The bottom of the fountain was a shimmering mural of pennies, the dapper man reached in and picked up a penny, this particular one caught his eye, something gleamed differently about it, something that niggled in his memory. He had a vision of walking this route as a boy, knickers and plaid, a little beret on his dark head.
As the memory became clear he saw his mother, in her radiance that was lost as he got older. The years withered her frame emaciated her skin mere parchment covering frail bones. Cancer. She had died not long after his fifth...
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....
I walked along the flat stones that made up the busy road and let the bustling crowds swallow me whole. My heart pounds in my ears. I hear a sharp shout from behind me and instictively dive over the bright green barrier. I press my body into the lush grass and take shallow breaths. The sound of thousands of footsteps set my nerves on edge. For a moment, my mind wanders to the many times my friends and I used to play hide and seek in this garden when we were younger. Children squealing in delight and running in circles....
The wind is picking up outside. It's unsesnoabley warm. The announcer on the television rattles off a list of counties that are under the warning. Leaves scuttle along the patio outside the window. There is no fear, just curiosity, a little confusion. People step outside to gander at the sky. The voice on the tube implores us to take cover, yet we continue to look out the windows. Thunder rumbles in the distance. People sit on the swing set, passing cigarettes and smiling. It is always calmest, right at this
If I had a camera every time he did something like that, I'd be winning contests. Funniest Kids, Giggling with the Stars, stuff like that.
Henry bought me the camera when the baby was six days old. He was supposed to be picking up the Chinese take-out (I loved those pancakes back then), but he stopped by the camera store. Not Wal-Mart or some big box store. No, Henry spent the extra forty-seven minutes to go to some specialty place.
I was painfully post-partum, couldn't sit without that donut, and he was buying an SLR. Like I was going to...
"Do you think we'll be there in time?" Annette didn't care but she felt as though she should say something to break the awkward silence in the car.
"No." Paolo answered. Annette waited for him to say something else. He didn't so she just continued staring out the window, watching the world pass by outside the car.
They had been traveling for two days, stopping only briefly at a run down motel on the outskirts of some city to catch a night of sleep. Yesterday had been Annette's birthday but the occasion passed by without so much as a balloon....
she didn't look at him. he had been absolutely horrid. he had simply taken off to the other corner of the world and hadn't even thought to come back and see her first. "Oh, darling. I missed you so much. Sweetheart - is something wrong?" "No - it's nothing." he begged her to tell him what wa wrong. she looked at him with her intense stare. "Why don't you guess? You can't just leave me like that! You said you loved me!" "I do love you.." "If that were true you would have come and seen me before leaving again....
Ridiculous. I've tried to write to you probably 30 times since you moved away. I have unfinished letters, words stuck in my head, of a million different ways to say the same thing.
In April I wrote a letter to you in my head on the car ride home from the mountains. Then I went home and typed it up; deleted it, then pulled it out of the 'recycle bin' on my desktop.
Now it's January, the only thing I ever sent was an 'I Miss You' card with a dog on it that looked incredibly sad and I have...
Long after the fireworks, Katie was returning form the lake side. It wasn't a long walk back to her home. She walk along the road. She was passing a house the paint a yellowed white, this was her boyfriend's house she stood there, and began to remember the the happy time she had with him, and as she remember all the good a phone rang, then the sound of a crying woman, she realized it was her voice.
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.