaching out like tendrils toward the sun
archways between their fingers
but you're still abandoned
They reach and grab for anything
but the silence of space
and the blood between your teeth is
something very solitary

(Morgan Garrett)

Sandos in Guayaquil, Ecuador #171 (Hyperreality)

First we'll see a closeup of her face. We then see a room with deep red carpet and gray walls. She is sitting on the edge of a bed and staring out the window. There are floodlights to her left and directly beneath her that illuminates her profile, displaying harsh and unhealthy features. Miasmas. God's tiny birds in her throat. (Morgan Garrett)

Adam in Nantucket, Rhode Island #170 (Dreams)

You're in the back seat of the car sleeping, soft as thirst while I drive into oncoming traffic. You wake up and ask me to lay down with you.
(Morgan Garrett)

Claudia in Lyon, France #169 (Hyperreality)

Violence is lovely in the city
But they don't know how to treasure their loneliness
I'd like to sleep in the sky too
and know every fevered dream

Else in Bern, Switzerland #168 (Hyperreality)

Dead children
who stare at the sun
and go blind

Ellie in Wick, Scotland #167 (Hyperreality)

You were a witch
and I was the deep blue sea
I knelt at your knees
and you licked the floor
with a hungry, longing mouth

Anh In My Tho, Vietnam #166 (Hyperreality)

She was still alive when I used to come visit her. When she died I visited her more. She left behind a window and an untended, overgrown garden. All that violence.

Richie in Bristol, TN #166 (Rewriting Pop Songs)

Chantilly lace
and our garbage race
eating shit
till we die of it
Chantilly lace
and a little girl's face
smiling before she
gets all her teeth

Geming in Jilin, China #165 (Hyperreality)

A nude woman chasing dead animals through a large, wooden empty room. Flowers shivering in the lamp light.

Arkady in Novgorod, Russia #164 (Hyperreality)

Two bodies in an embrace, floating above a bed
Starved children running through the streets
celebrating the end of the material world

Vyacheslav in Gdansk, Poland #163 (Hyperreality)

Praying in cemeteries
where the snow is melting
and the clouds are moving
through puddles filled with illness

Usman in Kalat, Pakistan #162 (Sorrow)

A child in bed
End of natural life
Shadows of animals and plants
Fear and no hope for reprieve
Fleeing down flooded steps
Grass in the wind
Seen through half opened windows
Father, blow the candles out

Yannick In Douala, Cameroon #161 (Sorrow)

Mother has died and we will starve. Longing for grace and blessing the mysterious workings of the hand that moves unseen.

Demirkan In Izmir, Turkey #160 (Sorrow)

There were dead bodies and trash everywhere. Filthy water running freely from a broken faucet. The immense poverty of life.

Andrei in Kharkiv, Ukraine #159 (Love)

Your naked body in the shower. The sound snow makes when it's crushed under foot. Washing your hair in the train station bathroom. Your head flung back, appearing to be in a state of profound ecstasy. Tangles of hair knotted on your slender back. I've never loved another person the way that I love you.

Lori in Ashland, OH #158 (Love)

I approached two butterflies mating in our driveway
I thought of you
As I came closer, they unattached and flew away
I thought of me

Longwei In Suzhou, China #157 (Hyperreality)

Children reborn
Mother dies
Muddy creek
Children cry
Sun sets
Forest in the half light

Sandy in Bettles, Alaska #156 (Hyperreality)

That sink is a basin deep enough to contain a nude male body wounded by the lashes of the unjustness of existence. In the mirror your face is always we but I close my eyes until I find a new way to experience the human form.

Isabelle in Superior, Wisconsin #155 (Self Evaluation)

Even if I'm a dazzling cupola
I don't like the building I crown
and even if I'm an aureola of light
I don't like the sainted head

Wesley in Portland, Maine #154 (Love)

Good in the heart
Is Ashley
She ran instead of walked
when she
was a little girl,
out of restaurants
underneath a large bridge near her house
and always toward herself

Good in the heart
Is Ashley

Jennifer in Silver City, New Mexico #153 (Hyperreality)

They're both lost and terribly alone in the sky. They've each experienced the sensations of ascension and are individually aware of the limitations of their crest. Hiding in the attic, pressing against the skylight; the human face was crowned with soft, blue light. Anyone who saw this face understood the meaning of the word eternal. Rising, creating countries in the night. Even so, exposing isn't healing and our light remains fractured when we stare at our reflection in the water.

Timothy in Yuma, Arizona #152 (Hyperreality)

I saw God stripped of
His humanity
with stars
wound round His throat
like a necklace

Nate in Washington Court House, Ohio #151 (Love)

If I'd left for home, I'd be there by now but then we wouldn't have looked so long as so steadily into each others faces and disappeared into the dark night as suddenly as the girl's arms who are reaching for something beyond herself.

Faizah in Hail, Saudi Arabia #150 (Violence)

I hope they hang my body
in the city streets
So their children can see
the human body doesn't mean anything
I hope they hang my body
in the city streets
So their children can see
their parent's words don't mean anything
My body is unclean
It's easy to die
but it's hard to be alive
A bird ran under my tires this morning
It's easy to die
but it's hard to be alive

Lisa in Tromso, Norway #149 (Transcendence)

I hope
that eternity is quiet
and soft, mother
I hope my passions
die with
my heart

Luis in Camaguey, Cuba #148 (Violence)

Mankind without atrocities is not mankind as I recognize the term. If human beings were not capable of terrible and astounding things I wouldn't want to be alive.

Karl In Hamburg, Germany #147 (Hyperreality)

They aren't objects for sexual gratification. They're little girls being blown up by bombs, crying in a crowd, watching paratroopers descend as slow music plays.

Bogdan In Aryta, Russia #146 (Sorrow)

This child is going to die here in this bed. Someone call his mother. He's shivering; a dog scared by the thunder and scratching the door to get inside. This little creature's life is just like when you were 16 and walking through the city square. A woman smiled at you as she passed in an automobile and then you never saw her again.

Lynn in Shelby, Montana #145 (Sorrow)

It's like watching yourself leaving on a train. You can't comprehend where you're going and you're terrified but your horror is an ecstasy. You know that no one will accompany you on this trip and you learn to thrive in your aloneness.

Mi-Ok In Inchon, South Korea #144 (Love)

Drifting through the many rooms in my father's house
finding no welcome or rest for my weariness
In the quietest room
I found my lover
and he didn't ask me
why I had profaned our love
He had understood
that my heart
couldn't bear it's weight

Oana In Cluj, Romania #143 (Love)

I wish he would have killed me when I stopped loving him. Loss of love is betrayal and makes the taste of life galling because if I could stop loving him, I could stop loving anyone and that means that nothing lasts.

Andreas in Valera, Venezuela #142 (Sexuality)

My attempt at orgasms were so painful when I was younger that I was unable to achieve one until I was in my early 20s. When I overcame the mangling pulse of oceanic misery, I felt that I'd lost something potent and I laid sobbing in my bathtub, frightened that I'd become human. Finally, I became acquainted with the pain of being alive and agony became pleasure.

Elane in Rochester, NY #141 (Violence)

I was in the living room at my grandmother's house opening up a Christmas present a day late when I heard her crying. I went into the patio room and she was laying on the sofa with white fluid coming out of her vagina.

Barney in Moose Jaw, Canada #140 (Anger)

You're all shriveled organisms. You're all dead inside. Your death wouldn't change anything. The world will go on spinning, shitheads.