#danielredd

[danielreddbooks]

new story up on my substack

read it here: https://danielredd.substack.com/p/floor-23?sd=pf

[danielreddbooks]

good quote but without full context

“So, once and only once, he wrote a short entry. It read: ‘Loving a rose is dangerous, for she may prick you with her thorns. My hands bleed from her, but I may die happily. To love just once and feel its pains is better than to have never loved at all.’”

-Daniel Redd, “A Rose with Thorns”

https://danielredd.substack.com/p/a-rose-with-thorns?s=w

The funniest part about this quote is knowing who the “rose” is in the story because everyone else does not see Sabrina as a rose at all, but Tommy is just too in love to see her as anything else. 

[danielreddbooks]

Shadow Boxing

Shadow Boxing

I’ve killed a man a thousand times

His blood still stains my fingers

Slowly he sees I want him out,

But he smiles, saying, “I’m staying.

I’ve got round two, four, six, and eight.

I’m going to get my hits in.”

 I’ve scarred my knuckles for him.

The cuts callous, turn violet,

Infected with all of his sins.

The recoil bites like a snake, and

I paint his face with my blood,

A finger portrait dabbed with sweat.

 Every punch rings in my skull,

The knockback only he can give.

He’s the antithesis to morals,

The only cancer I will crave.

Shadow boxing with my burdens

Always leaves me as the loser.

 I don’t feel like myself today,

And I’m starting to believe that I never have.

-Daniel Redd, I’m Not Myself Today

[danielreddbooks]

I think she was afraid of the selfishness that can live within so-called heroes. We sometimes solve problems for ourselves, so we can sleep at night. We make victims out to be objects that we never cared for in the first place.

-Daniel Redd, “Lantana and the Nobody”

[danielreddbooks]

(excerpt post) Check out “Lantana and the Nobody” at danielredd.substack.com

The parents couldn’t understand it, and I almost couldn’t either. Why would an eleven-year-old girl kill the family dog? No one saw the dog die except for the girl, and the family couldn’t believe she did it, but she admitted to it.

The girl’s name was Lantana, and she complained that something was inside of her, physically inside of her. Lantana said she could feel it in the area between her nose and her chest as if it were something she breathed in. She could feel it moving within that space. It didn’t seem to inhibit her breathing at all.

Just talking to Lantana, it was difficult to get her to explain what she felt.

This girl couldn’t explain anything about the thing inside of her, and that only fueled my imagination. I thought of different textures and movement styles. I imagined different sizes because of the broad area this thing supposedly moved around in.

Lantana told me she didn’t want to kill the dog, but she knew she did. That sounded to me like slight disbelief. I asked why it happened if she didn’t want it to happen. Lantana told me that she just did it. She just moved and did it. Lantana cried and said it wasn’t her fault. She said her body did it.

I should mention now that this was a fairly big dog considering that Lantana killed it. It was a Samoyed no more than two years old.