The year was 1986 and she was a high school softball star. So young and full of potential. She was beautiful. She had a beauty that stopped time every time you looked at her. The world was hers for the taking. She loved a lot and loved with all her heart. She held it together for her babies. She tried for so long but the pain chipped away at her slowly everyday. How could she leave? She loved her children more than heartache killed her. What were her dreams? How different would her life be had she not gotten pregnant?...
There was a party in the upstairs of the building. On the roof. It was my building too. I had lived there for many years. Paying rent, not having a pet (not allowed), putting up with all the noise and rubbish in the hallways and out. There was a lot of nastiness, to be sure, but it was my home. Come to find out, its the building's owners giving the party. A corporate landlord business that aims to put themselves first and the people trying to live in their wasted spaces last. The party was buzzing, I could hear the...
"They won't be of any help."
"Why? Did they not see anything?"
"I think they saw too much."
The man in the white coat was right. That was what had happened. We had all seen too much. Too much of the evil that had passed under the sky that night. We had born witness to horrors that no human tongue can describe. And by the way that the animals had fallen silent, not even they knew how to communicate what had happened.
We all sat in silence, those of us cursed to survive. It was by group consensus, unspoken as...
Springtime. In yogateacherland that means detoxes. Twist. The liver is on the right side of your body. Or is that correct? Maybe it is the left. Either way, cross that right leg over your left leg. Settle those seatbones on your mat. You can put your left leg out straight if you need to. Now, right arm out behind you- straight spine - left elbow to the outside of your right knee.
And twist.
With each breath drawing in and up, rotating towards the back of the room, towards the other side. All those dark wintery things that have been...
Potatoes.
That's all the six year old girl would eat. And it seemed that no matter what else I tried to serve her, potatoes was it. She wouldn't try anything else. Wouldn't look at anything else. All she ever wanted? Potatoes.
"Honey, what are we supposed to do?" I sighed, sliding into bed that night. "We went out to the Olive Garden. And she asked for potatoes!"
My husband chuckled a little. "Well, look on the bright side: at least it's a vegetable she wants. Could be worse."
"This is bad enough! No protein! No grain! Heck, even sugar would...
She was stuck inside her own dream it felt like. All around her was fog and darkness. Okay, so it had to have been a nightmare. Alice tread lightly over the crunchy leaves and snapping twigs. Hands outstreched and head down so as not to get hit in the face with the seemingly large tree branches surrounding her.
She started to hear music, something she'd heard before, from her dad's record collection maybe? No. From a movie? She couldn't pinpoint the sorrow female voice she heard singing; as Alice walked more closely, she realized the song was not a song,...
i woke up in a drab, dark room that smelled as if it had not been cleaned in 100 years. I felt a rag over my mouth. i knew that if i dared take so much as a breath, i would slip back into chloroform induced darkness. i tried to reach up and brush the rag from my face, only to discover i could barely move. i struggled, but only succeeded in throwing the rag from my face. i saw a figure in the doorway. he threw back his hood and spoke. *there is gold in these hallways, and you...
The garage was stacked to the ceiling with boxes, the U-Haul ready to cart them away on that windy Tuesday morning. I was wearing sweatpants and my hair was tied up in a bun, ready to move the hell out of there. I had only lived in that white suburban house for two years. I remember the day I moved in it was mid-February. That was two years ago. Then it became May 19th, Tuesday, and windy. I held back tears as I drove away from that house, the one we were supposed to live in after the wedding, raise...
I remember sitting there, minding my own business. The wind was a slightly moving napkins about the table. In frustration, I put my glass on the stack to keep it from dancing in the breeze.
As I sitting, waiting for Charles to arrive for our lunch, she walked by.
It was a fleeting moment, to say the least. But my slouched pose suddenly corrected itself. I was no longer concerned with the wind or its affect on napkins.
She was crossing the street, coming toward the cafe. She was wearing a red summer dress, and it being an August evening,...
All of a sudden, Mary had transformed. She had gone from a reasonably normal looking human woman to a ferocious tiger. She roared. I roared back. Wait, why did I roar? Oh no! I was a tiger as well. Well, this was unfortunate.
Now that we were both tigers, the argument we had been having moments before about who would do the dishes was rendered meaningless. Tigers can't do dishes, because they don't have thumbs. We were also a bit too large for our kitchen. I pushed past tiger Mary to escape the cramped space. Going down the stairs was...