All of a sudden, Mary had transformed. She had gone from a reasonably normal looking human woman to a ferocious tiger. She roared. I roared back. Wait, why did I roar? Oh no! I was a tiger as well. Well, this was unfortunate.
Now that we were both tigers, the argument we had been having moments before about who would do the dishes was rendered meaningless. Tigers can't do dishes, because they don't have thumbs. We were also a bit too large for our kitchen. I pushed past tiger Mary to escape the cramped space. Going down the stairs was...
Travel light, but take everything with you. Words that my grandmother used to say in wisdom. And words that I've never take to heart till now. The twister ripped though our neighborhood and everything I owned was taken with it. My Children and wife stand now where our Kitchen was. With a heavy sigh, I remember those words my Grandmother used to say, I truly have all I need standing in the kitchen.
Springtime. In yogateacherland that means detoxes. Twist. The liver is on the right side of your body. Or is that correct? Maybe it is the left. Either way, cross that right leg over your left leg. Settle those seatbones on your mat. You can put your left leg out straight if you need to. Now, right arm out behind you- straight spine - left elbow to the outside of your right knee.
And twist.
With each breath drawing in and up, rotating towards the back of the room, towards the other side. All those dark wintery things that have been...
Potatoes.
That's all the six year old girl would eat. And it seemed that no matter what else I tried to serve her, potatoes was it. She wouldn't try anything else. Wouldn't look at anything else. All she ever wanted? Potatoes.
"Honey, what are we supposed to do?" I sighed, sliding into bed that night. "We went out to the Olive Garden. And she asked for potatoes!"
My husband chuckled a little. "Well, look on the bright side: at least it's a vegetable she wants. Could be worse."
"This is bad enough! No protein! No grain! Heck, even sugar would...
"They won't be of any help."
"Why? Did they not see anything?"
"I think they saw too much."
The man in the white coat was right. That was what had happened. We had all seen too much. Too much of the evil that had passed under the sky that night. We had born witness to horrors that no human tongue can describe. And by the way that the animals had fallen silent, not even they knew how to communicate what had happened.
We all sat in silence, those of us cursed to survive. It was by group consensus, unspoken as...
The garage was stacked to the ceiling with boxes, the U-Haul ready to cart them away on that windy Tuesday morning. I was wearing sweatpants and my hair was tied up in a bun, ready to move the hell out of there. I had only lived in that white suburban house for two years. I remember the day I moved in it was mid-February. That was two years ago. Then it became May 19th, Tuesday, and windy. I held back tears as I drove away from that house, the one we were supposed to live in after the wedding, raise...
Disappeared into the cityscape,
hiding unintentionally,
friend to only the birds,
for they are the only ones who
will keep this lone soul company.
On days like these, it's easier
for him to just stay in the shadows,
he has, after all, been living as
one. A familiar shadow of his former
life before he had succumbed to
the circumstances that brought
him to this humble time in his life,
whatever they may have been-
drugs, loss of a job, mentally
unstable. But this man was- and still
is- a man. Although it may not seem
like it on this...
He hated the color green, he hated it with all the enamel in his big front teeth. Since he was a tiny woodchuck he was teased mercilessly by his peers because well, he wasn't colorblind like all the rest. He could see the color green...everywhere, everywhere! The anger grew within him against this gift that he called a curse. He just wanted to be like all the other woodchucks living in their happy, ignorant, colorless little worlds. He could never sleep during the day with visions of sugar green fairies dancing in his head. He began taking walks, destroying all...
It's ringing. Ringing. Ringing. Ringing. STOP it from ringing!
Karla never wanted to hear his voice again. Never wanted to hear that damn ring of the public phone at on the corner of East and Cherry. Never wanted to wait again; to see if he'd call, usually he wanted money. Always for drugs. Drug money. Meth money. That idiot, he was killing himself, and now he wanted their son. Brian wouldn't even look at Gray when he came to the lobby of their high rise, his dad was always high, red-eyed, and stumbling. They used the pay phone in case...
"why cross at all?" was the first thought. "why cross, or pass, or walk, or tread, or sprint or anything else of the sort?"
the sun was even lower than when the first thought started, oranges now completely red, soon black.
"or, why not." the next thought. "who am i to rethink, or revisit, or retry, or reimagine, or reexamine the path now before me?"
to my left, infinity. an unstoppable openness. to my right, the past, from whence i'd come. dust.
finally, twilight. but with my final choices, no regrets. only then could i step out in front of...