Absent for years and then he shoes up and wants to pretend he was never gone anywhere. Catch up, he says, get back to how things used to be.
Used to be, I told him, we,d wake up at dawn and start working. Then the drought came and the animals starved and died and then Pa snapped his back falling down from the hayloft. And then Ma just about folded in on herself until she was just this little thing that the wind could have picked up and taken away, and then one day it did.
But you wouldn't know,...
I clung to the mast as the sea tossed them from wave crest to furrow and back again. This was not what I'd thought it would be when I volunteered to document the tallship's maiden voyage.
The curse of the weatherman'd struck at the worst of times. The forecasters had confidently predicted firm winds but that the real storm would happen far south of the ship. They'd proudly proclaimed fair weather for the day's sailing with winds at our backs and sun overhead.
I wondered what they thought, staring at their radars and maps, tallying numbers, crunching data. Did their...
Travel light, but take everything with you. Pack your life into a suitcase. Compress a room of memories, dreams, nightmares, hopes, pain and happiness, take the few essentials and clear out.
That's what this feels like. I have to choose which of my memories are the most important to me. Pack them away into a suitcase and walk right out that door, never again to see the ones I left behind.
Clothes. A necessity. As many as possible-- I might not have the money to get more for a while.
Toiletries. Also a given.
Books? Well, with three shelves filled,...
"I-I can't reach it," she choked out.
The small girl had been lying at the base of a tree in the woods, to weak to move, but too motivated to give up. Running away was not easy, but worth it.
Her cheek was bloodied and so were her legs.
Her rabbit left abandoned in a gaping hole in the tree. She dropped it, and now she couldn't get it back.
She twisted around painfully and poked her head into the hole to find an assortment of bugs making a home of the hole and of her rabbit.
The tears she...
It wasn't easy to stack the gold bars in the cellar. Very heavy. I kept one in my bedroom so I could look at it whenever I wanted. Part of me was trying to warn there was something strange going on, another (the greedy part) knew that it was synchroncity that worked this for me.
Cousin Marty told me about the new shop between the Chinese Grocery store and the old-fashioned chemist. Strange as I'd never noticed the shop even though it was supposed to have been there for the last month. Marty showed me the rare whisky he'd bought,...
Fish meant for market was found dumped in a bin outside the school. The mother believed the rotting smell would disguise her hidden bundle beneath. Her post-birth addled brain forgetting only papers were supposed to be in that container and what she tried to dispose would be eventually found.
Margarita wasn't a bad person. She did what she thought best at the time. Took her baby to the church and left her on the steps timing so the priest would find it. The bloody towels, rags, her own clothing stuffed below the fish. She kept the umbilical cord and placenta....
It was the fall that suprised me most. It had just been spring, and now the trees leaves where turning there yellow and touching down on the ground. How did this happend, just recently I was happly looking forward to the summer of wearing t-shirts and shorts and not haveing to suffucate myself in layers upon layers of clothes. Now I had been surpised and catched by the coldness of an cold day when I was freezing my way to work. As usally dreaming about the girls I meet on my walk, and my thoughts was even more than usally...
He stood outside the castle, looking in. That little fence was all that separated him from the world of imagination. For the castle was filled with magic, with kings and queens. If only he could get inside, and experience that magic for himself.
When he got older, he'd realize that there was no such thing in the castle. The outside was a beautiful facade to entertain the children, but the inside was used as a storage room.
The trip was turning into a disaster: we got lost at every turn, the food made us barf, the sites were disappointingly normal and the boisterous flow of life that had seemed so appealing when we first started teasing out the details of what a mutually enjoyable vacation would look like, all of a sudden reminded us of the very place we were trying to escape.
Today's excursion hit the last patience nerve left.
"I have to leave this place. I want my life back", I thought to myself on the bus ride back to the hell hole that sounded...
Sometimes you look kinda creepy when you are happy
Really?
sorry
I mean it is an odd thing to say but well I guess it is what it is, I don't feel creepy
No, no I, I don't know why I said it
It's OK
Yeah, I'm just weird tonight. Everyone is gone and it just me and you..
and?
And? And nothing it is just that you know me and you we never really hung out you know? And I don't know why I keep talking
Look, lets play a game - I will look not creepy and you...