Edition 5 Prompt – Unreliable Narrator: A Tale from Two Sides

Sun & Stars
By Eliza Shallard

I love him, maybe. I fight for him anyway and win, because that’s safer. I’m not happy. I should be. He’s perfect.

But something big is missing. I cry on my best friend’s shoulder and since that’s already ridiculously cliché, I let myself wonder, what if I’d had the courage to fight for her instead?

***

She loves someone else. That’s okay because she’s beaming, she’s the sun.

But then she’s crying and all I want is to make her laugh. I make her laugh sometimes and she looks at me like maybe I’m her stars.

But that’s normal, right?

Brain Versus Heart
By Noni Cole

When it comes to dealing with feelings

And emotions

There are two worse than a conflicting conscience

They personify the duality of art and reality

Combating anatomy

They coexist to resist and insist

Each other’s irrationality

One says “go!”

The other says “no!”

Know of forgo?

We are an entity though?

Inherent deceit

Competing, beating, bleeding one another

Both just as greedy

And neither defeating the other

Of equal reliance

And virtual compliance

It defies all logic

Synthetic apparitions of you

And illusions

Cause confusion

We’re back at the start

My brain thinks I just had a change of heart

Hot Coffee
By Edie M Bush

Betty was onto her fifth rendition of Chris’ promotion from office overseer to co-supervisor. Cheryl sucked her lips as if in deep thought and blinked to shift the glaze on her eyes. Adjusted her scarf against the icy mist. Only an hour in. Two more to go.

What she wouldn’t do for a hot coffee.

“Skim cappuccino, extra extra hot please, dear. Really hot.”

“Yes, same again, thank you. As I was saying –”

***

At the barista bench, Sarah’s waitress smile stretched into a ironic grimace.

“Two ‘hot’ skinny caps for a pair of old biddies.” Carl rolled his eyes.

Dilated Eyes
By Isabella Luk

In the water the stick is bent

My eyes they deceive me

But they are all I have to see

I saw this with my eyes

The man. He jumped

The man jumped. Where did he jump?

The man jumped off the building.

The stick is straight

The man made no noise

And eyes lie to me

I saw this with my eyes

The man was pushed off the building

The man fell off the building

The man tripped off the building

The man flew off the building

What did I see?

The man jumped off the building and lived

It Comes In Two
By Scarlette Do

He brought me where no one could find us

He made me kneel on the fallen twigs
amidst the naked trees

His hand behind my head

His hand between my thighs

He came to the sounds I could not make

He left before I could speak again

I wanted him to stop.

***

I followed him to the place no one knew

It was the way I looked at him

the way I had my first button undone

I touched him there, where he liked it best

I touched him where he could not resist

I wanted him

Too.