Ell Grey
Ell Grey is a writer, a passionate Dragon Age player, and a lover of D&D. They are the proud adopted parent of two furry little beasts, Toby and Wilbur, who enjoy watching cooking shows and horror movies with them. If you ask them to write an essay, they will cry, as they much prefer to write fantasy and sci-fi.
Space Lesbians
They didn’t believe in gods, not at first. How could they, when the polished, sanitized visages plastered on buildings and street corners were blind to the people they were meant to protect. They learned quickly that the gods were just like the governors and the factory owners, who spent their days worshiping at the altar of profits and of greed. They cared only for those who could fatten their already overflowing pockets, and everyone else was simply a bug to be stepped on to reach greater heights. So no, they didn’t believe in gods.
But then they met her, and how could she have been anything but? Her watchful eyes sat sunken in her ashen face, such a beautiful brown no planet in the galaxy could hope to produce its equal. Her hair was tied back- always- a curtain of starlight shaped into a halo rising above her head. They knew then and there their life was hers; they knew they would throw themself at her feet, songs of praise bubbling from their lips, at every opportunity she gave them. It was when she spoke that their ideas of divinity fled; she was firm, but soft, a smile always on her lips when she glanced in their direction.
No, she wasn’t a god, she was something far greater, for what god could love the way she did?
Bugs, Somehow
Whispering between the stairs
The soft words of scuttling feet and clicking jaws
Tiny and silvery
with black eye sockets gaping above mandibled mouths
Blinking open and closed in a meaningless pattern
Trying to speak of something deep
and chilling
and unheeded
But in the end, just vacantly grinning, and easily ignored
Love Poem for an Ex
The only karaoke I’ve been to was in my kitchen, with you
Crooning along to words spilled from crackling Ipad speakers
Bumping shoulders as we spun on creaky stools, simple and naive and the happiest I’ve ever been
I was told to write a love poem
And you were the first person who came to my mind
Even though I wish I didn’t think of you every time I hear that song you hated,
or when I see sparkling gems that still don’t measure up to your eyes
I wish that this love would leave, and leave me lighter
I know it doesn’t weigh you down, and it never really did
But I am a bag of stones, filled with every word you’ve ever said to me, thrown into the river called healing and told to swim
So yes, I wish I could say that I don’t love you anymore
But your voice claws at my heart, on the cold January days when all I can see is gray
So I can say whatever I want
And we’d both know it isn’t true
Purple
Purple was hard to make,
which is why the rich, the greedy,
the kings and the monsters who reach for such titles,
Drape themselves in it
But how hard is it really, to reach your throne through a climb up the mountains made of our corpses
The poor, the kind, the small
They exist only as things to stepped on to reach the height of purple
So sit there, in your pristine palaces, draped in your fabrics dyed with our bloodied
Because it truly must be such an easy color for you to make,
you who care only for wealth,
for power,
for purple,