As soon as Roger grabbed my wrist, I knew the spell was broken. Silence had been my way of being. Silence, yes, on the outside. But inside? Screaming. Screaming an Ella Fitzgerald glass shattering scream. But Roger's fat fist around my bloodless wrist created an outlet for me. Finally. THere was no way in hell he was going to take my sister's banana bike. I may not have spoken for the first 9 years of my grade school existence, but I wanted to make sure She WOULD.
I flipped out of the wrist hold with a Karate move my brother...
Magic. We've all heard the word before but, what does it mean? What does it really do? Is it just the stuff in fairytales that makes the glass slipper fit? That makes Prince Charming sweep her off her feet? Or could it be more... Listener, the answer to this question is simple, yet complicated. Yes. Magic is so many things. Magic is the times when we stop frowning at the clouds outside, fling open the door, and dance in the rain. Magic is the smile on the face of a little girl, and Magic is found in the sight of...
My feet ached, but it was well worth it. Not only that, I was starving. Twenty-six point two miles. It was a stupid decision, but I'm glad I made it. A marathon isn't the sort of thing most people do on the spur of the moment. I mean, I'd thought about it before. But I'd never trained for it. I just wanted to do something that I would remember. Something that would make me feel alive. I wasn't even sure I would do it until this morning. I wasn't sure I'd go along with it even at the start line....
Set down the light
set it down anywhere
The pure clean of a random weeknight on the coach staring at the white ceiling. So many balls in the air so much that I can not control. I have given control to others.
It is my human condition.
I will set this ball here on this perfectly lit field. Void of trouble. Maybe someday I will throw it to you and wonder, as I lay here in this white clean apartment,
will you throw it back?
He was no more than a barely-significant piece of a gargantuan puzzle. His ambitions, he was told, shouldn't have been as high as they were.
But, anyway, who did they think they were to tell him that?
Their opinions weren't going to stop him. Who cared if someone told him it wasn't possible, he knew he'd make it, as all obstacles can be overcome with the right amount of will.
He had but one obstacle, the Russian feline who lived mere meters away from him, and wanted nothing other than having his taste buds touch his insides. Oh he'd get...
Green bows were her signature hair accessory. Abby, with her fiery red, curly hair, always had a green bow. Her grandmother thought it was special to represent her Irish heritage, her mom thought it was a phase. Last year, when Abby was 8, she wore rain boots wherever she went. The green bows were just "a thing."
In school, though, the bows didn't go over so well with the other kids. Abby was teased for always wearing them, gettin called names for looking the same everyday. Bonnie was a mean girl at Abby's school, and ripped Abby's favorite green bow...
Ridiculous. Absurd. Absolutely and beyond all normal standards of decency, indecent. That was how I looked in the mirror the morning that I discovered my first gray hair. Or was it my third. I was faced with the overwhelming reality of a head of lustrous, youth-infused auburnness marred by the upright and wiry soldier who insisted on taking up some precious real estate in my brain that could have been much better utilized by a sudoku puzzle or a cure for cancer. How were things now to possibly proceed in a direction other than graveward? What was the sense in...
They gathered in the woods. The darkness entwined itself around everything it touched. Filling every hole, every space it could claim.
It was not the darkness that was so frightening, it was that which hide inside. Using it as a clever camouflage.
Something hid, something stalked and watched and he could feel it. It was looking at him, watching and waiting. Its gaze crawling across his skin like tiny spiders.
He hid within himself not wanting to accept it. He built up the layers to keep the darkness out. He would not fear the thing in the dark. he would...
Which watch are you watching?
Which way are you talking?
All the boys
And all the girls
Will never cease their marching.
Is waiting the answer?
Or being a dancer?
Twirling
And chasing
A garish romancer.
It's better to be
Alone in the forest
For there you can see
Who
Anyway, after the assembly, the fourth-graders signed up for whatever instrument interested us.
"I like the saxophone!" So my parents signed me up for the saxophone.
Later, when we went to the music rental shop, I was presented with the saxophone. I was confused as it did not resemble what I thought was a saxophone. Where was that brass tube that slid in and out?
What a dumb kid! I wanted to play the trombone, but thought it was called a saxophone. I never protested, shy and passive as I was. So I learned to play the saxophone.
I never...