Crystal Starr

  • I met a man named Dale in the frozen food aisle. Now before you get excited, Dale was not shopping for frozen vegetables. Dale was standing in front of six family-sized lasagnas, two pizzas, a gallon bucket of ice cream, and something called Bacon Explosion Bites. I didn’t know Bacon Explosion Bites existed. Part of…

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  • The university library was almost empty. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. Rain tapped softly against the windows. Somewhere in the distance a printer coughed out pages nobody would read twice. She sat alone at a wooden table buried beneath notebooks, highlighters, half-drunk coffee, and a stack of books that had become progressively stranger over the…

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  • There was no beginning. At least not the kind humans understand. No clocks.No calendars.No birthdays.No deadlines.No Mondays. Just endless awareness stretching in every direction like an ocean without a shoreline. And somewhere in that infinite place sat a soul preparing for departure. A nervous little spark of consciousness holding what could only be described as…

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  • Rainy days always change the world. People don’t notice it because they are busy running from it. They pull jackets over their heads. They hurry toward doorways. They retreat into coffee shops and living rooms. Windshield wipers begin their hypnotic dance. Parking lots empty. Sidewalks lose their audience. The world becomes quieter. More honest. Rain…

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  • Somewhere along the way, we started speaking to the voice in the head in the third person. Not because we lost our mind. Quite the opposite. It happened because one morning, while standing in front of the bathroom mirror brushing our teeth, the voice started talking again. You know the one. The running commentary. The…

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  • There comes a season in life when you must disappear. Not because you are broken. Not because you are angry. Not because you hate people. You disappear because the next version of yourself requires silence to be built. Most people misunderstand disappearing. They think it means isolation. Depression. Giving up. It isn’t. It’s construction. The…

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  • Born of Sevens

    There was a table hidden in plain sight. Not the kind hidden behind locked doors or guarded by passwords. The kind hidden because most people would never recognize its value if they sat down in the empty chair. The room itself was ordinary. Wood floors. Dim lights. Coffee cups scattered across the table. No one…

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  • The city lights stretched to the horizon like artificial stars. From the top floor of a glass tower, the world looked conquered. Screens glowed. Markets moved. Politicians argued. Religious leaders preached. Experts explained. And somewhere beneath all that noise, something old was waking up. Nobody could quite figure out why. Ancient symbols were showing up…

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  • “I wish I could tell you she was a hippie.” The Mind sighed and stretched itself across the corners of consciousness where it spent most of its time organizing thoughts into neat little piles. “But she wasn’t.” The Ego laughed. “Thank God for that. She would have been unbearable.” The Spirit smiled quietly from somewhere…

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  • The Things We Carry

    I used to think I was a cactus. Turns out I wasn’t. I was just a stubborn plant trapped in bad circumstances. Back then I lived in a dented coffee can sitting on the floorboard of an old eighteen-wheeler. The man who carried me around wasn’t much different than I was. We were both things…

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