Absent.
He sat right at the front, but would never once look up at the board all while knowing full well the snippy teacher would think him rude. He would only doodle inside his beat-up notebook he'd kept since seventh grade, and I would never know what exactly it was he was so intent on drawing.
It's a project, he would say.
He is not here today. He and I do not interact much, but I know he is beautiful. He is beautiful and I have loved him since I laid eyes on him. I have loved him and loved...
Three Chances. Two Donors. One Hope.
December 4th. Today is the third anniversary of your first bone marrow transplant. Did I actually say “first transplant”? Who in the hell has another one? It is still hard for me to imagine that you did. What parent walks around carrying those things in their memories?
You had such an amazing donor. He gave you six months of good health and a year of life. He must have been so brave and selfless to give you such a gift. I wish that I could thank him in person. But that would never happen...
The gate closed behind them. Like a thunderous blast of insecurity they were shunned, abolished, removed from the society that their father so desperately tried to control. Sarah turned, taking hold of her younger sisters hand and began walking, but she wouldn't move.
"Damnit, c'mon Michelle! They've thrown us out, our dumbass father screwed up, and now we're the ones paying for it!"
"But daddy was trying so hard, he only wanted to help-"
Sarah slapped Michelle across the face, tears breaking fourth along side the ear shattering sound of flesh smashing into flesh.
"Dad messed up, he died, and...
The sky was blue, the grass was green and the little clouds were as fluffy as the picture in a child's reading book. All was well with the world. And on her swing, she could see above the park, above the neat hedges and the flowering bushes. She could, as she swung higher still, see over the row of terraced houses and into the street beyond. Over the flowering cherry trees and the neat gardens with their blossoming plants, over the heads of the middle class and middle aged gardeners and housewives and shoppers and busy bodies of the suburban...
In this world there is no pain, no disappointment. No one can hurt her here.
In this world she's in control. People look up to HER. They LOVE her. They admire her beauty and style and uniqueness. In this world she can be as silly as she wants.
She can break all the rules and STILL be looked up to as Role Model.
In this world there is no pain, no disappointment. No one can hurt her here. She is a child as well as an adult. She is a hero. An angel. A warrior.
Anything she dreams off, she...
We wrote a song for the silver trees. The streetlamps gathered underneath the bridge to hear us. Our band played. Others milled. The night was soft. The river was a metronome.
We wrote a song for the silver trees.
Sylvia wasn't sure she should have been there, never higher than 3rd chair in the symphony, but the viola was for her and her alone. I loved it when she tilted her neck just so. The chains glinting silver in the groaning of the streetlamps.
This was a song for her neck.
We wrote it in a hurry, gathering musicians out...
"I want grandchildren."
"I know, ma. But, I'm just not ready for-"
"-Did I ask you what you're ready for?" ma interrupted me, once again. "I'm old, lonely and in need of grandchildren. As my only child, you owe me that."
I closed my eyes and sighed heavily. Why? Why does my mother torture me so? "Listen, I really do have to-"
"-When are you going to get a man?"
"Mother!"
"Don't act surprised. You're 28. You've never had a steady boyfriend. The girls in my book club are starting to wonder about you."
Embarassment covered me from head to...
Capriciously, I repudiated the sky and all its lighting and thunder, snow and rain, and changing colors.
The paradigm wasn't there. Or was it?
Well, if it wasn't and if it were grounded by gravity, then so many Big Things are just frivolous.
Like love.
And losing a lover.
And even being born here, gasping for breath at first, and fighting through a mob just to climb some ranks and "make it." And those were the Big Things, too.
The paradigm here can't hold such Big Things if it was made to only hold such small, ambiguous entities like eating,...
"Light. I feel light"
"I should think so, you lost about half of you."
I struggled to open my eyes, afraid to see what had happened. The last thing I remembered before the darkness was the light, the bright light that had surrounded and suffused me, that had seemed to consume me. A hand waved in front of my face, and at first I was certain it wasn't mine, couldn't be mine. I had never been that skeletal, I had always been a rather large man.
"Easy there, you just did something stupid or amazing, and you're rather week. We...
She opened the envelope and screamed. Then she opened the next envelope, screamed, set it down. Then the next, screamed, set it down. Next, screamed, down. Next, screamed, down.
A strange ritual. Letting out some kind of pent up anger and frustration. She had drawn a crowd, as one letter after another would be opened, followed by a scream, then the laying down of the envelope. For hours on end she did exactly the same thing. Open, scream, down. Soon, the crowd had grown quite large. The police arrived, and stood for a few minutes, watching this bizarre ritual. One...