Absent. The roots were absent but you could still see them. When you burn a stump, you often end up with a chunk of its heart that doesn't turn to ash. The interesting thing is how the fire always seems to follow the roots, no matter how deep they go, burning away every trace of them. Sometimes, even a year later, a fire can rekindle from deep in the earth where it was banked in some hidden location. Looking down from above, you can see the faithful reproduction of the root system only it's just air. Hollows that disappear into...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.
Passersby ignored the frail, shivering thing, their eyes never dropping, their heads never turning. She might have been a doll in a window, or something someone left behind. She wasn't any of their business.
A little round boy with a little round face in his little grey jacket wrapped around his little round belly poked at the girl with his little round foot.
The girl, who wasn't much older than he, looked up from the protective valley of her arms and smiled at him. The little...
We speared our forks on the tablecloth stained with soy and spice and duck sauce as the waiters took the picked-over "Chinese" dinners from our sight. The restaurant catered to American tour groups whose beef and corn tastes fall too unrefined for authentic foreign dishes and who long to travel thousands of miles just to conjure a memory from the hole in the wall Taiwan Garden down the end of Mulberry Street, across from the courthouse.
As our servants sprinkled the remains of our feast in the dumpster like fish food to the swarm of street children eager for their...
I carry you with me.
I carry you with me here.
Right here, in this tender spot
in this hollow space.
I carry you with me.
I carry you on the tip of my tongue
Just on the tip, so that I can
carry you with me here,
in my words, in my sounds
There. That word, that sound -
Said just as you would, just as you have
Because I carry you with me,
I carry you with me here.
Right here, in the downturn of these lips,
In that expression you wore had that carried with it a...
We waited for the curtain to go down, some patiently and obliviously to the palpable tension between Fran and I. Once again she'd tried to force me to go into the final act without the correct props. Once again she'd sabotaged, or rather tried to sabotage my costume. But I wouldn't be held back. I was going to upstage her no matter that my backside was revealed to the entire audience. She thought I wouldn't turn and face her? Apparently she was unaware of my tenacity and forgot that I'd seen her in action before. To that end, so to...
There's somebody standing in the corner of my room. He just stands there in diffused light - brooding and making no noise.
Oddly enough, he makes no attempt at escaping. Perhaps its because I stapled him to the dresser drawer as he had refused to have his picture taken.
He looks so much better in person anyway...
She'd been in the park till noon, watching the gate to the Forbidden City, seeing the tourists as they milled about in mist-rimed sunshine. Finally, she caught sight of him as he approached the gate. Every day without fail, staggering slightly under the weight of his bag. She was overdressed for the streets in a red dress meant for parties not park benches. Flung out suddenly from the warmth of the car, out of favour and, quite suddenly without comfort. At the bottom of the hill she lost him briefly, then saw him, walking alongside two Western tourists, his sack...
"Goodnight..." My baby sleeps in my arms, her little hands balled up into tiny fists.
"Goodnight..." My baby lays in bed with her pigtails loose and her pajama's too small.
"Goodnight..." My baby dances and twirls herself to her room; dancing on air and blinded by love.
"Goodnight..." My baby waves from the car as they drive away, her white dress shining like the tears in my eyes.
"Goodnight..." My baby rocks her baby to sleep and I smile.
"Goodnight..." My baby kisses my hand and I drift away.
Before the crone could lift the latch, the outsider entered unbidden; not something wisely done at a witch's door. The boy seemed to need folding to miss the oak lintel. Felt cap respectfully in hand, he spilled over the urgent threshold.
"Some rich master has stolen my Bess away from me!" he blurted out.
The old woman assessed him bending his way through the old wooden doorway. Green doublet. Old but smart. Yellow hose. Bachelor. Sixteen Summers. Mayhap a little more, but large - she smiled - in every respect.
He hadn't noticed the maid, half shoved behind the door,...
"Tell me what you did. Tell me what you did yesterday."
She was at the bottom of the stairs in her own house. She was alone, but she knew she wasn't. The lights were off and it was dark.
"I was home. There was nobody there, except him."
She put her foot on the first step, and slowly pulled herself up. When she reached the second floor, she put her hand on the railing to steady herself.
"I felt like I was going to pass out. It was because of him."
She walked into her bedroom, looking nonchalant though there...