Lola is the best dancer in the class. I couldn't believe her moves the first time I saw her, she was that good. I am good too, everyone knows that. But to dance with Lola--that'd be a dream come true. Somehow, though, I couldn't get up the nerve to ask her, and the guy always has to ask., It's the way things are done, you know, even in middle school.
So today Stewie comes up to me and tells me that if I wont' ask her, then he's going to go up to her and tell her that I said...
Drowning in the sea. That was the trick of it. To be seen to swoon, to fall to the bottom. The pretend to expire. It was the pearls that weighed me down. They alway do. Spiros bought them for the moon. That is what he said. The moon. As if the moon had a price. All things had a price. He gave them to me in the back garden of the hotel under a moon that was more red that white. A bad luck moon. But the band played on in the gallery and couples in their best passed under...
The pidgeon man rolled off the sky-scraper. Thousands of birds flew with the updraft, gaining momentum as they hurled their bodies into his back. The crawling taxis below wailed insistently. Pedestrians opened their umbrellas, one by one. Sunset embalmed the towers in reflective flame.
The pidgeon man did not see what was beneath him. He only and always looked up.
His shadow grew on the pavement. He was seconds away from landing, yet the birds continued their sacrifice.
I don't like this piece at all. It is a depressing photo. :(
Read something else.
The year was 1986, when Madonna was telling her father not to tell her what to do, and life changed beyond my own imagination. The holiday had been planned for ages, but I had no desire to spend two terminally tedious weeks camping with my younger sisters. I had Mark, with his dark hair and warm lips, and I couldn't bear to leave him for a fortnight. He might fall under a bus, or worse, fall for Jayne Marsden and he stilletto heels.
Midnight on the roof. She stood alone, shivering, cold, the wind blowing her hair across her face, blanket wrapped around her. It had gone all wrong at the party, and she knew it. She had meant to approach him, to say she was sorry, to ask him to forgive her. But instead, she froze, watching carefully from across the room while her friends chatted on, oblivious. He never once looked her way. Did he know she was there? Could he feel her presence? The truth she had spoken aloud in anger only a few days before seemed not so true...
"Helluva storm, Joe," I say.
"Ayup," he says shakily, gazing out into the fog. His uniform is wet through and he's a-startin' to tremble. It won't be long before he can't hold on to the beam no more.
"Shore wish you ain't cut the riggin' there, Bob," says Dave. He's on the end, Dave is, hangin' tight to the canvas. A good gust o' wind gonna sweep him away.
"Oh yeah, everythin' be my fault," I complain. How was I to know? You tell me that. How was I to know the riggin' be the on'y way down?
"Too bad...
My sleep was disturbed. I hadn't eaten after a long day trekking across the desert. Weak and faint I lay down and fell into a troubled sleep where images of food flitted through my dreams.
I hungered to eat and in lucid cravings ate all that flew towards me. My hunger so intense now I turned upon myself. I can eat myself I thought, then I will live and tomorrow I can begin again.
I felt my hot breath on my head as my mouth turned upon myself...my wet tongue licked the side of my face as though anticipating...then in...
Lost, without a hand to hold. I imagine that's how some men feel in my position. As though everything they once had, all those they once knew, has gone forever. Because they were abandoned, or because they pushed it all away, who can say.
Yet it's weird, I've felt that way for so long, for so many years, I assumed that that would be how I felt at this moment. But somehow, staring at the noose before me, I've never felt more alive, and less alone.
I am guilty. I am innocent. I am a contradiction. And it doesn't matter....
The mob held torches like flags, upright and proud, ready for battle with the onion factory. Sons, mothers, daughters, friends, marched on toward revenge. They threw their torches onto the large building, sending smoke signals for miles, saying "we're in charge here!"
For weeks, the town smelled like onions. At first, people sniffed their clothes to make sure it didn't come from their home cooked meals "People" here meaning the people who didn't boycott onions altogether. Most people substituted elephant garlic or onion powder, or just went without the taste. One girl started vomitting at the sight of onions altogether....
Leonard stumbled back. He almost fell. His heart raced and sweat stuck his shirt to his belly and back and armpits. He'd had patients worse off than Bea, patients with bloody ends, with pointless existances, tortured creatures that lived and died hooked to electricity and strapped to beds. None with the relative safety and comforts that he'd been treating Bea in, the comfort of home.
This was a scheduled meeting in the garden, she'd come from the trees, barefoot, bare arms, makeup garishly applied and with the gauzy veil over her face. His boy would laugh, he imagined, would point...