And Then I Woke Up

by Malcolm Devlin

Isn’t it beautiful how stories can work like that? The subtle way they help the teller, the subversive way they reach the listener, how they creep inside you like waking dreams.

I read voraciously, because words on a page felt committed in a way words said out loud were not.

They liked the weapons she had forged herself; they couldn’t stand the way she chose to wield them.

The crazy stuff was already sneaking in by then. Little cracks in the societal structure everyone stepped over with a little skip rather than stopping to figure out how to resolve.

A story told under duress is not the story ready to be told.