I just stepped off the train, and the heat is unbearable. Before I left my apartment, it was already at 90. That was at 5:45 this morning.
Now, it is the end of the day, and I am stopping to grab a drink with a friend. They are visiting the city, so I have meet them up in a place I normally don't go to. Well, except for work.
The heat is so intense, taking the train was easier than walking. I would normally walk but this would have been too much of an exercise.
Michael Phelps would have been...
The sun this morning grows short thick shadows from the cobblestones. A sweaty head against the curb, red hatching at his temple, bleeds dark light onto the lane.
Did someone win last night?
No, the square is too clean.
But it's too late for so little noise.
Perhaps the town has emptied its contents into the universe, jettisoned the citizenry, the mutts and ferals, the tourists and the visitors.
Oh, the visitors.
Who were those visitors? Cheerless, I thought at first. But, no, I reconsidered, occupied.
I look back at the sweaty head, shake mine, and continue, hand in my...
It was the fall that surprised me most. Stumbling, suddenly in darkness, in a vile body that felt alien, so different, so limited, so odd - nothing to...before.
They never believed me, never believed what I said, when I tried to explain where I belonged (this tongue is clumsy and cannot say the words I need - I use words like "sky" and "stars" and "above" and "far" but none of them even begin to describe home - home is the closest approximation I have, but it is, I find, unhelpful)
They tell me that such things - I -...
It felt like the last night on earth, the last day of the world.
The truth of it was simply that it was the last day for the two of them.
She wasn't certain she could really pinpoint the day they ended, nor that she could really work out why they ended. It was as if she'd woken up one morning, looked at him (his back, how long had that been the way they slept, not even touching, two bodies in the same bed, not two souls in the same space) and realised that she didn't love him.
It hadn't...
We stood watching lights of a city I would soon leave behind. Atop the hotel roof, we clung to each other on my last night in Cleveland. The triangle-shaped Rock Hall was lit beautifully. The river below, the stadium where the Browns played just a short ways away. It had been an incredibly hot day for Ohio; yet we held hands the entire day. Woke up with fans blasting, drinking ice water that had turned lukewarm overnight. My feet stuck to his hard wood floors, making squeaking noises as I walked to the kitchen in my summer pajamas; a night...
Sarah sat down on the concrete bench and stared at the couple locked in an embrace.The city lights across the water blinked glowed and highlighted them against the dark sky.
The light also highlighted what Sarah lacked.
"Lousy tourists," she said fumbling through her purse for her pack of cigarettes.
She found the pack and pulled one loose and lit it.Hoping to get the bitter taste out of her mouth.
The couple hugged and kissed each other's cheeks foreheads and ears. They whispered softly and then laughed.
They stared out at the city skyline, they hands searching desperately for the...
I couldn't sleep, so I went out for a late-night walk around town. When I got to the bridge, I stopped to look out at the bright lights in the city.
Suddenly, a woman came up to me and gave me a hug. Not wanting to be rude, I hugged her back as we both looked off in the distance. I'm not sure why, but she began to move her hand lower down my back. I tried to hint that she was making this even more awkward than it already was by moving my arm up, almost to her neck,...
There's somebody standing in the corner of my room. He tells me things. He tells me to do things. Sometimes, he tells me other people are lying. He tells me not to tell anyone he's there. And I listen, because he's scary. But I think they're starting to figure out.
They see my eyes dart his way when he speaks. They see my confusion when I try to separate the voices. They see my hesitation when he tells me they're wrong. I think they're starting to figure it out, and I can't let that happen. He told me I can't....
The attic was stuffy, of course it should be. It is May, and they are preparing to move into a new house.
She is hunched over a box sifting through the items time seems to have forgotten.
She sees kids medals, awards and photos from the ceremonies. She finds trinkets and grade school crafts. Making sure they are in tact, and making sure she wishes to keep the memories, she places the items into the box with care.
The boys have been out of the house for years now. These items are all that pretty stays here. They have their...
She wasn't the kind of girl who kept love letters, wrapped in pink ribbon, locked in an inlayed wooden box. Not that anyone sent love letters these days.
She would have no wild stories of her youth to tell her neices, no lost loves, no ones who got away.
She was, as she always had been, just her.
She had got so use to being on her own, the proverbial independant woman, that she ended up so afraid, afraid of being any other way.
And so , even though she was still young, she had stopped looking for love letters...