Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She gazed upwards towards the empty whiteness where the sky used to be. Outside, the streets were filled with people doing the same. Cars had screeched to a halt. Things were dropped, and dog leashes let go of.
The sun, the moon, the stars, the clouds - nothing was there. Only, they weren't looking just at the nothingness. All eyes had narrowed to the one dead pixel. Hanging in the sky, like a tiny afterglow of a tiny what-used-to-be.
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.
She was crouched over an open laptop, her scowl lit up by the screen as she stabbed cmd+R repeatedly. The browser blinked frantically as it reloaded the same white text area on the same light blue background over and over and over again.
"It's past midnight in the U.S.," she muttered. "Why hasn't the prompt been updated yet?"
She scrolled down the rest of the page, cmd-clicking every link until the Twitter page popped up.
"GODDAMMIT," she cried, 'THEY'RE ON THE WEST COAST."
After removing the gown and sliding to the floor, she flinched - another splinter. Number four. That is simply too many splinters.
Fen agreed.
There were three daughters of the Feng family, and when the father lost his business and the mother lost her mind, the three daughters were left to serve others on their own china, long ago sold for half its value to a family of gloating pretenders.
The first daughter married a nice young man from across the way, not a family of any importance but he was a hard worker and that was enough. The second daughter died young, and since no one cared to remember her family, much less her, her life was brief and short and unremarkable.
The...
It was cold. Freezing, really. There at the stoop, on the street, glowing in red. Dark, straight hair raking her face. She shivered, stood and walked down the street. To me, this place is foreign. To her, she knows the environment like the stories her mother told her. She walks down the road away from the doorway. Where they threw her out. Spit on her. But now she walks down the road trying to keep warm. She coughs. The shivers shake her again. The cold day drops her onto the street, rejecting her and the brightness of her clothes. The...
Wide, flat expanses lend themselves to romance. The romance of the open air and the sky as they meet the horizon and walk away. In this dusty corner of the world the muezzin stirs. He who calls the believers to prayer.
Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.
Allahu Akbar into the rising sun. Allahu Akbar to the departing night. Bleary eyed with sandalled feet, the faithful congregate through the thick dust. Voices hushed as though in respect as the light beckons.
Awake for morning in the bowl of night,
Has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight,
And Lo, the...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. It was a cold evening, and it turns out she didn't quite make the cut to be invited to the party. There's no way she could've gone back home, though. The opinion of her parents was so important to her-- having them know that she was an outcast? It wasn't an option.
So she just stood there. Outside, watching all the more popular people go in. It wouldn't have been so bad if she could sit alone in a quiet corner of the restaurant across the...
She had no idea why she'd put on her red party dress this morning. It was cold, it was overcast, and she had nowhere special to go. Still, when she'd awakened this morning, the thought that made her want to get up was not any of these:
- You have the entire day to yourself
- You deserve to do something fun
it was:
- You love the way you look in that dress.
So, on an autumn morning indistinguishable from the days that proceeded and would follow it, Sal was wearing her red silk dress, a natty trench coat,...
There is nothing good about Monday. I feel bad every time I think that, because then I realize, "Well, I could be dead, or in Cleveland, and then my Monday would be much worse." And then I feel bad for making fun of Cleveland in my head, because I actually liked it the one time I went there.
Even though I don't do much here, it's hard to escape the native smugness that comes with being from New York City. It is all going on here. The thing is, I don't want to do most of it. I'm pretty internal,...