He looked upwards. My goodness - it was high! What would he feel like under these arched ceilings, dwarfed by the massive columns and enclosed within the brick and stonework of this enormous building? A cold wind blew between the arches and pieces of litter fluttered by.
But to gain entrance to this place he knew that first he had to pass the exam. And he knew he had not prepared enough, not worked hard enough, not learnt the texts by heart as he should. He had been too busy with other things; eating and drinking, loving and sleeping, singing...
to feel the moss of the forest floor - this was her favorite. she would bend down periodically, just to caress the soft verdant covering. when she came upon a cluster of burgeoning ferns, she reached and ran them through her fingers like she would strands of a lover's hair. she loved the forest quite as much, and found spending time in it much more peaceful than time passed with any lover she'd ever known. the sun-dappled ground. the falling leaves led in a gentle dance by the breezes. the sight of it all renewed her spirit, in the way...
"Swing." She watched her daughter, ignoring the wails and screams.
"Push me Mom!"
"No. Lean back and put your legs out. Then lean forward and pull them back."
"PUSH me MOM! NOW!"
"No. Lean back then forward. You can do it yourself. You will go higher then. Higher than even I can push you."
"MOMMY! Push me!"
"No. You need to be able to do it yourself." She watched as her daughter swung her uncoordinated legs about before giving up.
"Mommy! It DOESN'T work!"
"Let me show you. See! If I lean back and forth the swing goes without someone...
Goodnight sweetheart, well it's time to go...
Goodnight sweetheart, well it's time to go...
There's a contentment there. I find myself humming that, especially when everything has gone to hell and the day is a loss, and yet there is still the final evening bits to get through.
It's Sha-NA-NA in my head. A sense of contentment settles over me, a sense of belonging - to another time, a younger time - a time before pain. Well. A time before this particular kind of pain, or even the pain of what was coming a few years after that song stopped...
Whap! It him like a .... what? Whap! It did it again... that thing inside his head. He'd forgotten to take his meds... oh, many days gone by. The doctors had warned him when left the ward... Whap! It felt like... God, he couldn't have described it if he'd wanted to. He'd loved his mother.. when she was alive. Being dead didn't help his issues... his mother, not him, that is. The ward had been locked, the drugs forced on him.
Whap!
He'd promised the doctors he'd take them when he got out.
What!
He'd instead torn them up and...
Midnight
On the roof.
A shouldn't-be time in a shouldn't-be place,
Thad pecked a shouldn't-do cigarette from the packet and lit it with a burst of flame that violated the darkness and fizzed against the silence.
He exhaled a plume of smoke, pushing it away from his body with his breath, but it hung about in his personal space as if it was reluctant to go too close to the edge.
He looked up. Some mist up there was blocking out the stars and, for now, the moon was balling along behind a strip of cloud. There wouldn't even be...
The disco ball was turning. Who knew there were real discos anymore, with real disco balls?
This was my seventh time coming here in three weeks, all because of her. It was the same story every night: I walk in, I see her, I sit, I do nothing. Why do I do nothing? She paralyzes me. She paralyzes me but she doesn't see me. Or so I thought.
--
She's back. Again. Seven times. Seven nights of coming in, seeing me, sitting, and doing nothing. Why does she do nothing? It's clear she sees me. It's clear she wants to...
Pollution is an artist
and poison is a poet
Death is the brightest of colors
Noise is the sweetest song
Pollution won a grant
and poison won a fellowship
We're meeting for drinks downtown
to celebrate their well-deserved
recognition.
The chill of the water slowly crept up his trunk, until it reached his tusks. He couldn't move...not that he even wanted to, any more.
They had won.
He'd faced adversary ever since he'd announced his intentions. At first from his parents, then from his friends, until he was the laughing-stock of the whole herd.
"How are you going to pole-vault?" they'd sneered. "You don't have any arms!"
"You think they're going to let you in the Olympics!? Ha! You don't even speak the same language as the humans...how are you even going to communicate your intentions?"
His parents had...
Leaving was the easiest decision to make, and the hardest action to take.
They were just sitting there In the box. Helpless.
Helpless was the only word that seemed to match all around. Why wouldn't someone destroy everything in that box. Why wouldn't they be debauched to within an inch of the last bit of everything there ever was?
She was always too soft when it came to things. It's like her house was the place where things came to be rescued, rabbits, fledglings, dogs that ate the rabbits that took refuge there and demanded to be rescued themselves, and...