She didn't look at him.
Instead, she stared out of the window, quivering as though she would cry at any second.
"Bev?" Steven called out tentatively.
She shook her head, still not looking at him. All Steven wanted was for her to look at him. Her gorgeous green stare always made him breathless. She always made him happy.
But now? He screwed up.
"Beverly, c'mon. Say something."
She stared out of her window as though he weren't even there. He walked closer and reached out to touch her shoulder. "Beverly-"
Jerking back violently, she twisted his direction and snarled, "Don't....
All I could do was stare down at the text book and pretend that I was listening to the class going on around me. I just wanted to be free again. I flicked between the pages and the past documented in the battered book. I wonder if when those sailors set out that they even thought for a glimmer of a second that their whole adventure would be covered by a short paragraph in a 10th grade history book and a photo that barely even grasped what their lives were like and how tragic that journey was. I knew that...
I was an optimist. I thought that I, like Hemingway, could weave my influence between countries, live in the welcoming limbo between a government I believed in and one that spoke my language. I stopped trying to return to the United States thirty years ago. I am an airplane steward now. Sometimes I write in imperfect Spanish for a newspaper named after a boat named after a nameless elderly woman half a century dead. I believe every word I write. I am happy.
But the days I spent in the narrow land come back to me every day. They knew...
She wasn't sure she could do this. the bishop had been her friend for a while. he was trying to kill daddy, though, so the princess pulled out her kit and pulled out the vial she hadn't touched since she'd found it. the deadly poison was slipped into her sleeve as she went down to dinner. She sat down next to the bishop, smiling. she moved her arm ever so slightly during the entrees, knocking his hat to the floor. "Oh! You seem to have dropped your hat! Here, let me move your glass so you can get it." she...
When represented on a flat surface, a right angle can appear acute or oblique.
Leave me behind as you do is because of my fault. The fault you saw in me is the one you said you'd fix, it's the fault you spoke to me about while we sat on the bus, and I still had a smile, and a home, I still had ambition and curiosity as to where I belonged. I sat and stared out the spotted window and saw a man on a bicycle, and the bicycle made a sound both wooden and metallic against the side of the bus, and the lump under the wheels did not come with the...
The audience stared open mouthed at me. They've probably never heard that much senseless profanity before. But blaming me, they can't. I told them my material wouldn't fit here, but they wanted me to do it anyway, so now they have to sit through it. It's as simple as that. Admittedly, I could ease it up a little, or better yet, I tell them my "Aristocrats" version. That'll teach granny not to ask me what I do for a living. I really hate these family gatherings...
Fourteen fish
bunched
like a silver
artichoke
They are traveling
farther
than their fathers
who never
left the river
Their futures
are
in lemons
and
bread crumbs
He ran in the room, his heart pounding, and his clothes soaking wet. A man was sitting across the room in a fat leather chair, the kind you see CEOs with. His back to the sopping boy.
The boy stood panting with his back against the door, his eyes closed and his head tilted at the ceiling. "S-sorry. I ran into some trouble on the way here."
With every drop of water that landed on his carpet the man cringed. He could hear it ruining the material. He took a deep breath, "Please, have a seat."
With complete disregard for...
He sat in the corner with that look on his face, that look that said, I am about to speak.
"Let's get up and go."
I felt so sick, my joints ached, my mouth felt like it had been dry since the moment I was born. I got up anyway. There was no point resisting.
"We've gotta hustle." He said preemptively thwarting the gleam of protest he already suspected.
"But I'm so tired, baby." I said, hoping in vain that he would go for me.
We got off the cold floor without another word. I threw up on the way...