Bre O’Brien
Bre O’Brien is the author of several fantasy novels and short stories. She focuses on the middle ground of writing, places where the medical meets the magical, the possible meets the impossible, and the real meets the unreal.
She’s been a longtime collector of unlikely book boyfriends- starting with Frodo Baggins when she was 10. In middle and high school, she wrote her crushes down on paper as the love interests with overly complicated names. Every night before going to bed, she’d tell herself a bedtime story of romantic couples and magical places to drift off to sleep.
As a recent graduate of Southern New Hampshire University with a bachelor’s in English and Creative Writing, and a current student in the MFA program at SNHU, she loves to find new ways to play with all aspects of story. She works as a nurse in a juvenile detention center where there is no shortage of stories.
Every story deserves to be told no matter how heartbreaking or strange.
Bre lives on the Central Coast of California with her husband where they spend every other weekend going on fun adventures throughout the state.
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The dance isn’t one you expected to know. It was a dance you didn’t even know existed until it was shown to you and you woke up from the dream. It was as if the ribbons were cut away from your eyes, and your hair as it all fell to the floor under the attack…
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You take a deep breath and stand before the mirror. You see a stranger, someone wearing your skin that you don’t recognize. Someone whose face is too long, whose hair is too short, whose bones take up too much space under the too tight skin. Do you know what I see? A warrior, whose face…
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You think he’s the most beautiful thing in the world, with his golden ringlets, his light eyes and those pouty pink lips that are almost criminal. You don’t see what hides underneath those icy blue eyes. The pain and intolerance he’s seen, the tears he’s shed over those he truly loves. The things you can’t…
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Give me Life, Give Me Pain, Give me myself again- Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes. The big quakes we can prepare for. The upheavals we expect, the ones we know that are coming, the big changes we make ourselves ready for. It’s the little tremors that take us by surprise, create enough cracks in our gentle…
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As I navigate this forest of life, I am reminded that there is not just one path, but many. For me, following someone else, wanting what they have, what they have earned is pointless. I am my own me, and I will work for what I want. I will chase my dreams, make my own…
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I see you everywhere and I don’t like it. In the most obscure things, the smell of a patient’s soap, the way the yellowing grass looks like your hair, the disaster that some patients bring with them. I can try and hate you, but it doesn’t help. Your memory, your ghost never gives me peace.
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When the moon gets tired, she curls up in the clouds and takes a nap, the fluffy white leaving her dreams soft and gentle. What does she dream of? Perhaps the glorious sun and when he will notice her…
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This is an except from a 2011 journal I kept where I wrote each entry as poetry. No one knows how he became a captain. He certainly didn’t go through the ranks, Or start out at the bottom, That was for sure and for certain. He just was a captain, Strong and true. A real…
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The earth is a big ball of blue, Like your eyes, or the sea. My eyes are green, But you assure me, You would love to get lost in the forest. I think you might need a map, No one comes out alive.
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I watch me be this other thing and never know- Purple People (Christmas in Space) by Tori Amos Who knows who I really am? I mean everyone sees me as someone different. The student. The daughter. The perfect little specimen of perfection and light. Who don’t I see those things? Who am I?
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I think there’s a flaw in my code- Gasoline, Halsey The others all are rushing to the altar, quick to pair off and complete their duties to society. I think I am the only one with sense. Don’t they know how much they are giving up? Their freedom, their hopes and dreams, their future! They…
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“Do you trust me?” He asked, the slight smile on his face making her stomach do backflips. She nodded before she even had to think about it. “Then close your eyes.” She closed her eyes without a second thought. That would turn out to be her downfall six months later.
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Where have I been all your life? I’ve been there, but not there entirely. When I was born you were nearly thirty and had already lived so much life without me. We had a few years together, just you and I, but I was too young to remember them. You hold the secret to what…
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There were no hospital visits for you. No loud sweeping exits, no shrieking machines to tell us that your heart stopped. It just did. Home, surrounded by all of your friends and family, you just left peacefully. I would have wished nothing more. Except maybe to talk with you one last time about all of…
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The photograph is old and faded, but she can see that they love each other. The photograph from years ago, and she doubts her parents would even recognize themselves after all the years. Time is a bitch.
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There is a dead woman’s food in the fridge, And it’s starting to stink. There’s a dead woman’s food in the fridge, But no one can bear to get rid of it, Either because it is the last part of her, Or because no one has time. There is a dead woman’s food in the…
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You beautiful brown brew, Instilled with bitterness and fire. You stunning collection of sun and dirt, Filling me with energy and light. Without you, I don’t think I could survive. Thank you, For letting me turn you, into pages and pages of Nonsense. Same time tomorrow?
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I love you so much, do me a favor baby, don’t reply. Cause I can dish it out, but I can’t take it -Limosine, Brand New You tell her you love her on accident. It slips out somewhere between when you’re making out in the back of the movie theatre and when she’s naked under…
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She hadn’t expected that she would feel so light after her trip. When he had called her after years of radio silence, begging to see her, she had expected the worst. What she had found when she had arrived back in New York was the best thing she could have hoped for. Her trip hadn’t…
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She is the sun, And she is the moon. She is the entire galaxy, And I am drowning among her stars.