As a girl she dreamt of becoming a butterfly, pearl-winged and pure.
Instead she turned dark and rigid, crawling out of adolescence on spindly legs. She could not fly, and so taught herself to weave. The silk in her veins was endless and iridescent; the tales it spun were beautiful.
Alyson Floyd spins her stories late at night with caffeine in her blood and a CD in her discman.
Last night I walked into the sea, not planning to return. Suspended deep in endless black, a stranger’s ashes whispered to me.
“You’re too early,” they said, shimmering in the warped moonlight. “Go home.”
I washed up onshore at sunrise, still breathing in spite of myself. And I walked on.
Alyson Floyd wrote this. Author’s note: for Beck.
Things went missing when he was around. A dollar here. A cigarette there. He swore it wasn’t him.
The summer he moved away, we kissed behind the bleachers. I found a fragment of me in his pocket. He couldn’t deny it that time–he’d stolen it the day we met.
Alyson Floyd is camping on a couch in Houston, Texas, writing odd little things for your entertainment.
I throw on my finest dress and my dancing shoes. I swallow my nausea in the bathroom. I trudge toward the altar as my audience gawks. I play pretend.
Pretend that I want to be here.
Pretend that I meant to say yes.
Pretend that I never stopped loving you.
lyson Floyd is a writer, rock music devotee, and west coast smoker. You can contact her on Instagram at @monochromefloyd. Knock three times.
I learned from you to lure them in by radiating loneliness. To cup them gently in my hands so I wouldn’t crush their small wings. To whisper my last goodbye and let them go. I still heed your words every time I catch one. After all, it might be you.
Alyson Floyd is a writer, poet, and amateur zine-maker drifting around the east coast.
Her skin droops under the bar’s neon lights, melting away like candle wax. From underneath, a different woman emerges. Disheveled hair. A tattoo sleeve on her arm. Gray eyes that might’ve been green once. With every self she burns through, all that becomes clearer are the screams she hears inside.
Alyson Floyd is a writer, artist, and poet. She hopes to publish a novel someday and then disappear into the woods.