I was going to the store to buy figs when the kid with the long brown hair ran past me. She was running so fast that her body was on an angle... like 45 degrees and her hair was raking back. There was a big piece of wood stuck to her back.
I bought my figs and then I started the arduous walk home. The girl ran past me again and I was able to stop her.
"Why are you running so fast?" I asked.
"Because of the wood stuck to my back," she said. "It is infested with termites."...
You can count me out, I said. I am not doing it. No. I left this years ago. I have a life now, I told them. No more of this stuff for me- I'm out now.
Of course, they pleaded. They always do. But I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders in movements perfected over the years. Please, please, please! We'll give you anything you want.
Never any creativity, really. It was all the same thing. They were small. They wanted to be big. How did their little prods affect me? They were merely molehills aspiring to be mountains,...
Alarm clocks, women, toys and books;
Bananas, high-heels, dirty looks.
The clocks get bigger as they grow,
For Cleopatra told me so.
And in the middle of it all,
Suspended, that which cannot fall,
There lies a prickly yellow fruit
That renders chosen meter moot.
The wall is the place most people choose on their own. You come for a day or a week and it's never to see the sights. The sights are immaterial, and not unexpected. Temples, tea houses with dripping peremera trees hanging soot and sleek flowers over damp pollenated tables. Once thriving book shops and market warrens closed down by the proper authorities. Cab drivers who direct you round about ways and never give useful directions. None of these things are unusual, or particularly memorable. It is instead, the wall itself, that calls to you. The wall is the reason you...
I thought she was made of china, the first time I met her. Girls that perfect didn't exist, only dolls. Frozen icons of perfection, unattainable.
She made me feel clumsy - she was slight, small, pale, hiding behind perfect ringlets. On paper we sound the same - the same could be said of me (apart from the ringlets; my hair is straight, limp) but she wore it with pride, I treated my height as a disability, my weight as an inconvienience, my skintone a health hazard. I looked sickly, she looked ethereal.
Somehow it wasn't a surprise when she spoke...
She opened the envelope and screamed. This was what she had been waiting years for, the answer to her quesitons. As sobs racked her body, Casey could tell from her reaction that this was not the news she had been expecting.
"She's not going to talk to you?" Casey whispered, moving closer to comfort her friend, now whimpering face down on the bed.
Angela hiccuped softly," She doesn't want to see me."
Although the search for her mother had been fairly easy, just a few clicks on Facebook, Angela was not prepared for the heartbreak that would come when her...
It was all good and well having a goal in life. Knowing your purpose.
He had known his for years, he had worked tirelessly day in, day out, for fifteen years, putting his dominoes in place so that he would be able to topple them at the exact moment.
But everyone needs a day off.
Goodnight... I didn't think I would wake up. Well, maybe I did. Seventeen pills ought to have done it. It didn't. I guess I had known that. My sophomore-year project on suicide told me that. That seventeen wasn't enough. And I shouldn't have told anyone either. I got dragged to a counselor in front of my crying father (who never cries). I got dragged to a therapist, whom, thank God, realized the insanity of my life, and my mother (who refused to talk about her issues). Maybe I would have gone a different route, used talking, anything else, other than...
without wine, my table would have only small slices of bread and small slices of cheese. without wine, my table would have only small slices of truth.
Bring me wine friend, and ill tell you things i know. bring me wine and let's sit on an evening where nothing is happening, on my old soft couch looking out on the mid-section of a tree. Bring me wine and we'll swirl it around in our glasses, we'll let our noses rest on the rim and feel the vapours on our eyes. We'll sit and let ideas come and go,
sit and...
Billy was steadfastly unimpressed.
"Can we go home now?" he asked.
"But, Billy, don't you want to see the top of the beanstalk?" Sarah asked her son. She was confused. Why didn't he like the things other boys liked?
"No."
"Why not? Isn't it cool and -"
"It's a phallic object from the a fairy tale written by the unwitting supporters of the patriarchy," he interrupted.
Sarah hated this. Being lectured by your own sever-year-old was the worst. "Billy, quit saying silly things," she scolded. "It's just a beanstalk. It's supposed to be fun. Why can't you enjoy anything in...