Blue open windows,
training wheels on the driveway,
Papa let me fly.
Afternoon bubbles,
wedding bells for fireflies,
the laughter echoes.
Saturday mornings,
the rain never goes away,
I'll always love you.
It was the fall that surprised me the most. The fact that it took so long that I could actually be afraid of the action of falling. The wind was stinging my face and making my eyes water, I was screaming but the noise of the explosion had taken out my hearing. The people strapped in around me were mere shadows, forms with fuzzy outlines and indiscernible features, mouths open in silent noise.
I forced my head back round, my throat filling with bile as the ground suddenly rushed up to meet us, my fingers twisting in the belt around...
There wasn't much more he could say. At this point they had been arguing for hours and it had slowly spiraled in to complete silence, neither one willing to say the first word, to break the ice (again) so to speak. Both facing away from the other, arms crossed. Defiance. Why is it that sometimes adults can act like children? Children are masters of the silent treatment. Then again, children are just that - children. It means so much more when it's your partner refusing to talk. And you not wanting to 'lose' by talking first. That's all it is...
Millions of people left the coasts and ran into the dry middle of the country. The plains and prairies were filled with tents and lean-tos. Smoke rose from fire pits as the tall grass and grain bent in the strong winds.
The coasts flooded. The storm crashed and smashed the cities that had harbours.
But the people in the dry middle of the country were safe.
Safe for now.
The country was flooded. People said they only had half the land they used to.
And even then, it was the dry, grassy rolling hills in the middle. The people used...
As the Sun rose from His slumber,
She began to stir
in her little house of wood,
a coffin just for her.
Each day,
she hears them scrape
away the earth with shovels,
waiting until
finally
her final bed is done
forever for her to lay.
In the morning,
she awakes,
dead to others
yet alive in her dreams,
to the sound of falling stones
as they cover her coffin.
And, as the final stone fell,
she said a silent prayer, asking for
sweet dreams for her to keep.
And as the earth lay there,
the mound dug in the...
"If you say so," I said, feigning indifference. It was best not to commit to something that would go south in microsecond, which I suspected would happen with Jacob's escape plan.
"Let's go over it one more time," he said excitedly. "At 2100 tomorrow, I'm going to shank Billy in the kitchen. The guards will come running to take me away to solitary, like they did the last thirteen times."
"You don't have anything to shank with," I said, annoyed at his overly dramatic air. "All we're allowed are sporks made of recycled corn, or whatever this shit is." I...
"I've got a loaded weapon and I'm not afraid to use it!" she shouted, holding the cat in her arms like an AK-47 as the snow swirled around her on the open playing field.
"You touch my snowman again and I will set the cat on you!"she snarled, walking menacingly towards the group of chav-scum teenagers who were busy kicking over her children's carefully constructed snowmen.
"Oh yeah, as if we're scared!" one of them challenged her. She just smiled, peeled back her black balaclava and revealed her badly scarred face. "He did this last month." she said simply, and...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. The doorway was not the kind of doorway best suited to huddling, and the gown appeared equally ill-designed for the purpose. Yet huddle she did. The rain dripped and sputtered from the sky, streaking her scarlet back as it fell.
After a time, she carefully unhuddled and picked up the bag that she had lain down beside her. She withdrew from it a small, glass orb, in which indistinct shapes and colours seemed to float. Lightning flashed briefly across the sky and as she held the...
The waitress came up and said "Hey, want corn flakes?"
"No," says I. I am busy reading my book, which is about masking tape.
But the waitress is having none of it. "I made these corn flakes myself," she says.
"Okay," says I. "Give me some corn flakes."
She gives them to me. They are red, not orange, but I eat 'em anyway. "Yuck," says I. "These don't taste like corn flakes at all."
"They're not," she says. "They're scabs I picked off my elbow."
She shows me her elbow, which is bleeding lots. All kinds of blood is pouring...
When I was young I found a baby sparrow. Fallen from his nest. Abandoned. I took him home and nurtured him. Cared for him. I named him Franklin. Day by day he grew stronger. He was soon able to fly. He'd fly about but always return. Until one day. He flew away. I rode around the neighborhood looking for him. Then I realized he was gone forever. I started looking always for a new baby sparrow. But I never found one. I am glad. I think just one baby sparrow was perfect.