I lost my grip on the wheel. The cruise ship went off to the left, then to the right, then dtrihght into a pile of rocks by the shore. Taking on water, I evacualted my crew and passnegers. Once safely on land, I looked around and wondering where in the heck we were. All I saw was slime...pink slime...and a McDonalds on every street corner. What a great place this is! I mean, McDonalds everywhere? That's gotta be good, right? Then I nboticed the people walking around...um, they were all, well, not in great shape? I looked at myself...not Arnold...
In the beginning, he tasted like rainwater: salty. Dried sweat around the rim of his mouth, a taste that clung to his mustache bristles like saltwater taffy.
In the beginning, he was rainwater, and I was a pool. Splashes hit the bottom. He said, you are a the ruin of mankind, rising to the tops of the trees. He said, you make me greedy to reach your destination like a home.
In the end, he tasted like a mountain top. Stretching high above the clouds to breathe a privileged cold. And I was a seed that could not grown on...
She shifted slightly, adjusting her spine against the doorframe. People kept screaming at her to get out of the door way. She was too tired. She had been there too long. The people, who were screaming, had no need of the door. They had much need of her. So they screamed. She noticed that her nails were clean and bloody. She thought that she would have to dirty the nails with a towel in order to stem the flow of blood.
"Couldn't have picked a better night for it... or a better doorway."
This was the message that she had...
The darn woodchuck was bothering me. He was a smart woodchuck. He had a bucket of red paint, which he was using to paint the golf course. "Ha ha ha," laughed the woodchuck. "I am painting this blade of grass right now. Watch as my paintbrush, which is laden in red paint, strokes the blade. See? It is red now. Ahahahaha!!!!!"
I was having none of it. I do not like the golf courses to be red, especially the green, which is called a green for a reason. You don't call them red or blues or yellows, do you? No....
There is nothing good about Monday. I feel bad every time I think that, because then I realize, "Well, I could be dead, or in Cleveland, and then my Monday would be much worse." And then I feel bad for making fun of Cleveland in my head, because I actually liked it the one time I went there.
Even though I don't do much here, it's hard to escape the native smugness that comes with being from New York City. It is all going on here. The thing is, I don't want to do most of it. I'm pretty internal,...
I still washed his shirt. There was only his plaid shirt, because it was what he'd worn. But I still washed it. My son disappeared a few years ago. They found his body by the lake. He was wearing that old plaid shirt. The rest of his clothes I gave to my nephew, about his size. But that plaid short...I'd never give that to anyone. It was his, it was all I had left. The plaid shirt. His room was in perfect condition, but it didn't seem right. But his shirt in my soft-from-washing-so-many-dishes hands. It felt like everything was...
It came at me. At a speed of lightning. I couldn't think. Speak, or even hear correctly.
The crowbar was flung directly at the side of my head. It nearly missed my face and I could hear the buzzing of crowbar go through the air. Joe ran for me and the crowbar as I sprinted for a safe place.
Joe and his gang were following behind me. There;s now
Daring to be noticed for the first time in her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up.
"Oh, looks like we have ourselves a volunteer?" the D.J at the booth smiled at her.
She blushed when the spotlight hit her. Figures the first time she wanted to be daring, the whole world would see her.
Looking back at her friends as though she wasn't sure of herself anymore, they all encouraged her, their hands moving towards the stage. "Go on!" her friend, Darnell grinned wildly to her. The rest of their group nodded their approval.
Well, if Darnell...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She was tired - her mother had been taking her from door to door all morning looking for ... what exactly? She wasn't sure, but she knew more than her mother thought she did. She watched the kids play who weren't her.
She was the product of two Peace Corps volunteers, and this adventure teaching English in China was the next step. AmeriCorps, Peace Corps, MercyCorps, and now the less valiantly named R4 English Tutoring. She should have been starting second grade this year, but she...
Fate always gets the last laugh.
You expect one thing, another happens. You predict a storm, there's not a cloud in the sky. You bet on red, the ball lands on black.
Or worse, double-zero. Salt in the wound.
I hated it. Predictions, prognostications, fortunes even, for those inclined to call it that... they're supposed to be real. I always believed in that little bit of the supernatural, some little psionic impulse, letting you see fate, visualize fate, and perhaps even manipulate fate.
Only I could never get it right. Nothing ever rang true, even when I deliberately predicted the...