i could be someone else,
a beauty queen,
a famous singer,
I could be an artist,
painting mountains and seasides,
making millions.
i could be a tv producer,
sitting in a beach chair and yelling at cast and crew.
But i choose to just be me.
I'm not a beauty queen,
an artistic genius,
or a tv producer.
but i'm unique.
there's no one else who can see through my eyes,
No one has walked two moons in my sneakers,
and that's the way i like it.
my mind is uncharted territory, my soul has never been explored. i'm a...
My heart sank. The sound of a leaf crunched behind me. I turn my neck in fear. There I see it. My demise. Lurking in the shadows of Shayne Park. Drool bungee jumps out of its vicious mouth as it snarls at me. I feel its heat breathing in my heart. Piercing eyes stare into my soul freezing me in my tracks. The tan-skinned coyote puffed its chest and readied itself for attack. Suddenly I hear a loud bang, followed quickly by a squeal. I look behind me and see the coyote on the flor
2070 grains of rice. For six people. To last six weeks.
Less than 60 grains of rice per week.
No water too cook it with. All the water is too polluted.
We don't even have canned beans anymore.
What if you were one of these six people?
Maybe you could save your brother, child, or friend by sacrificing your own life.
Would they eat you??
Maybe, but at least you would no longer feel the pain of your body slowly eating itself.
Would you really be saving your family, your friends?
After all, there is no guarantee of another 2700...
They were the best of friends, but the worst of enemies. My husband and his brother would become like tigers fighting for turf or for female companionship. And they would never stop. I liked it when we first met because, of course, my husband, then my roommate's friend, fought for the right to sit beside me at the dinner table, to talk to me, and would find all sorts of ways to stop his brother from any contact.
He didn't have to do that. I didn't like his brother much. They looked exactly alike, although there were 10 months between...
Sadie didn't believe Mother when she told her it would be a greater adventure than the ones she entertained in the garden. Mother squeezed her, kissed her cheek, and they all laughed once upon the summit. The air was so cold and dry it cracked the skin of her cheeks and it chapped her lips, yet it felt thin and clean, like the waters from the stream.
The ladies breathed heavily, hands on their lower backs, stays pinching them into a dazed sort of happiness. The men gallantly offered arms for them to lean on.
They lingered a bit longer...
Chairman Mao came into town at the insistence of his family. He was not happy. His mother, whom he had loved far more for every difference from his father, did not look well. Chairman Mao, accustomed to finding his mother pleasant to look at, did not want to see her.
"YOU have abandoned your father!" cried his relatives.
"And my father abandoned me well before" said the man who remembered his father's cruelties all too well. Who were these people to remind him of the past. He loved his mother and he doted on her.
He despised his father. He...
It was the third day of my cruise and I was bored as hell. If I had to sit through another party on the deck with the awful music and the dull people in fancy clothes I was going over the side with no life preserver. I decided to walk slowly around the perimeter of the ship by myself instead.
Suddenly, I saw a Jack Russel terrier sitting on the railing all alone. I was seized with a crazy impulse. I looked around and saw no one; no one to witness the heinous act I was contemplating. With a twisted...
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...
Prison is for mossy bricks, reinforced iron bars, decrepid toilets and savage guards beating on the door every morning. How can it be anything else?
And yet, within the confines of this framework, there is a nook as tangible as any cell; the walls are closing in on me, invisible monsters lurking in the dark, only — these are worse than any monster imaginable, for they do not breathe, do not reason. You can't reason with walls.
The post seemed like a good idea at the time, for who doesn't dream of directing such a large, historic enterprise if given...
The cannibals were behind bars strong enough to keep lions contained. They were the newest attraction at the zoo. You could hardly see past the sea of people to what was inside the enclosure.
Up! I demanded.
My father put me on his shoulders so I could see. There were four. A mother and a father and two children who were too small for me to tell if they were boys or girls.
The mother smiled at me in what I thought was a friendly way, exposing teeth that were sharp and wicked looking. Her face had two long streaks...