I was an optimist. I thought that I, like Hemingway, could weave my influence between countries, live in the welcoming limbo between a government I believed in and one that spoke my language. I stopped trying to return to the United States thirty years ago. I am an airplane steward now. Sometimes I write in imperfect Spanish for a newspaper named after a boat named after a nameless elderly woman half a century dead. I believe every word I write. I am happy.
But the days I spent in the narrow land come back to me every day. They knew...
They were trapped for seven days. God's work was able to be done in freedom: the dividing line between earth and sky, earth and ocean, the fecund fields with animals and birds, the oceans teeming with fish and monsters, the two legged animals - human beings - created to carry God's hope.
But the forces of chaos, of tohu and bohu, were chained for those seven days; trapped and kept away from the great work of creation.
There was order at work: chaos was trapped. There was fertility abounding: destruction was stayed. There was ingenuity in creation: blankness was put...
She'd always come running when I called. I could have called her to come get a splinter out of my hand, to help me with my homework, to get me out from the tree in my backyard, or just so I could see her smiling face for hours as we talked. I was so use to this that the idea that some day she wouldn't come running when I called never even crossed my mind. I loved her with every single particle that made up my body.
At this exact moment though the only thought I could think was that...
The pidgeon man rolled off the sky-scraper. Thousands of birds flew with the updraft, gaining momentum as they hurled their bodies into his back. The crawling taxis below wailed insistently. Pedestrians opened their umbrellas, one by one. Sunset embalmed the towers in reflective flame.
The pidgeon man did not see what was beneath him. He only and always looked up.
His shadow grew on the pavement. He was seconds away from landing, yet the birds continued their sacrifice.
I don't like this piece at all. It is a depressing photo. :(
Read something else.
There was blood on my pillow. And a tooth on the floor. And a snake in the corner, coiled around the arc of the rocking chair. The snake I don't believe had anything to do with the tooth or the blood on the pillow, but if that cold blood hadn't clicked me from sleep, opening my eyes on the tooth on the floor, I might not have rolled my eyes to the corner where the snake hugged the rocking chair. It's an old chair and probably felt the dry ribs of hundreds of snakes around its legs. But never in...
-The thought of having to tell you my life story for forensic reasons, is quite barbaric to me. Is there any other way you can learn what you need to know?
-No. Go ahead. We need a summary of your life in order to rule you out as part of this crime. If we don't have that chronology, we can't do that. It looks very much like you are a perpetrator but this longer timeline will give us context for the short term timeline. Go ahead.
-{Sighs} Okay. As you know, I was born In Mount Auburn, NY. I lived...
It seemed a good idea to tell the kids to hide behind the bars when the boy went berserk. Glue sniffing was the first suspicion but when we found the numbers appearing all over his skin, a priest was summoned. 666 isn't the kind of thing you normally expect to see on young skin, measles, chicken pox, blackheads, sunburn is a yes. But numbers? That was plain weird.
The exorcist prayed, sprinkled holy water and blessed the boy by putting his hand on his forehead. 666 kept appearing until there wasn't a millimetre of untouched skin.
Then, just to confuse...
I am looking out the window of my tiny house in Michigan and watching the snow pile up on the road.
I won't be going into town today, and I don't mind at all.
My dog is in a ball at my feet. The heat is on. I'm wrapped in a blanket. I feel so lucky in this moment to be alone here, to feel safe and to feel like I'm home and there is nothing to be scared of.
I think this morning I will maybe go back to bed. But I think later I'll read a bit, and...
Tom said my neck tasted of honey. When I told Jasper he laughed hysterically, dropping the crystal glass of champagne onto the thick white carpet. Snorting like a horse, slapping his black Parisian jeans, contorting his face like a fairground mirror image. I didn't think it was so funny but didn't say anything. I laughed too.
One thing that Jasper would never know about me is how lonely and disgusted I feel with myself when I tell him about Tom.
When I walked away from the car, turned back and waved at Tom who had wiped the condensation from the...
Shattered.
She had always had a fondness for that word, the way it reflected the brokenness it supposedly defined, the way the consonants lined up, hard and jagged on the ears and soul. Maybe that was part of its appeal. She had always had a fondness for broken things...
She stared at the black screen before her, out of practice and rapidly running out of time as the timer quietly mocked her, accused her, with its silent countdown. Time was running out. Would she have time enough to mend the shattered peices of her soul? In the seconds that remained...