He was absent. Again. The kid would only show up on test days - on which he performed well enough. But that wasn't the point. All the other students showed up every day, and worked earnestly. And taught each other. And applied the concepts. He would pass the exams but forget all the material down the road. It would be like most of the bright students - playing with ideas. Treating it all as a show - as a game. Show up to perform. Wasting their talent. Lacking direction. Lacking any real purpose. Where was the kid going to get...
They danced in a circle by the shores off the lake, laughing as they held each other. Their shifts, made of white samite, fluttered around their knees as their feet squelched into the wet ground below them. It was the morning of the vernal equinox, a time of regrowth and enchantment.
The three danced thrice clockwise, then thrice more counter-clockwise before returning to the former for three more rotations. Nine was a magic number to them, the number of years they'd been friends. They smiled at each other, white teeth gleaming as their eyes sparkled.
And then, the waters roiled....
She could tell I was faking it.
Three words. They aren't that hard. I can type the. I love you. Yet they cant be spoken, they stick in the mouth, their bitter flavour tainting the tongue Not even force can bring them out and if managed, well then it would just be plain ugly wouldn’t it? Yet why do people struggle to say those words? Why do I? I can type it all I want, I love you, I love you and so on, but here it’s meaningless, nothing matters as it comes from my fingers to the screen. I...
There is a place, near where I used to live, that looked like this - you see it, right there? It's a bowling green. Not the bowling you and I would do, the bowling that belongs to another age. Mostly the elderly.
There were, in fact, two near me - high amusement, I can tell you, since we came to the conclusion that one had decided it was a rival for the other. And that said other had no idea that it existed. That this perceived rivalry would fuel them entirely, even though the other lived in blissful ignorance of...
Time was running short, and John still had no idea where Adam had stashed it. I mean, thought John, how many places are there to hide a pelican in a Des Moines nightclub? There was no use trying to listen for it, with the mind-numbing beat of some kind of Euro-techno-disco-30's remix whatever the hell it was kicking the living shit out of his eardrums. All he knew was that if he didn't get to that pelican soon, eighteen future suicide bombers would have easy access to any entry point in the Pentagon, and it would all be his damn...
This fallen world or the next on. It is hard to be entirely sure of anything; gravity, what to have for breakfast, whom one should marry - fuck
kill
We stick our heads out too far and we expose ourselves in ways we could not have guessed at the beginning when we were warm floating. We forget how to float when we learn how to swim and sometime soon we will learn how to drown - or let go.
This fallen world or the next one. The choice is just as banal as it sounds. But some nights it is...
"Son" I said squinting, I think we are here. "it's Colorado, wake up." I dug out the petrified french fry for Charlie, who was ripping up the upholstery in my v.w.
"Mom, why did we drop Frances on the highway, again?" Eric asked sleepily. He was plump and pink from sleep. I felt for him. There were many books under his rump, but looking in the rear view mirror, he seemed cozy with the dog. The sky was a deep navy, the long prairie grass synchronized so beautifully with the wind. And the black cows lying, trusting all this open...
It was weird, the way the rest of the world could see something that you yourself couldn't.
Like, I look in the mirror and there's - yeah, there's a girl there. And...yes, those eyes are dark, and that hair is...kinda curly, if it's behaving, and that skin is pale, freckled -
And I'm seeing the things I need to do to get to beautiful. Pluck that, moisturise that, define that, conceal that (some mornings, conceal all of it, please)
The amount of times I look at myself and I think that I need to be fixed. That I need to...
I don't know when I stopped believing in unicorns and rainbows. But I know I was a kid. A very troubled kid. Life wasn't as easy as it should have been for a child. Everything was bigger and scarier. Especially the things and the people that were supposed to make me feel safe and protected.
Home wasn't safe. I thought it was. I thought we were the Cleavers. My parents were perfect. My mother worked hard. She kept a beautiful home and prepared perfect meals. She kept her kids in line and made sure we were all just right before...
So, I left. I couldn't stand it anymore. I had had enough. Absolutely enough. There were no more chances for me. I knew that if I stayed, it would be the end of me. The end of the me I was trying to become. I wanted it, so depsertaly, I wanted it. If I could just make it to the finish line. But first, I had to break away from this pack of slower runners. I feared that if I used my energy now, too much iof it, I wouldn't have enough for the end. The end of the race...