the works

a.f. swanson

stories, poetry, and prose.

  • drive

    every night, he asks her the same question, and every night, she gives him the same answer.

    but on a summer night like tonight, when she’s been pushed to the very edge of her waning patience for this fragile existence she calls a life, she’s thinking a drive is just what she needs to clear her head—even if it means getting into a car with the bane of her existence.

    “I’ll drive you home with the windows down.”


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  • it’s late, go to sleep

    it’s been a year. 

    life has gotten exponentially better since then, but i’m still so unhappy. it frustrates me that i’m so unhappy when everything points to things being alright.

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  • i give the messiest head

    i have my moments where i believe i could be loved by someone other than myself. if i think about it, and maybe examine myself from the perspective of another, i can see all the lovable parts of me.

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  • the dawning

    at the sunrise of my existence, it was decided that i would carry with me a special kind of burden. perhaps i did something to deserve it in a past life where i was ungrateful and wretched; a godless, wicked little thing of which he decided would suffer in every incarnation to follow.

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  • break. build.

    you.

    you will get weaker. 

    you will break down into infinitesimal pieces as you try to fit the needs of others.

    i.

    i will get stronger. 

    i will build myself up with the infinitesimal pieces i broke into when i was trying to fit the needs of you.

  • when you go away

    there are so many things i can’t do, so many games i can’t play, so many songs i can’t sing along to, so many places i can no longer visit, and so many memories i cannot relive without feelings of devastation now, because it all makes me think of you.

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  • —06.13.2024—

    i was put on this earth to dream up great love stories and write them for others to enjoy, but an imagination like mine makes experiencing a great love story of my own an impossibility.

    some days, it feels most unfortunate, but other days, i realize that i would be nothing without my imagination.

    if the trade-off for that is love, so be it.

  • god is my oath

    we had an ‘outdoor cat’ named Isabella. my mother never got it right; always calling her Isabel instead, confusing her with the youngest daughter of a family friend.

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  • —06.01.2024—

    i am taking the parts of me that i’ve lost—parts that i’d always treasured—and attaching them to the person i have blossomed into. if the world will not love me, i will love myself, and if nothing else, i will at the very least become someone i want to love.

  • a brief thought on yearning

    someone can be a yearner while not allowing that yearning to interfere with their life. the real question is if you consider one being unable to continue on with their life normally a necessary aspect of yearning?

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  • a world left wanting

    there might be a world where i am wanted.

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