Everything was going according to plan until that Saturday morning.
Birds chirped and the sun gleamed and glistened over the water. Laura had been in love with the same guy since her middle school years. His name was Joe-a funny, outgoing, loving, handsome, man. It was her senior year in high school when she found out that she would be the mother of his child. And until this Saturday morning, he had said that he loved her and that he would never leave her side.
The ultrasound appointment came, which he agreed to join her in, that morning at 8...
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...
I had a dream the other night. We were sitting alone in our rooms, all of us, every single one, when suddenly —
The walls just fell away. There was no sound, no pyrotechnics; with a quiet resignation, all the matter in the world, except for our warm, breathing bodies, fell down into the void, leaving us floating purposelessly, naked.
And we all looked at each other, as the psychic frameworks that we etched into the streets, into our homes – our routines, our beaten paths, all the conventions that existed not in the world, but in the world as...
Majestic words like maelstrom, preponderance, warbling swirl through my creative whirlpool, pulling in pieces of conversation, tail-ends of admonitions, the lilt of swearing. I live by the calendar, fitting my days into the squares, x'ing the boxes at midnight.
Friday is the wave that crashed but hasn't withdrawn to the sea. I'll compose this in the spiked surf.
It never speaks,
it barely breathes,
it never fades away,
It sucks you up, then spits you out,
leaving you behind.
It tugs at your heart,
then casts it out like trash.
it walks and talks with others,
but ignores you completely.
It cast it's line,
and pulled you in,
then threw you to the sharks,
you spun in it's orbit,
only to fly out and land on your face.
it left you for things,
pieces of paper and plastic.
it orbited your world once,
the left to spin through another.
that is the behavior of the void.
I rarely watch the news.
Except for that one time when I did turn on the news to catch breathless commentary of the desk crew as the news chopper puttered over the train tracks and there was a man standing on the tracks. The man wore black, his face draped in black and he held a sword in his hand--oh not just a sword, he had one of those Samurai Katanas aloft.
At least I think it was a Samurai Katana, my only experience with those was what I saw on "Kill Bill" and the katana letter opener I had...
"Your team is to find the contact code-named Scurvy."
"Scurvy? Boy, he sounds pleasant."
"Actually, she's quite humorous and accommodating. You'll understand when you meet her."
"What time should I set out."
"Now."
"Great, thanks. I'll take my own rig."
At 0800, I landed on the beach where Scurvy was waiting for me. She didn't seem particularly pirate-like in any way. I handed her the documents, she scanned them, then threw them in the air and set them aflame with a snap.
"So why do they call you Scurvy?"
She stopped mid-stride and leered at me. Hilarious, indeed.
"We've got...
Delia placed fifth in the science fair. For her project, she sliced a potato in half and put each side in its own tupperware container. One side, she sealed shut with a top. The other, she left open.
On the posterboard she wrote "This is what happens when oxygen affects a potato."
Michael's was next to her. He strung miniature light bulbs with wire to show how electricity works. His posterboard was the sturdy kind, with its three foldable panels. He got first place.
Delia hit puberty at twelve. Michael did not. He ate more french fries than ever. He...
afraid I can't follow the prompt
it's entirely outside my area of expertise
guess I could make it all up
but that's not my thing today
thought I would be writing truth
and deep strongly held beliefs
but the prompt about news reporters
and grabbing for glory
doesn't sound like my kind of story
glad for the time limit
as it ticks away I think
at least I will not be verbose
and yet there is something
I really wanted to say about
praying for peace and going to war
and fighting terror with terror
that niggles at my gut...
The daring were punished. They were punished with exactly what they wanted, and found out the paucity of their imagination and desires.
It was near midsummer when the djinn arrived in Baghdad. He promised to each person, exactly what they wanted, the one thing. There were no rules, no catches. This was no monkey paw to wish upon, but a djinn in all his smoking glory, blue fire leaping from his eyes and his ears, red lightning visible from his mouth when he spoke, and a long rumbling thunder when he laughed at those that came to make their wishes....