Wet asphalt sparkling under the white sky. There is a yawn of blue. Sometimes fall is brighter than summer, more alive with moisture and energy. Some things are dying, but many things end like fireworks.
We can be categorized in many ways. Let's divide us into the standing, the sitting and the reclining for the time being. Then let us separate into summer minds, winter minds, spring minds, fall minds.
You're going to yawn. You're going to stretch your eyes.
It wasn’t a specific look, or anything she said exactly. It was the things she didn’t do that gave it away. The way that she didn’t automatically include me in the conversation, the way she didn’t look to me when something funny happened, the way she didn’t move up to get more space but stayed, leg pressed against mine, reminding me that she was there.
All the instincts we’d developed about one another over the many years we had been friends were now kicking into gear and compensating for all the things we couldn’t say, not with all these people...
Sadie didn't believe Mother when she told her it would be a greater adventure than the ones she entertained in the garden. Mother squeezed her, kissed her cheek, and they all laughed once upon the summit. The air was so cold and dry it cracked the skin of her cheeks and it chapped her lips, yet it felt thin and clean, like the waters from the stream.
The ladies breathed heavily, hands on their lower backs, stays pinching them into a dazed sort of happiness. The men gallantly offered arms for them to lean on.
They lingered a bit longer...
From up there, I thought I could see it all, but there was nothing. I could see the vents on the roof of the building next door, and beyond that I could see into the window of the man who always kept his suit on until bed.
It wasn't supposed to be about the view, I knew. It was about living in the city and making the most of it, having a small nest to come to at night, to rest, to get up in, to walk out of, to descend from. The point was to be on the ground....
Travel light, but take everything with you. They were father's last words to me before he took my mother and sister down the wooded trail opposite mine and my brother's.
The cossacks had burned our village to the ground an hour ago, and he told us we had to flee into the woods, where they would have more trouble finding us.
When I was young, we used to play in the forest, so I knew it well. I would take my young brother Sasha to a lake a few hours' hike from here, that the cossacks don't know about.
I...
Snitches Die Heroically, the Rest Burn in Hell
October 2002. As the flames ripped apart the body of a five year old girl, burning her skin into a mass of molten cellular plastic, boiling the red and white blood cells that traversed her barely formed veins, charring her fragile, yet to be developed bones, and exterminating the intelligence, wit, and beauty of a child who never had the chance to be; our generation looked on and cheered. While the firefighters rushed to squelch the blaze and douse the embers of dying justice, we arrogantly proclaimed the righteousness of this row-home...
She opened the envelope and screamed. The paper didn't so much as drop to the floor as simply fall apart in her hands, clear liquid eating its way out of the corners and seeping everywhere, floor, clothes skin.
She screamed again as the contents of the envelope liquidated the very flesh from her hands. She turned sharply as the back door banged, meeting the horrified eyes of her husband through a blur of tears.
"Holy fuck," was all that he whispered as he grabbed the 'phone from the side and dialled 999, barking orders for an ambulance.
"Why would they...
Travel light, but take everything with you. Words that my grandmother used to say in wisdom. And words that I've never take to heart till now. The twister ripped though our neighborhood and everything I owned was taken with it. My Children and wife stand now where our Kitchen was. With a heavy sigh, I remember those words my Grandmother used to say, I truly have all I need standing in the kitchen.
He hadn't wanted the light there.
She had insisted - there was light on her, light on her voice, lifting her up, letting them all see her. He was playing too (had a solo during one of the songs, actually) so why shouldn't they see him?
He'd tried to protest that it wasn't traditional, and she'd just given him one of those looks, the one that made him certain that if ever (...when) she did get signed the record label wouldn't be able to force her into one of those moulds they seemed so fond of.
He'd stood his ground,...
They crouched to peer beneath the stairs. They were surprised by how small it was -- "I don't even think an adult could fit in there," he said.
"Sure, if it was an adult midget," she said.
"How big of a midget?" he said.
"We're not really going to discuss the relative sizes of midgets, are we?" she said, turning to look at him for the first time since they found the passageway.
"I think dwarf is the preferred nomenclature anyway," he said with a tired air, pushing the hair out of his eyes. His glasses had slid down his...