She rolled onto her side, the duvet rustling, pulled back to reveal a slender leg, almost too slender for a young woman of 24. Her eyes opened slowly. The expression on her blank, disinterested face was a striking contrast to the expectant face of the girl kneeling next to the bed. The little girl clasped the woman's hand in both of hers and shook. Pulling away, the young woman disappeared back under the covers.
"Mommy! Mommy, wake up today, okay?" Pleas were answered with silence. There would be no waking up that day.
It started like any sunday morning, with coffee brewing and the literal show Sunday Morning on cbs when we decided to walk our 140-pound saint Brenard, and our smaller dog Casey down by the lake. We had Casey on the leash when Bella, our Saint Brenard, crashed through the brush and tumbled upon a deer that had bedded down. Casey fought her way off the leash and by the time we had found them the deer had gone into the water rather than to face bella. Our two excited dogs of course rushed right in after it
The Waves were...
Set down the light
set it down anywhere
The pure clean of a random weeknight on the coach staring at the white ceiling. So many balls in the air so much that I can not control. I have given control to others.
It is my human condition.
I will set this ball here on this perfectly lit field. Void of trouble. Maybe someday I will throw it to you and wonder, as I lay here in this white clean apartment,
will you throw it back?
He ran into the room, his heart pounding, and his clothes soaking wet.
"Mummy, Mummy!" he yelled, his face flushed and eyes gleaming with excitement.
"What is it, sweetheart?" I asked, my heart in my mouth, fearing the worst.
Surely nothing terrible had happened in those few short minutes since I'd turned my back and left him to his own devices?
Unconsciously scanning his body for weeping wounds, gaping gashes or odd shaped bones like a Men in Black zapper I began to relax.
"What's happened now?" I said, smiling at my golden child.
"Mummy, I rode up the hill...
My feet ached, but it was well worth it. I absolutely HAD to make the weight requirment for my dance competition. I only had three more days to lose another five pounds. My legs burned, but I suppose that I should have expected that much after a three hour run, but I thought that I could do it effortlessly by now. After being in dance for five years, I've had to really push myself to stay within my weight limit. Sometimes it was really hard to keep from eating. I knew that if I couldn't make weight, the uniform wouldn't...
I was studying in science class when he came up to me. He slowly sat down next to me and asked me for help with a few questions from the textbook. "I need to hear someone explain it to me." He was begging now, but I knew that he understood the material. "You tell me. You know the answers, now teach them to me." I was trying to get him to put his thoughts into words and sort them out in a way that he could remember. And then he looked at me with his soft eyes and said, "But...
All Sam had wanted was a ride.
He's grown up in the Mid West, eaten his breakfast from cereal cartons plastered with the faces of lost children, so he knew the dangers. Still, it was raining. The weather was crap, and out of the falling rain the white ambulance had come like an angel of mercy. It's flashing lights were off; only the fog lights cut through the gloom, shining on him like a halo.
"Want a ride?" called the driver over the water's roar.
Indeed, he did. His goal, simply to get from point A to B in relative...
I wonder, looking at the picture, who he was, to dream so... audaciously. Really. To even think he could surpass me-- us, I remember, looking over at her. Her belly is round and curved, like a ripe melon, and I smile. She does not reply; she is tinkering with some wires. I am sure in a few minutes she will have something ready that will sell for millions.
The man in the photo is looking off to the side at something else. He is wearing a bulky waistcoat. I should think he epitomizes the stereotypical inventor. Indeed, the fantastical creation...
Powerful legs, legs charged by the spirit of youth, the longing to break free and simply run full pelt meaninglessly. These legs, this energy took her gambolling madly down to the bottom of Grandpa's garden to the summerhouse. Back at the town house, up his room was death, despair, disease and unbearable suffocating sadness and stifling stillness. Here outside was green; fresh wet green, distant roaring traffic - movement, life energy, freedom. Her lungs were full of cleaner cooler air and her hair pulled straight out behind her. Fresh air hair. She reached the summerhouse door and ran in.
'He's...
She'd always come running when I called, my little sister.
She was three years younger than I was, but to her, I was big brother, father, and something close to God. I kept her and our little brother safe from our mother, I tutored her in math when she realized it wasn't her best subject, I bought them both little cupcakes for their birthdays when we all knew Mother couldn't be bothered with spending money on anything other than booze, and I'm the one who broke down and went to the principal for free lunches when they joined me in...