If you really knew me, you'd find I hate cinnamon; the smell, the taste, everything about it. I've never tried a brussel sprout and I would say my favorite food are hot dogs, even though they aren't so good for you. If this were a book about my life, I could tell you I've lived in NY my whole life, and just recently I want to move; the winter used to be one of my favorite seasons, and now it's just too cold to bear. If we just met and you asked my favorite color, I would tell you pink...
The year was 1986. It was a Tuesday, at night. 7:58 PM. I couldn't wait until 8 o'clock to enter the world. I'm sure I came out screaming like most babies. I'm sure my eyes were closed, and that the October chill had me wanting a blanket.
The year was 1990, and I remember asking my dad for days when I was going to be 4 years old. My eyes were wide and hazel, my hair blonde and short.
The year was 1994 and I got to wear a sundress in October. Never ever in New York can you wear...
"It worked!" He stood, startled by the sound of his own voice. What had worked?
Looking around, he wasn't quite sure if he should be more worried that he didn't know why he had said something he didn't understand, or about the fact that he was in a place he didn't recognise with no memory of having arrived there. A word caught his eye. Phone. He rolled it around his head. Yes. He could make a call. He should make a call. A number emerged from his growing consciousness. Should he be worried about that feeling of expansion, as though...
There's somebody standing in the corner of my room. I can't see him, but I know he is there, and yes, it is a he. The collar of his shirt flaps soft with the night air, and the breadth of his hands dwarfs the whole space. I don't move, but it's not because I'm scared. I just don't want him to know that I know. That he's there. I don't want him to leave. His keeping watch while I sleep, a sort of volunteer sentryman, comforts me like my father's stroking my hair. Maybe it was my father who dispatched...
There once was a man named Fernando
Who encountered a man named Orlando
They met at mid-morning
But then, without warning
They were killed by a robot commando
Back in 1943
Everywhere was tyranny
It seems the perfect time to me
To test my backwards time machine
If Hitler dies, what happens then?
To future women, future men?
Perhaps we've come to pick the locks
To history's temp'ral paradox
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She hugged her shoulders and shivered in the form fitting dress. Too little cloth and too much cold collaborated to goose-pimple her flesh.
The man on the bed behind her called her back. She waited as long as she could before she knew he'd start complaining, and then she turned. He told her what to do. She did it. What choice did she have?
Later that evening, the Madam demanded the money she'd collected that evening. The girl pulled up the straps of her dress. "Yes,...
"The day after tomorrow, this will all be over." He promised. Jason kissed Anna's hand as he said it and then returned his focus to the road.
"I know." She whispered into the passenger side window, "I just wish it could be over now. I'm so tired, Jason."
"Baby," He didn't break eye contact with road, "It'll all be over soon. And then we can start our life together. Isn't that what you want?"
"Yes." She sighed, "I just didn't want it this way."
"Well, this is the only way it can be." Anna knew he was right and she...
She'd have preferred The Electric Chair to be the name of the band. But she was out voted by the drummer and the bassist who wanted The Hanged Man.
What, did they want to give the impression that they were unable to spell? She had asked on numerous occasions. But none have them had understood what she was saying.
Well, the guitarist had, but Jeff had wanted the band to be called The Rainbow Rogues so he didn't really count.
They had been a band for about six months and had yet to unanimously agree on anything.
They hadn't been...
We had gone to Ueno with the best of intentions, to take in some art and culture, but by 2 pm it was too hot to do anything but drink in the shade by the pond there. The lotus plants were fully grown now and spread out, standing tall, across the whole of the pond like a field of corn husks back home; in the middle you could just see the red and gold spire of the temple there, in the middle, rising above the lotus.
We sat on a rock under a weeping willow. Emi had told me once...