“We learn from failure, not from success!” ― Bram Stoker, Dracula

It is a good thing I am not a betting man. I though for sure that the plastic bag would tear against the pavement with one tug. But Jerry’s plan had worked.

He sprayed the cement with water from a hose he had found around the corner. The condo he lived in housed a lot of people. They were always coming and going, but we had gotten lucky. The parking lot was deserted and everyone seemed to be asleep.

I felt tiny droplets of water misting against my calves as Jerry watered my path. My hands dug into the bag like an eagle clutching its still bleeding prey. I tried not to think about what I was grabbing.

"Mother, why don't we draw water from the black pond?"

"Who have you been talking to, my boy? You know you're not allowed near that vile place. If you and your friends are urging each other to seek it out I suggest you find another game to play"

"Why?"

"Because its waters refuse to quench our thirst."

"That's an answer to my first question, not the second."

I know a bully
He's beaten and kicked
And when he tells others
He's hit with a stick

I know a bully
He's sad and alone
It gets even worse
When he goes home

Mama wanted to teach me her folk medicine, but I wouldn’t let her. The woods spoke to her and she listened. I was afraid to listen. I was afraid the woods would speak to me too. Then, what would I do?

I made sure that I’d never hear the woods again. I left home as soon as I turned eighteen and married Phillip. He was a man as far removed from the mountains as the ocean was from Kansas. He came from the big city.

Three years later, I stared at the ocean from Phillip's penthouse window, and realized that both the ocean and the man left me feeling cold, gray, and lonely. They couldn’t compare to the bright, bubbling brook outside the cabin or my mama who cared for me.

Ironically, I could hear the city cry out when I couldn’t hear the woods. I listened to city, and it spoke to me about misery, strife and death. It was depressing. The woods were never depressing.

“What do you think your doing?”

I almost slipped off my narrow perch at the sound of her voice. “Hannah! I thought you were Nike!”
She shrugged, climbing down to join me. “Nah. You’d never hear him coming.” Her eyes shifted around the area. If she was nervous, then that gave me a very good reason to be nervous too. She sighed heavily. “I should have known you’d follow me. Let’s get down from here before he actually comes.” Her words weren’t rushed at all. But I knew her far too well.

I nodded, biting my lip as I slid my foot from its safe ledge. Hannah was already five feet down, her hands grabbing and releasing the mountainside as if it were nothing.
Would she leave me? Surely not! But fear made me speed up.

I sat next to my Uncle,
fourth row from the front, where he told me
he loved me
and meant it.
And I learned how to cry again -
how not to hide my thoughts underneath brain folds
We sat on seats to watch clowns bounce around
in latex spandex, and the trapeze artists coughed fireballs.

She came into my life with a glance, a whisper and a red dress.
We met years ago at a party, she was standing in a crowd with a glass of wine in her hand. Looking so elegant, calm - strangely dangerous...

Our eyes met as I drifted her direction, drawn in by her beauty and mysterious demeanor. We exchanged a cordial greeting, I reached out to touch her hand. We talked long into the night about everything - and nothing at all.

She told me of adventures we could discover, beauty we could create. I believed; I had found my muse. Promises were made, dreams were created. I dove into my writing with a compulsion and desire unbridled by fear, reflecting my life's story for all to see.

A crow flew over to a cabin, hoping to find some food. Sometimes the woodsman would leave meat hanging from the trees, and the crow would take some scraps when the woodsman wasn't looking. The crow noticed that there was nothing to eat by the cabin as it had been all season. Winter would be here soon, and the crow would have to look elsewhere for food again. The crow got curious and flew over to the window, deciding to seek food elsewhere later. Upon looking in, the crow was quite surprised at what it saw.

A large brown bear lay down in the corner of the cabin's main room licking a large leg wound it had. It noticed the crow and looked at it. It was a sad and troubled look. After seeing the crow, the bear returned to nursing its wound. The crow was even more curious now, for a bear in a cabin was an a strange thing to see. It flew onto the window sill and greeted the bear.

"Hello bear. You're an odd sight, living in a cabin. How did this come to be?"

I have written many poems and a few short stories. I submitted these stories on different writing sites. I have never written a book or found a publisher that wanted them for their magazine. I must be looking in the wrong places. If you have some advice for me I ask you to share them with me.

Thank you so much for this. I know there are a lot of different markets out there and I've been looking for a few different magazines on my own. You've just proven to me they're there. Of course, when I received one rejection for a story I submitted they actually said it was a good story just not what they were looking for and I should submit it to a different publication. (yea!)