BRONZE FROG

Tag: prose

  • A Heap Sort,

    A Heap Sort,

    A still life that refuses to stay still.

    Sugar and brine touch tongues that shouldn’t meet. Ink stains the water while something bright flashes once and is gone. What’s gathered from the ground is braided, then fed back to fire, which remembers everything. Cloth keeps the gesture of a hand; concrete keeps the gesture of winter. A heart opens and leaks without apology.

    A wing holds light the way a screen holds itself—looped, recursive, and with slight delay. Letters appear in a font that pretends neutrality while smuggling intent; a ± that never decides whether it’s healing or harm. The image watches the image watching the image.

    Caffeine hums like a low prayer to velocity. Fish gleam like punctuation. Dust settles on paper, insisting on time.

    It’s an altar, maybe. Or a debug log. Or a spell assembled from whatever was closest when attention struck.

  • Hope? No. Is it fear?

    Hope? No. Is it fear?

    The winter water forms a dulcet froth as it churns bubbles and ice and air.

    The winter sun is setting. Or rising. Skims of golden hour sunlight make their way through the water as the waves crest, whose murky character returns as they are pulled back into the depths. The lapping waves are dense with chunks of ice, tossing them about like buoyant pebbles, smoothing them to seaglass. 

    Larger waves toss the tumulted sea ice onto the frozen banks, where you can stand to watch the waves with relative safety; the largest piece could squarely cover the palm of your hand. Brushing against their melting point, the airy-icy cobblestones, covering every surface, glisten diffusely. The stones glide easily among and across each other, scattering at the slightest disturbance. Frictionless, cold, and slowly forgetting the churn of Lake Michigan they just endured as they bake out in the frigid air.

    The frozen bank is craggy, jutting in and out, ceaselessly bracing against the churn of the water, losing and gaining parts of itself with every wind-swept watery advance. As waves crash, clouds of glittering mist are drawn up from the depths, catching every ray from the drooping sun. The air hangs cold and heavy, bearing down indifferently on the activity of the water, a highly-contested battle between stillness and noise.

    In front of you, cresting a small mound of icy bank: standing tall, a frozen, defiant pair of skinny-fit denim blue jeans.