Homeless, the art installation won first prize. John Wentworth had planned to ruin the artist Kitty More. She used his idea. The one he told her about during their snakebite drinking days. The ones when they both woke up with hangovers worthy of bad poetry, the agony of headaches.
John posted intimate, embarassing photos of her. Lovers amateur sex tapes. Recorded snores and farts. Millions of hits. She retreated from the public eye, she always had low self esteem.
But he never thought she was the suicidal type.
the city was empty
winter empty, not
summer empty
snowstorm home-bound, not
bound for Myrtle Beach, or
flown to Florida or
wherever the hell
the neighbors went.
Christ, doesn't anyone stay
home anymore?
Sit on the deck in frayed nylon
beach chairs?
I can't even find them in
the stores anymore.
what happened?
where did everyone go?
it's the city...
it should
never
be
empty.
When represented on a flat surface, a right angle can appear acute or oblique.
The child wanted the bully's red bicycle, but he knew to take it away would be going against a pecking order that had been around forever.
He walked up to the bully, who was sitting on the slightly oversized bike, and asked if he could ride it.
The bully squinted at him as he spoke, acting as though he couldn't hear him. As though the child had no voice at all.
"Get away from me," the bully said.
The child assured him that he only wanted to try the bike so he could tell his father if that was the...
Vanquished.
She looked at the body of her enemy lying there on the floor. She knew she should feel a sense of triumph, but instead there was only sorrow. Sorrow for the lost years, the million memories that would never be, the milestones both present and future that would never be shared.
For you see, the dead body belonged to her mother.
Her mother had run out on her father soon after her birth, and the girl had wondered all her life what it was like to have a mother. Someone to make sure her hair was perfect on picture...
Listen to the sounds that the butterflies make. Listen what they say when they communicate, as they talk to each other, their little butterfly whispers, back and forth, their conversation. Through these special headphones, you can for the first time hear the conversation of the butterflies.
Sadly, twenty seven years ago was the last time we saw real, live butterflies. The great butterfly passing of 2017 was a hard, lonely time for human beings.
But thankfully, forward thinking scientists recorded every sound, every movement, every bit of data they could about 2102 different butterfly species. And now you, through the...
Absent. That's what mom has been for the past three years since the day the front door slammed shut on her and the four carrier bags of belongings. That's all she took, her makeup and her best pair of shoes. Crocodile skin. Horrid looking things but they seemed to mean more to her than the family.
Kathleen, the youngest still kept an eye on the front path most evenings just in case mom returned. Rest of us knew that very unlikely as her latest boyfriend had been very rich and mom had always been a gold digger.
We lived with...
She could tell I was faking it. Unforgiveness. Ten years working at the lab, overtimes, ruined marriage, kids that pretend I'm not their dad, ulcers. I hated her for joking around, waving the scalpel, accidentally killing F7, our first subject to live beyond three months.
In human years he this was equivalent to 20. Tall, dark haired, extraordinarily strong. Yes, he was ugly, but this was of no consequence. We had all grown to love him. .
Sonia, my assistant ran out the room instead of trying to save his life. Couldn't look at me. Knew I would never stop...
It wasn't easy to stack the gold bars in the cellar. Very heavy. I kept one in my bedroom so I could look at it whenever I wanted. Part of me was trying to warn there was something strange going on, another (the greedy part) knew that it was synchroncity that worked this for me.
Cousin Marty told me about the new shop between the Chinese Grocery store and the old-fashioned chemist. Strange as I'd never noticed the shop even though it was supposed to have been there for the last month. Marty showed me the rare whisky he'd bought,...
I'm not sure how it will end between us. I am not sure about the middle. I can't even promise that I'll remember how it began.
But what I can promise is that in years to come, your friend or your girlfriend or your child will ask you to tell the story of us. and when they do, I can promise you that you will smile.
I won't matter how it ended or how it started. In that moment, you'll pause, and smile because you'll remember the bit that made it great in between.
"She was an optimist" You'll say....