Chloe Allison
Creative stories inspired by fleeting moments captured in the streets of Richmond.
His mother’s mother was a painter and danced upon the reaching ladders like they were a second pair of legs. He was always mesmerized by her ease of being up so high. All the while, he was terrified of being on the shortest ladder in his family’s company.
Rooftops glistening with the tears of a girl trying to find herself again. She rained until she couldn’t. She poured until she was drained of everything but her essence. Just her in the city of faceless people trying, just like her, to find their own smiles again.
These locks are supposed to symbolize everlasting love, but instead what if I use one to eternalize myself. Lock in a piece of my heart to be a secret symbol of self-love.
What secrets do the ceilings have hanging right above our heads?
The brick fireplace spills molten lava lamps and amber-orange juice from its furnace. Reflections reflecting enigmas of poems within its light and awaiting endless beginnings, middles, and ends.
One slip and they may fall. Holding on to the hope that the bars that can’t keep anyone out can at least hold them up— they’re charmed by the graffiti telling tales of the gods who created them and why they exist. They hang on to their histories. Tosses them around in their head like drying laundry and stacks them neatly in their mind for the next time they need to bring them up again.
Maybe this story is too cheesy to share.
In the moments we met, I saw you through reflections and corners of the windows. Smiles that seemed to walk away as soon as I did. The laughter that would bounce on the sun’s rays. Yet, the clouds still swam through the glass, and the street lights never dimmed because you weren’t there with me.
‘Til the morning sun. They wonder how their cards will play out and how many sunsets that’ll become new favorite memories.
Beyond the sign, we see so many things through the glass yet we are so blind to what is going on around us.