Voices of the Ribbons©.

 PR15M: Guilt By Ink Those first days after Ice’s return were overwhelming and, if for me, then how much more so for Ice. I could feel it radiating from him in waves that pulsed in my temples and throbbed in my chest and yet there was precious little I could do except be there for him in the quieter hours of the night after the doctors and the visitors finally left him to some measure of peace. It wasn’t surprising. Hae-jin and the Black Dragon security team managed to keep a great deal of the media at bay, but news of his return slipped out despite their best efforts. Journalists camped at the hospital doors and did their best to make it to the private room the company had transferred Ice to and so security around him was tight. Then, naturally, there was his actual physical condition to take into consideration, which wasn’t great, and the questions. So many questions. His physical and emotional condition led to many of those questions. It wasn’t only about where he’d bee...

 When I was a Child By Guest Contributor: SueC " When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." Corinthians 13:11 I remember learning this in Sunday school, gosh, how long ago was that? Sometimes, it feels like a lifetime ago and sometimes it feels like just last week. Our Sunday school teacher, Mrs. MacEachern, whose voice always sounded like she was singing an octave higher than God intended, would tell us, 'Don't worry about what it means, you've got the rest of your lives to figure that out. For now, you must commit it to memory." I remember thinking, "Well, that's dumb!" Now, here I sit, the events of this morning swirling in my head. The day started out like any other. I woke at the usual time (7am), ate the usual breakfast, (Cheerios with milk and half a banana), watched my usual program (Captain Kangaroo) while absentmindedly searching for treas...

 PR15M: Salvation By Ice It took me three days to find Ink alone and unattended by his retinue of bodyguards so that I felt safe to approach him. Three days of following him and watching him from the shadows. Three days of agony. I'd found him. I'd finally, after all these years of loss and pain, rediscovered my brother and I was vibrating with impatience and anxiety. But old habits die hard and I wasn't ready to let my guard down easily, even for Ink. I'd learned the price of trust and it had come at the cost of Taehyun's life and I wasn't about to walk out into the unknown without some measure of confidence in my ability to safely retreat if need be. It was three days but what was three days after it had already been ten years? Still, it burned me to have to wait those necessary three days. It was an all-consuming fire that made it impossible to eat or to sleep and I stumbled through fevered days and nights waiting for an opportunity and meanwhile rehearsing a...

  Honesty or Discretion? By Tai How do you give a review or critique when you admire and respect the person but honestly don't like the writing? When does critique become criticism and when does honesty go from being supportive and constructive to being cruel? This is my dilemma and it's not the first time I've encountered it. Writing a positive review for the work of an author you truly love is dead easy. I have been sorely tempted on several occasions to give a 5 * rating and the only reason I don't is that 5 *'s suggests there's nothing left to prove. Writers always have something left to prove; even if only to themselves. More often, I tend toward the middle ground. A 3 * from me should be taken as the sincerest of compliments and anything above that is 'praises to the Light for your work!'. That's how I personally roll and I'm not speaking on account of anybody else because everybody else has their own personal approach to critique and revie...

 The Edge of Darkness (Of an Impossible Love) By Arlan "If you don't make the effort to seek the Light, the Darkness will swallow you." It was always going to be a fight and I was a fool to have thought otherwise. I was, I am , mortal. He was, is , always will be, a god. And one who toyed with hearts as easily as a cat toys with its prey.  In hindsight, I know he never meant to. I know his words were true, once. But that was little consolation in the aftermath. It was little consolation when I was left broken and betrayed and he moved on to love another, even though the one he chose was the one he was meant for, the one with whom his heart lay entwined from the beginning. Broken hearts do terrible things to you. They poison you. They twist your thoughts and lay bare your weaknesses and bring to the surface your jealousies and insecurities and anger. Yes, anger. I, who had thought myself so pure. I, who had held my head high and turned my back and walked away thinking I wa...

  Quit? Never! By Tai We all have those moments, don’t we? Where we wonder if any of it’s worth the effort and the pain? Maybe not. Maybe it’s only we broken few who periodically teeter on the edge. Consider me shrugs . I regularly have phases in my life where the alternate reality in my mind holds far greater appeal than the harsh reality of the real world, to the extent I struggle to differentiate the one from the other. I almost quit. Writing, that is. Not life. I’m long past quitting on that and I’ll continue to fight to the bitter end, but writing? Yes, I’ve considered it. As if I ever could. Hiatus. It ended up being a reasonably (to my mind) prolonged hiatus. It felt like an eternity, as if I might never be able to get word to the page again, and it very nearly broke me all over again. There were many reasons. The past catching up, the voices in my head arguing for space and negotiating a peace treaty and, in and above all that, major changes occurring in my real-tim...

PR15M: Serendipity By Ink   Losing somebody close to you is always going to feel like losing a part of you. Losing a twin is like losing half of you. It doesn’t just tear a hole in you, it tears you in half and leaves you broken and incomplete and empty. Losing Ice was like looking in the mirror and seeing only an empty space, and that’s scary shit! The peculiar thing about being twins, however, is that it’s true what they say. There’s an inexplicable connection beyond what science or reason can explain. I think there was some Nazi psycho during the second world war who experimented on twins trying to prove it but I really don’t think it’s as simple as that. It’s not something you can measure or define. It just is . I knew, I always knew, that Ice wasn’t dead. Wherever he was, I was convinced I could feel him, a shadow in the back of my thoughts, a silhouette behind me, waiting for me to find him. On my own, I was powerless. I was six when Ice and our friend Taehyun were ...