The desert rose would always grow.
It knew nothing of circumstances beyond its control. Nothing of bodies drying in the sun, baked by heat on the hot sand. All that mattered was the sun and the wind and just enough moisture to survive.
The girl turned, picked the pink blossom, and tucked it into the soldier's kaki colored uniform. The color clashed happily with the washed out surroundings, almost as much as the smile with which he repaid her small kindness.
Wine. I knew that the Prosecco was cold enough and I was nervously stepping all over the apartment waiting for her to show up.I loved her. She knew that, but all she could give me was her frienship she said. Oh How much I hated that phrase, it kept pounding on my head like an hammer. I had the wine, sparkling Prosecco. If ...maybe....I was dreaming. I met her when she was very young. She was as beautiful as a star in the dark skies of Arizona. She wanted to be an actress..I was going to help her with my...
The audience stared open mouthed at me. I didn't know if I should cover up or keep dancing. Who would have thought I would have fallen out of my costume? A wardrobe malfunction, that's what they called it.
So I did what I thought was the right thing to do. I pushed myself back into the low-cut tube top and kept on dancing.
It wasn't like I was a double D floating through the air as the tassels twisted blindly around. I could fudge a C on a cold day.
I just hope someday I will live down the day...
TWIST.
The World Is Still Turning.
It was months after the destruction. We knew it was coming so we headed to the shelters that our grandfather had dug, in the deep mountains. We went in and closed the doors, sealing out the world and sealing ourselves inside.
Eventually, cabin fever struck. We decided that living like rats, in a hole, was not acceptable. We had to know what was going on.
We opened the seals and felt the rush of truly, fresh air. Everything outside looked the same. We decided to venture out to see what was what.
Part way,...
In the 'old days' I would close my eyes and see colors and a land scape so serene that I dare not open my eyes. These vision were so vivid that they would take me and I could be in this peaceful and tranquil, but now I close my eyes all I see a world set in a haze void of color a bleak land warped by corruption.
What happen? where did my peacefulness go?
I open my eyes to a cold small room, water dripping from the eves, and wind that caries a foul smell. I step outside into...
Fault. Whose was it? Lying on the ground like that. Cracks spreading out, damaging everything it touched. No one wanted it. It had to be dumped somewhere, though.
Suddenly, it seemed like the world shifted. The fault shifted, heading towards me. It opened up, and swallowed me whole. I fell into the abyss. Doubt and shame fell on me. I could have avoided it. Easily, too.
I fell and fell. The further I got, the more afraid I grew. The light above me shrank. I thought I could see people above, shaking their heads at me.
I spent so much...
Gradually, that was how the world where it was okay to be a geek, a fangirl, a dork, herself, came into being.
It started with an acquaintance who knew the animated series who became a best friend.
It grew with a sister who accepted everything and opened her eyes to new worlds.
But it finally became real to her when she met him, the boy who pushed her fringe out of her eyes and led her onto the dance floor when she was sad. Who had moved closer in the fog and who had taken her hand without asking. The...
She moved through my dreams in the silver slippers of moonlight. I shivered. It seemed as though something had touched me. I could hear the early morning mist slip off the slumbering streets...my bones shuddered and I longed in those lucid moments for warmth.
Did you breath? I felt a soft air cross my cheeks as I struggled against the frostiness cast by being in the limbo between sleeping and waking. Touch me! Touch me! make me come alive again, don't let me drift into cold darkness.
Sunlight drove hard through the window and fell on my cheek...is it your...
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....
then it picked up, it picked up like the coming of an ocean born storm. Not a movement in the air; a few dark clouds separate. Aeros licks your face, sending a chill down your spine right to your sacrum, right down into the earth: grounded. Crystalized. Everything becomes clear yet remains fractal. You sat down next to me. Your thick accent warming me up on this cold afternoon. But your not present, your a another world away, its probably the middle of the night. Maybe your enjoying a midnight snack.. maybe your thinking of me too. And maybe the...