Daring to be noticed for the first time in her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up. She knew every detail of his face: the way his nose arched in between his eyes, the way the left side of his lip always rose a little higher when he smirked as he walked by, and that freckle under his ear that she always imagined kissing.
They had worked in the same office for about six months now, and since he walked in she could not take her eyes off him. They would talk very casually, about the boring weekly...
They were listening. Outside of the door, on the floor, in their footed pajamas. Listening while they heard yelling from their Mom and Dad. Listening to "Leave, I hate you," and "How could you love him and not me?" Holding empty sippy cups, on the verge of crying because they didn't know what was going on. Sitting there outside the door with their matching blonde hair and matching haircuts with matching faces. The twins Andrew and Erik holding each a stuffed cow and an empty sippy cup. Andrew started crying, screaming for his parents. The door opened, he stopped crying....
My kids are always begging me to go to Disneyland. I suppose I'm not alone in this. The thing that kills me is how well they argue their position. It's like I'm raising a pack of lawyers in my home. That's maybe the worst part of the whole thing - imagining that I'm incubating the next generation of shysters simply by encouraging my kids to back up the claims they make.
That's why I continue to refuse to take them to Disneyland even though they've mustered some really good arguments in their favor. I don't want them to think that...
The conversation lasted two words:
Why?
No.
This was the conversation that I had with myself every day. It always followed the question that I asked myself after waking up from the dreams of my foolish heart. At night, in sleep, I would dream about him and the way things could be if only life were different. We could be and do amazing things together. Every night I dreamt and every day I asked.
Why?
No.
The words I held back from this daily conversation were the ones that hurt the most. They, were the truth. They were the words...
It was a vast open space. Where the distant hills cling to the horizon, and the blue sky above curves to fasten to the mountain tops below, and desert sand cloaks sheet metal on the floor, stretching as far as the eye can see. It was an illusion…
This is the place where all things die.
This is the place where it ends.
A man in a dark suit approaches me and shakes my hand.
"I’m glad you could make it."
As blood runs across the sand, and the sun drops, and red sky filters between the moments of openness...
Highrises and skyscrapers never scared her. Layer upon layer of people and things were a comfort; like extra blankets on top of beds in the winter. The noise of floors reaching to the sky acted as a lullabye.
So when he asked her to move to a place where the highest high was just as high as bird could fly, and the people were all tied to the land, she said yes but thought no. No I can not be alone. No, I need layers of people to protect me. No, I need to be up high, away from the...
She wanted to kill her. She wanted to murder the girl who got me fired. Why? I couldn't explain.
She didn't look at him as she gingerly opened the sketchbook he had laid in front of her. Carefully schooling her face into it's most neutral expression, just in case she didn't like what she saw.
She needn't have worried.
For as she opened the book and began to gaze over the imagery, the concepts, the scribbled annotations that sounded like he had been talking to himself as he wrote them, she became lost in the world he was describing.
She could feel him tense next to her. She understood that, by being shown his work it was like she...
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...
Dark spires pierce the night, reaching for full moons and distant stars. It's more than most could contend with. We sleep, conjuring pistol dreams while the tall buildings and statues do the work of our desires of actively attaining the beauty that this world has to offer. Every day we awake to the soft sunlight shining through our windows believing that today is the day that we will quit our jobs and move to distant cities and start anew. But these thoughts dim as we put on our clothes for work and eat more morning breakfast and continue on with...