It starts out a little top heavy
with a first line so weighted down with its own importance
that it has to sink to the second (or even third) stanza -
the spark of an idea around which the softer lines crowd.
It usually has a trail of water drops leading up to it
because all good ideas strike in the shower
(it's always the shower)
and will be lost in the time it takes to comb or dry or dress.
It's never quite happy in its own skin
but lacks the will to be anything else
It shouts to...
"Who among you, if her son asks her for bread, will instead give him a stone?"
I was paraphrasing, and quoting out of context, but she didn't know that. She was just a foolish, naive, ignorant, innocent young girl. She'd begged and pleaded for the opportunity to raise a pet. The goldfish just hadn't been enough, either. Oh no; she wanted a mammal.
So the baby gorilla came home with me one day, fresh out of acting school. This little guy was GOOD. He could play dead with the best of them. He could even slow his heart rate to...
Daring to be noticed for the first time in her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up.
"Ladies? Gentlemen? Entities?" Helen paused. No response.
Helen glanced around. The large workroom -- some schizophrenic combination of retro and avant0-garde -- was loud, clicking and warbling and chatting in a very large number of tongues.
Helen cleared her throat. It should have been for effect, but it was because her throat had suddenly dried, as if she had swallowed the entirety of the Sahara back on Terra. "People! And non-people! Listen!"
To their credit, many did. Many didn't, but that...
The rock where my sister died dominated the landscape like a giant defrocked mushroom.
My parents were standing beside me, waiting for my response as I looked up at the seaweed and the striations. I wasn't sure what they wanted me to feel.
"It's cold," I said.
"We were just up on that ledge," said mom. "The tide was coming in, but the sun was setting and we wanted to watch it."
"Thought we'd just wade back to shore afterwards," added dad.
"But I lost my balance and slipped. Pregnancy does that to you sometimes, messes with your inner ear....
I was nothing like his mother. Didn't look like her, act like her yet he told his friends we had to split up because I was like her. WTF. He told me that he no longer fancied me so why say I was like his mom.
I'd known him for over a year, we'd split up and got back countless times. I imagined that this time it would be like the others. He split up then pretended it was the drink. Although this time I decided I wasn't going to accept his apologies any more. This was final.
Jim called...
The border. He had. To find. The border. He'd made this trip a hundred times before and each time the damn thing moved. When he thought of it - if he thought of it at all - he imagined it as some kind of mystical shimmering veil. Except you couldn't actually see it. Couldn't map it. It might be there with the next step or it could take a thousand more and he never knew which it would be. He was pretty sure he'd been walking straight for it but... had he just been circling? Was he even heading in...
When I was a child, we used to have pet mice. The first one was called Snips and I don't remember how or why, but we had it for a few weeks and then it died.
According to Grandpop, who is not the most reliable storyteller...no, that's not quite true. He's a reliable storyteller, he's just not the most reliable truthteller. According to Grandpop, Snips didn't die of any ordinary mouse cause of death.
Snips died because he got in with the wrong type of animal.
Again, I'll stress that this is all according to Grandpop, not something I saw...
We'd been here once before. Staring through tiny holes on a weird-shaped box staring down at the bustling city below us. This time is different. This time he tells me he's ending it. No, not with me, with his fiance of merely two months who he works with at a dive bar down South. Naturally, I thought his engagement the week of my wedding was ludicrous to begin with. A Sapphire instead of a diamond on the hand of a girl with striped purple hair. She wasn't his type.
I gave my condolences, I guess that's the right word, I...
*click*
"Sweetie, Daddy is trying to work, OK? One more picture and then you go play with your dolls, OK? You can do a fashion show and take pictures of them. Wouldn't that be fun?"
*click* *click* *click*
"OK, that's enough now. Honey? HEY, HONEY! Can you come get Penny? I need to finish this report! Honey?"
"She can't hear you."
"Why not? Where's Mommy, sweetheart? Is she outside?"
"The woman is in my capture device."
"What? Your... Penny, what's wrong? Why are you looking like that? Where's Mommy?"
"The woman is in my capture device. Along with the pre-reproductive...
There was a young man but so much unlike a normal man he was. He was always put in solitude, never let neer others. There was a reason for this his, he was to dangerous his father would say to him. But he did not think this he did not think people would fear him. One day he had been walking through the courtyard and he spotted something in the corner, this was what he needed a tunnel. So the following night he crawled through and ended up in a town and smelled something so sweet.....blood.