Crystal Starr

  • That Backpack

    The longer you travel, the less you carry. That is what the old travelers say, usually while standing somewhere they have no intention of staying. They learn to count necessities differently. A coat becomes more important than a second pair of shoes. Water outranks perfume. Books become too heavy unless they are worth the weight.…

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  • The People v. Death

    Death arrived eleven minutes late to his own trial. The courtroom had been full since dawn. Every pew behind the railing was occupied by someone carrying evidence. A widow held a wedding ring between her thumb and forefinger. A father had brought a baseball glove that had not been used in nine years. An old…

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  • The woman in Jackson Square told me I had brought someone with me. I smiled. Of course I had. He had been with me for years. New Orleans was sweating through midnight, all perfume and rot beneath the balconies. Rain still glistened between the bricks. Somewhere down Chartres Street, a trumpet was playing something slow…

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  • Tonight at 7:15 p.m. CST someone passed away. They left a single rainbow and sun showers over the Texas Sky.  Home. There was no thunder. No violent sky splitting itself open in grief. Just rain falling through sunlight, as if the heavens had forgotten they were supposed to choose between mourning and celebration. And then…

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  • Killing Zombies

    The headset goes dark before the world appears. For three seconds there is nothing. Then the floor vibrates beneath my boots. Rain. Cold, silver, artificial rain falling through a city that doesn’t exist. I can smell wet concrete. Nice touch. The abandoned street stretches ahead beneath broken neon signs. Cars sit crooked across intersections. A…

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  • The Next Fire

    The knock came before sunrise. Three slow strikes against the door. Not desperate. Official. The woman inside was already awake. She had been sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of something that had gone cold hours ago, listening to the wind scrape branches against the roof. The knock came again. She did not…

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  • The most dangerous woman at the burning was not the one tied to the stake. It was the woman standing in the crowd. She had arrived early. Before the square filled with bodies. Before the priest climbed the wooden platform. Before the men dragged the accused through the street and explained to everyone why another…

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  • Before they called her dangerous, they called her divine. That is the part of the story they tend to leave out. Before there were warnings whispered about women who knew too much, there were women people traveled miles to find. Women who understood the moon before anyone bothered naming its phases. Women who knew which…

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  • The First God Was a Woman

    When the creation turns on its creator the world is dark. A woman provides life. And somehow, man convinced the world that made him that he was the one holding the power. There is something almost beautiful about the arrogance of it. He arrived screaming, covered in her blood, entirely dependent upon her body for…

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  • The Reader

    Some people are merely reading the chapters of their life as they are exposed, not everyone can be a writer. There is something unsettling about realizing you have been holding the book upside down. You thought the blank pages meant you were supposed to fill them. You thought the pen belonged to you. It never…

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