Fault. It is so common a word. Used by so many to allay the suspicion that they are truly the ones responsible. And who am I? I am no different.
My leg moved as if in a dream, gliding through time and space like it was made of water, no jelly, no gravity. It moved, ever so slowly towards a destination that I couldn't help but be brought to. Call it fate, call it fault call it whatever you will but in the end that is where I ended up. One foot in the street and another on the sidewalk....
The detective sighed and adjusted the Stetson balanced on his head, fingers rubbing the brim lightly. "Where're the survivors?" he asked, looking over to his deputy. "They're over that way. Shaken up, but there were more survivors than deaths." he replied, gesturing down the tracks to a small mob of people milling alongside the derailed train. The detective nodded. The crash was most likely an accident, but the police had to investigate anyway.
He staggered down the embankment dotted with scraggly sage to the wreck. The red dust of the desert clay had been kicked up in the skidding crash,...
The city was empty. The skyscrapers during the day looked powerful and full of promise. At night, they just looked like pieces of art. The hustle and bustle of New York was beginning to bug me, for the first time ever. I was going to walk far, but I'd see someone. So I stayed in my quiet neighborhood, passing by restaurants and apartment buildings. "Being alone was possibly the worst thing that has ever happened to me." I thought to myself. From then on, that's all I could think about. That sentence rang in my head like a dinner bell....
Yumi had been drawn back to the beach. Inside her trembling frame her soul screamed in agony, her weakened legs barely held her up. It had been one year and eight months to the hour since hell rose up and sucked away her reason to live. On that frigid silent morning the black putrid ocean came over them and then forever kept coming. The shrieking banshee cry of the tsunami alarm vibrated through her bones as she ran with baby Akiko in her grasp. The impact of the wave smashed her legs and the baby tumbled from her tender grasp....
Spinning.
The tiny clockwork bird danced (for want of a better term) in a circle, twirling, singing out its jaunty song.
She sat, watching it sing out its tune, listening to the unique tinny sound of the music box - there was something about that music, that paticular brand, which brought her back to childhood. As a child she had watched the bird, watched it in her mother's palm.
Her mother had, briefly, convinced her that this was a real bird, that this was what happened to them when they were caught, tamed. That you could teach them these songs,...
Absolutely ridiculous. I mean really, how could anyone expect that much of me when I'm only seventeen! So I said no, of course I'm not going to. Then the question came that I'd hoped he wouldn't ask: "why?" Oh, there are so many reasons why but I didn't tell him any of them. I didn't say anything. I just stood there telling myself not to cry, that I never could have said yes even if I wanted to. I tried to convince myself that I didn't want to say yes but I'm still not entirely sure if that's true. Well,...
She sat in her car, staring up at the Motel 6. After begging her boss to let her off early, she almost wished he would have said no. If her boss knew what she was up to, he probably would have.
"I shouldn't be here," she whispered to herself, staring at the motel key Steve gave to her.
But she also knew she wanted to be. The same battle she has every Sunday night at about nine thirty. It's always the same. Leave work two hours early, come spend time with Steve. It's become as easy as blinking; automatic, and...
Time is right in front of me a constant reminder of where and when I need to go,go,go. Time tells me how to be according to my calendar.
We stopped along the path and he leaned back into the tree as if it were a place to rest. He deemed it so and there I took a photograph. We were late and time wasn't on our side so we were going to thank time and hold it tight against ourselves. We would rock it to sleep so that we could be free to enjoy the path. At the end of...
You gave me the best summer of my life. The summer before I went to college, I wished that everything we had shared would never change.
We kissed on the bench in my backyard, in your car in the rain, at the movies...Then once I got to college, it was your apartment.
Back to summer; I can't think of better moments I could have shared with anyone else.
After my sophomore year, I didn't see you again. And I'll always think of the night you proposed, watching MTV, high, at 4am.
I will remember the way you used to look...
The argument over the preferred pronunciation of "Pax Romana" bloomed into a bloody fistfight, not that it was terrifically violent so much as the pugilists were notorious bleeders. The patch of snow on which they sparred began to resemble the flag of Japan as arms unfurled, elbows snapped back, and fists clenched so tight, thumbs overlapped knuckles.
Inside, my kung pow shrimp cooled under the air vent.