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...
Leaving was the easiest decision to make, and the hardest action to take. That's what she kept telling herself as she drove through the beckoning water drops falling down both inside and out. She could hardly see but knew it was the right thing to do. There's no way she could stay, he hated her for what she was, what she had achieved. It wasn't her fault he resented her for wanting to do what was right.
Crash - and it all was over. Her last thought was her baby and how she would make a great mum, visions of...
Sam pulled the tuque tighter around his ears and hunched into the wind. Spring, hah! With no snow to melt, there was no way to tell the difference between today's nasty wind and yesterday's blistering sun.
He banged his way into Tim's and leaned a little too close to the muscle mass in front of him, seeking warmth, if not comraderie. The dude turned, looked down into Sam's wrinkles and coughed. Once. With phlegm.
Sam stood firm and bumped into the plaid workjacket when the line shuffled forward.
When he heard the words, "Large double double...and a Boston Cream for...
I am in love with a coffee machine. A robot that makes coffee. I am giddy about it my mornings are filled with percolating robot joy. I have placed the coffee robot on the side of the bed that I don't prefer to sleep on.
The girlfriend side of the bed.
The coffee bot is not my girlfriend she is not even a girl. I can not fuck her - she is too damn hot for that. But I don't mind if she watches my touch myself. That seems okay or well not okay okay I mean you know okay...
The sheep were at pasture and he tried not to disturb them as he jumped over the fence and darted across the field. He had to keep moving, if he stopped they would catch him, if they caught him they would kill him. It was a game, he was the odd one out, he'd been playing along, thought he was include but no, they'd kept him out, always kept him separate so they could use him. When the moment was right, when the moment had come, they had pounced. One had circled around him while the others continued to dance....
Running had always been an expression of freedom. That's how she had always seen it. The wind whipping through her hair, tugging at her clothes as her feet moved so fast that she felt like she was flying. AS though for just that moment, she was soaring above the ground, close enough to the clouds to touch them.
But then she began to notice the strings. The tiny threads, invisible against the light, that were attached to her clothes, hooked into her skin, threaded through to her soul.
When had that happen? When had she become the marionette? The freedom...
I had been running for just over an hour, almost breathless. Whose idea was it to train for this marathon anyways? I've always liked running, but never really enjoyed it, you know? There are only so many routes you can take. This time, I decided to say screw the concrete jungle, I'm going to take this somewhere different. So I took to the hills, as they say. Not gonna lie, it was much more interesting than running on pavement. The damp grass under my shoes, the crunching of the twigs, all that good stuff. I stopped at the top of...
Fault. Not a good word. Not a pleasant word. It conjures up the idea of blame. If someone’s at fault, someone’s to blame. The same thing.
Plus it makes me think of faulty. Broken. Useless.
Like you, really. It’s your fault. You’re faulty. It’s not me, it’s you.
I can tell you now I never appreciated the blank stares, the monosyllables, the selfishness, the way you sit there every morning drinking your coffee and reading your paper, or tapping away at your laptop, or doing whatever it is you do with your phone. Facebook, maybe? Or are you on Twitter?...
Martin Adams began to type. He wasn't sure what to say; a fact that the repeated DELETES and EDITS made clear. Love letters were so much simpler in the pre-computer days. You'd write what you felt, scrunch about 3/4 of the pages up and throw them next to, if not in, the bin. Then you would belabour whether to post the thing. Sometimes you would, then regret it. Sometimes you wouldn't, then regret it. Now all he had to do was click SEND. Or not. Not click SEND that is.
Martin wished he'd managed to set up that clever thing...
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...