Author’s Note: This short story was written in 2019 when I was taking a Creative Writing course at university. It was intended to be a little window into the experience and culture of a Cambodian girl from a poor farming background. Up to now, very few people have read this […]
He Has Made Everything Beautiful in Its Time
What is a moment? A moment is the space between one breath and the next, the pause when sounds and silence are taken together. Listen. Time hangs suspended, dust in a sunbeam. The world is still; thoughts quiet. Then- gone. Look away from the screen. Pause. Have a moment. *** […]
Sea-Spell in Kep
The sea sounds— relentless rush of rain, full on a clear night. Sewn into the sable sky, high stars glint in their patterns. The moon hangs, suspended, a dark sphere in a bright cradle, a golden hammock slung on a void. Out of the sea a hundred white wings of […]
Out in Dawn
In closed, warm rooms, made with hands doors guard borders, dividing space. Creak! heralds my egress into Out. Creation sprawls open, cool swirling. Damp gentles the air. Fingers of filtered blue creep from the east, but the moon does not know. Bathed in borrowed light she gleams brighter than the […]
Haiku Trio: Angkor Wat
Jungle Seeded stone split, bred shoots, roots—life strangled secrets for a thousand years. Monkey Five-fingered feet lope, thief gibbering at lost gods. Beast with human eyes. Stream Stone bed monsoon-filled, liquid glass running over carvings magnified. The Khmer (Cambodian) Empire once ruled over much of Southeast Asia, and its kings […]
A Poem Called “Desire”
I dreamed of summer, green and gold. The sun, he knew his strength of old– coolness dwelled in night and rain, and all things knew their place again. But a whisper came, a wintry breeze; the leaves fell tumbling from the trees, and I awoke to something strange– I remembered. […]
Pursat, Cambodia: On the River
When I was a child, we lived in the province of Pursat (Po-sat), in the city of Pursat, which straddles the Pursat river. The brown water flowed along, low in the dry season and running over into the streets in the rainy season. Men would pile white sacks of sand […]
A Christian Philosophy of Writing Fiction: God’s Reality
In the last post, I discussed objectionable elements in fiction, and three reasons that writers tend to include them: for realism, for hedonistic purposes, and to further an agenda (for or against). Using principles from God’s Word, I evaluated whether or not these reasons are valid for the Christian writer. […]
A Christian Philosophy of Writing Fiction: What to Do with Sin
We all know good stories, the ones that endure, that break your heart and change your life—that get told and re-told across centuries, ones children beg for at bedtime. Stories are powerful. No one denies this. They strike deep, and they linger; they enchant, and they slap us with reality; […]