The daring were punished. Oh, how they were punished. For their transgression of assumption: public mockery. For their foolish hubris in believing that one could get away with such tom foolery: A dressing down by the town jokesman (and I use jokesman loosely as anyone in town would and will tell you that he was only installed as the town jokesman thanks to nepotism. After all, it's his father who is in charge of humor.
Yes they were a sight to see, the daring. The sad faces of such dissapointment as you would assume most of them saw some sort...
And then there is the approach of Autumn and September impatiently tapping at the window, intimidating August, chasing it away. I reach out my hands in an attempt to catch hold of it, but it is already overshadowed by distance, one step removed. Only yesterday it was April and there was the whole of Summer; it was a time of promise and hope. I naively believed that I deserved it, that I would be delivered unblemished months. It was such a bad winter, so very long and cold.
But here I am on the edge of the season, dragging so...
It wasn't so bad, the cancer, eating me from the inside out. Started with headaches, diagnoses, hopes and dreams dashed like fine china on the asphalt. My hands shaking, pillow wet in the morning, children gripping me, knowing without words that life was changing. Daddy is dying, mommy said. Like grandma. No, daddy isn't going to heaven. There is no heaven. Only the great void. Its nothing to be afraid of Sofie. Daddy loves you. More doctors and pills, and then pain and then...nothing. The desire to life squashed like a grape on the supermarket floor. Life itself spinning, a...