Crystal Starr

  • Dirty Windows

    Opinions should only come from people who are living the life you want. Everyone else should be a spectator. But spectators are rarely quiet. They sit comfortably in the ruins of their own choices and shout instructions across the fence about how someone else should rebuild theirs. Turn left. Leave. Stay. Forgive. Walk away. Try…

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  • Satan Stepped Aside

    People no longer cease to amaze me in the worst way possible. Maybe that sounds cynical. It probably is. But cynicism is merely optimism after it has been mugged in a dark alley enough times to recognize the footsteps behind it. There are very few people left who aren’t looking out for themselves first. I…

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  • The Key at the Front Door

    Everybody is willing to hate you until they need you again by then the relationship has changed. Not ended. Changed. There is a difference. Endings have funerals. Flowers. Black dresses. Dirt thrown over something everyone has agreed is dead. Change is crueler. Change leaves the body sitting at the dinner table. It lets the conversation…

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  • Why?

    If time were currency you would spend less on the bullshit. You would. You would stop handing entire afternoons to people you don’t even like. You would quit spending Tuesday arguing with strangers who will be forgotten by Thursday. You wouldn’t donate perfectly good years to jobs that make you miserable, relationships that already died,…

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  • Crossroads Again

    The mind will tell you things that are not true then make you responsible for the outcome. It is a terribly convincing liar. It knows your voice. That is its greatest advantage. It does not arrive like some villain dressed in black, dragging chains through the corridors of your thoughts. It does not announce itself…

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  • A person who sits with their demons long enough realizes that they are all teachers wearing masks. I used to think they came carrying pitchforks. Turns out they arrived holding mirrors. Funny how disappointment always introduces itself as punishment until enough years pass for you to realize it was simply an instructor with terrible bedside…

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  • Borrowed Things

    Maybe it is just boredom that has brought me here, tired of human suffering. Not because suffering is unusual. Because it repeats itself with remarkable dedication. I sat watching people today and couldn’t decide what they were actually chasing. A better job. A bigger house. Someone else’s attention. An argument they intended to win before…

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  • In the mornings clarity settles in without any judgement. There is something sacred about the first few moments before the world remembers your name. Before the phone lights up. Before coffee has convinced your body to participate. Before obligations begin collecting their debt. The mind is quiet then. It has already spent the night doing…

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  • Somewhere today someone is celebrating a birthday, but I truly wonder if they are celebrating the way they should. There it is again. The writer’s block. A great big stubborn wall parked right in the middle of my afternoon like it paid rent to be there. I stared at the blinking cursor hoping it would…

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  • There is a strange kind of silence that only writers hear. It doesn’t sound like silence at all. It sounds like an empty room where people were laughing five minutes ago. I never thought I would run out of things to say. Writers joke about writer’s block the way fishermen joke about rain. It exists.…

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