The lamp wouldn't turn on. After all, it wasn't supposed to. If the lamp had turned on, it would have been back to square one for the elite team of lamp-saboteurs that had been hard at work here for a good week. It was with some relief, then, that the captain was able to announce their part of the mission to be complete. The not-turning-on of the lamp was the final piece in an elaborate and highly confidential plan, the full nature of which even the saboteurs were blissfully unaware...
It all came to a head just two weeks later....
The conversation lasted two words:
Why?
No.
This was the conversation that I had with myself every day. It always followed the question that I asked myself after waking up from the dreams of my foolish heart. At night, in sleep, I would dream about him and the way things could be if only life were different. We could be and do amazing things together. Every night I dreamt and every day I asked.
Why?
No.
The words I held back from this daily conversation were the ones that hurt the most. They, were the truth. They were the words...
I've been taught to play it safe since I was a child. Everything always slipped out of my grasp. And I never seemed to mind. Then you managed to come into my life and make scars that, even decades later, will remind me of the love we had. Can you fathom how beautiful that is? I held onto you tightly because you were the only thing that mattered. Please don't say that my love was suffocating you. I couldn't imagine loving you any less. Maybe we were too young to understand what we had. Maybe I was too naive and...
Only four days were left until the end of camp, and he'd resigned himself to his fate. He wasn't going to talk to the girl with the ponytail. He had run through the reasons why she would never see anything in common with him, and could almost recite it like a creed of self-defeat.
He saw her at the ridge, looking out over the farms in the valley below. Her headphones were plugged into her walkman, and she seemed completely at peace.
The tape player clunked to a stop. She sighed, took off the headphones and looked around. He realized...
The old man walked through a park. His suit was great, with a white shirt underneath and a grey tie. Meandering, he strolled along the walk way, no intention to end up anywhere.
He appeared to be in his 70s, although, the hazards of age seemed unnoticeable in his demeanor. He didn't shuffle, he wasn't hunched over and his head did not hang.
He glanced at his watch.
"Dear me, I am going to be late."
His meandering stopped and his direction became purposeful. His gait was long and graceful. Men his age should not cover this much distance.
Rounding...
"Wait, so he hit you?" "Yes, he did! I couldn't believe it! I was just waiting in line for a pink slime burger and then..bam!" Lucky for me, it bouinced off my ripplig shoulder museles and I felt nothing. But still, I mean, he hit me! First off, I ddn;t even know this guy. I think it all started when I walked into the restauraut. I walked past his table and I heard him say, "Yeah, you're right. Justin Beiber is HORRIBLE!" I stopepd in my tracks. I pulled up a chair and sat right next to this monster. I...
The year was 1986 and she was a high school softball star. So young and full of potential. She was beautiful. She had a beauty that stopped time every time you looked at her. The world was hers for the taking. She loved a lot and loved with all her heart. She held it together for her babies. She tried for so long but the pain chipped away at her slowly everyday. How could she leave? She loved her children more than heartache killed her. What were her dreams? How different would her life be had she not gotten pregnant?...
There had been many changes since last year, I observed from the front steps of the building. But it was the fall that surprised me most.
The genie that came from the lamp that I found promised me that the summer would last forever. I was so absolutely certain that he had granted my wish; but when I noticed the orange and brown leaves floating to the earth I realized that he had lied.
In fact, I even think he wasn't a real genie at all. At least the lamp worked, though.
I sighed as I reluctantly trudged back into...
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...
Pixie dust. I didn't think it existed before now. Until I experienced it firsthand. I had floated a few feet above the ground, spinning and whirling. Everything was different now. And beautiful. It shimmers and looks like gold sparkles. But it's not, it's so much more special. Fairies are real. Pixie dust is real. Take a closer look around you, you'll see it too.