UNITY DAYS // JANUARY 4-6, 2019 I don't know about you, but there's a moment for me every year - that few minutes or so before midnight every New Year's Eve - where I find myself a tiny bit lost in the wonder of what possibilities might be waiting on the other side of the fireworks about to burst over my head. What will I do? Who will I meet? Will they become a part of my story? Will I become part of theirs? How will the world fall together for each of us, all of us, this tim

He would tell you if you asked him. It would sting, but he would be honest. He’d tell you about the time he’d spent hating the man who stared back at him in the mirror every day. He’d speak of memory…judgement…dead things. People whose lives he’d help take for whatever reason, clawing up out of the ground in his head to hunt him every night; actions he wished he’d taken on the ground and ones wished he hadn’t. He’d speak of moral compromise covered in blood he’d shed; tell yo

No one worth possessing Can be quite possessed; Lay that on your heart, My young angry dear; This truth, this hard and precious stone, Lay it on your hot cheek, Let it hide your tear. Hold it like a crystal When you are alone And gaze in the depths of the icy stone. Long, look long and you will be blessed: No one worth possessing Can be quite possessed. Sara Teasdale No. Not again. Dark hair falls over darker eyes as knuckles tighten over a hilt. He

The last grasp Is the strongest Fingers clasped All around it The let go Is the hardest When you don't know What comes next But something new and beautiful grows Yesterday must die Before tomorrow can be born Yesterday Must Die, Missy Higgins Silence. It greets her in the yellow light where she kneels with a shovel and a backpack stretched to its seams. Scar-pinked skin turns up to sky. So…empty. Nothing but rocks and an oblivion that stretches far as the eye can

When the flood calls You have no home, you have no walls In the thunder crash You're a thousand minds, within a flash Don't be afraid to cry at what you see The actors gone, there's only you and me And if we break before the dawn, they'll Use up what we used to be. Lord, here comes the flood We'll say goodbye to flesh and blood If again the seas are silent In any still alive It'll be those who gave their island to survive Drink up, dreamers, you're running dry. He

All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die. W.H. Auden, an excerpt from his poem Another Time In some places - where the stones dip and curve against the buried skin of the earth below - it pools. Rain

One need not be a chamber to be haunted, One need not be a house; The brain has corridors surpassing Material place. Emily Dickinson, LXIX A small fire crackles at their feet: a bare lick of warmth and brightness in the air between three friends trying to stave off a chill that - whether they acknowledge it or not - cannot entirely be blamed on the weather. Hidden in the shadows, they tug innocently on the threads of tall and spooky tales from their old life; stories once tol

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered— Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before— On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.” Then the bird said “Nevermore.” Edgar Allan Poe, 'The Raven' With the white lights of the great ship fading into the night behind him, a man - veins stinging

He can hear their footsteps - slow, exhausted, heavy - as they return to their safe house of stone and shadows. One by one, Bellamy Blake watches the friends he betrayed with Pike, file in out of the mist and the rain, and an almost fallen night. Miller. Harper. Bryan. Sinclair. Kane, half carrying a shattered, bewildered Octavia at his side. Then...silence. And a gaping hole where a good man should have been. But - as we embark on this chapter of The 100, entitled 'Fallen' -

Across the land, far and wide, death rests like a great storm cloud upon the earth: clouds heavy with misery and cruelty, ready to rain down upon the innocent and the guilty alike. Their fate sealed by a tyrannical Chancellor determined to stamp out any insurgence, Kane, Sinclair and Lincoln sit in captivity waiting for execution in a matter of hours. But - as we come to this: Episode Nine of Season Three of The 100, entitled 'Stealing Fire' - even at such a hopeless hour, th

Something has changed. On the horizon, from all sides, Grounders are gathering in huge numbers, closing in on the walls of Arkadia like jaws as the blockade begins. To break it? Simple: the Arkadians must hand over the leader called Pike, with a view to making him accountable for the hundreds of innocent lives he took in the field massacre. Failure to do so will result in a blockade that will hold until the people of Arkadia starve. Assuming they don’t die of thirst beforehan

A wise person once said that ‘it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.’ And make no mistake: change has come to the peoples of the earth. But such is its magnitude, it is clear from the outset of this week's episode of The 100 - entitled 'Thirteen' - that no-one will emerge out the other side of this revelation, unscathed. Still trapped in a hidden bunker in the bowels of the

The last we saw of her, she was standing - pain free, eyes bright with hope - in an alley way, faced with a beautiful woman in a red dress. The person who had just released her from the torment of an injury that would never heal. The presence who had seemingly restored peace to her soul. The program named ALIE, who now freely roams the conscious mind of Raven Reyes with a manifestation and power as real as any person of flesh and blood standing before her very eyes. Tasked wi

War does not determine who is right - only who is left. Bertrand Russell Cold eyes. Colder hearts. Chests and faces covered in the blood of the peacekeeping forces they have just slaughtered. Ten monsters marching home. No prisoners taken, no mercy shown. Strewn across the mountainside behind them lie two hundred and ninety nine people - and a hard won peace - all viciously murdered by a squad of angry soldiers and a domestic terrorist wearing a Chancellor's pin. So dawns day

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice. Robert Frost, Fire and Ice For years, they have courted each other's destruction. A hateful dance of carnage, bloodshed and who knows how much collateral damage. Regardless of who started it, though, this was a war that existe

A feast of ornate, stunning patterns. Walls of wood and stone, interlaced with a dance of crafted shadows and sunlight. Lush furs, and materials somewhere between royal purple and ruby red, garnishing the room. As we come to this week's newest episode of The 100 - entitled 'Ye Who Enter Here' - you can't help but wonder if there was ever a more a sumptuous and plush prison for one such as her. For the one who has caused so much mayhem for so many, even if she did have her rea

For three months, Clarke Griffin has successfully evaded a veritable horde of mercenaries: every one of them eager and salivating at the thought of capturing the woman they call Wanheda: Commander of Death. But no longer. In this week's episode of The 100 - entitled "Wanheda: Part 2", Clarke finally finds herself outfoxed. Now captive to a mysterious bounty hunter who seeks to return her to an unknown enemy, she knows that she is heading to a potentially fatal end at the hand

I bear it so they don't have to. One can only imagine how those words have haunted Clarke Griffin. In some ways it seems like only yesterday that this extraordinary girl was sent to ground with ninety nine other people, as a sacrifice in search of a new life. In reality, a lifetime has passed as if it were no more than the blink of an eye. With the roar of her own chilling legend still ringing in the ears of the world, and innocence long since left in tatters at her feet, Cla

I am the captain and this is my shrine. Lord of the manor. See what I leave behind. River in flames, cities on fire. Yes, I'm a relic trapped in the wire. …Now a glorious war draws to a close. The yellow winds blow. And I have to know. Oh industry, whatever will become of me? - “Oh, Industry”, Bette Midler She stands fast for a moment, alone in the crippling emptiness that now billows through the space where only minutes ago an army had raged; and an ally – the most pow

In the walls. Around corners and in shadows, wanting the vast concrete heart of the Mountain to absorb them like water into earth; hoping that the people within it that are sympathetic to their plight, are able to keep them safe. Such is the fraught, tenuous hold on safety to which the 44 are clinging as they wait for Clarke and Lexa to finally break down the doors with the Grounder army. But despite the acid fog being destroyed, Cage – a man with no qualms about shedding blo