What's this?
Dad showed me the picture of the orangutan splayed on the grass.
A monkey, I said.
It's you, he said.
Neither of us laughed.
Remember that time you asked me for a Coke and I stood at the soda machine filling it with Root Beer imagining Homer Simpson saying Mmmmm Root Beer?
Dad laughed.
I laughed.
It's silent most of the time now. I don't think to text and neither does he.
"Clung to" means everyone in the house knowing when I am there and when I am not. A friend is dropping off some cookies she made...
Dispossessed
All he had to his name was this park bench, and not even that.
As he sat and gazed off into the distance, he contemplated his fate. He'd lost his job, then his home, then his family. Nothing was left to him, not even his body that lay six feet under rotting in a pauper's grave. His spirit sat on the bench that the shelter had dedicated to his memory. Suicide had not ended his suffering. Dispossessed of everything he had held dear, he contemplated getting his life back.
His ex-wife stood looking at the bench, at his name...
Whap! It him like a .... what? Whap! It did it again... that thing inside his head. He'd forgotten to take his meds... oh, many days gone by. The doctors had warned him when left the ward... Whap! It felt like... God, he couldn't have described it if he'd wanted to. He'd loved his mother.. when she was alive. Being dead didn't help his issues... his mother, not him, that is. The ward had been locked, the drugs forced on him.
Whap!
He'd promised the doctors he'd take them when he got out.
What!
He'd instead torn them up and...
He sat in the truck parked on the gravel drive, his arm hanging out the window, a cigarette dangling from his finger. The radio was on and Bon Jovi's Bed of Roses was blaring.
She watched him from the behind the closed screen door.
He lowered the visor so she wouldn't be able to see his reddened eyes. Def Lepard's Pour Some Sugar On Me came on next, and he tweaked the volume nob. He could tell she was still looking at him.
He finished his cigarette and flicked it out the window. He took a long drink from the...
Heather had never found her talent.
The smallest amount of knitting made her arms feel like they'd fall from her shoulders. Her paintings looked like they'd been crafted by a toddler. Even decoupage, just gluing paper onto things to decorate them, seemed beyond her reach; in every project the images were wrinkled and unattractive. What was she doing wrong? Time and time again she struggled to release her creative genius, the one she had been told lived inside each and every person, but evidently she preferred to stay hidden deep inside.
Standing on the bridge, she watched the churning waters...
It was enjoyable, this feeling. And so unaccustomed! He had come to a place in his life where so little really made him happy anymore. Leaving the store, though, despite the fact that it was a cloudy, cool day, he felt sunny on the inside. He had bought a new shirt, and he was wearing it - he decided to put it on right away, before he had even left the store. It was green - but a certain shade of green that he didn't see very often. It was his favorite color, and it had called out to him....
They were listening, she just knew they were. As she crept across the carpeted living room floor, she prayed that her parents wouldn't hear her. God only knows what would happen to her if they caught her trying to escape.
She made it to the front door and glanced at the darkened hallway behind her, sure that her mother would come storming into the living room at any moment. She did not.
Lacy reached out and gripped the shiny copper door knob firmly, slowly turning it clockwise. A click resounded like a gunshot in the quiet of the night, despite...
The disco ball was turning. Who knew there were real discos anymore, with real disco balls?
This was my seventh time coming here in three weeks, all because of her. It was the same story every night: I walk in, I see her, I sit, I do nothing. Why do I do nothing? She paralyzes me. She paralyzes me but she doesn't see me. Or so I thought.
--
She's back. Again. Seven times. Seven nights of coming in, seeing me, sitting, and doing nothing. Why does she do nothing? It's clear she sees me. It's clear she wants to...
Malcolm's coo became a cry.
The child peeked into the cardboard box, vexation clearly etched etched upon his face. "What's the matter, little bird?" he asked, reaching down to stroke the wounded pigeon. His mother had warned him to stay away, that sometimes birds would bite and a wild bird like Malcolm could carry diseases. He didn't care. He wanted to stroke his back feathers, far enough back that the bird's beak couldn't reach his pudgey fingers... just in case.
"David! Stay away from that bird!" his mother called.
The boy yanked his finger back just as the pigeon lunged...
Dancing on the beach in bare feet. What a careless thing to do. You could get glass in your feet, or step on a sharp rock. And what on earth are you wearing? It's too cold out; you'll get sick. Get back in the house this minute, girls. It'll be dark, soon, anyway, and you shouldn't be out after dark. That's when the bad men come out.
Sometimes, I wish I could be like you. Innocent, with the world ahead of me. Able to do silly things like dance on the beach at sunset without worrying about the consequences. But...