We sit in white rooms now, spartan furnishings, novel-sized windows. The tea is warm yet still melts the chocolate. Today they let us hear a bird song. The leap of its whistle reminded me of something that used to occur, when things used to occur.
It was not a world in which it was advisable to take risks.
It could be argued - had been, by a few scholars, in the deep and distant past, a more romantic age - that risks were always inadvisable, that this was what made them risks in the first place.
But those scholars didn't live here, they didn't live now, they were from a world of chivalry and knights and heroism.
They were not in a world where you were burned if you were caught.
There were marks all over her arms - his, too, they sat beside one...
2070, by 2070 i want all the bad things to be gone. i want there to be a cure to all the bad things that affect our world. cancer, gone. war, gone. i think that by 2070 the world should just have figured all of its issues out and be a eutopia. by 2070 i want peace on earth, no more starving children, no more impoverished nations. but it starts with now, this generation. i feel like before now everyone has put issues off to the next generation. But it cant keep happening. by 2070 i want the children of...
Like a breeze through the willows, was what she was thinking. The way he passed through her life. She shrugged, thinking if all it was was a summer romance, it had star quality. Long walks on the beach, starlit nights, hand-holding over glasses of wine at the little Italian restaurant long after the staff wanted to leave. They had so much together; they had seemed to be so connected.
And then he was gone. She had gone to his beach house that morning, the air starting to chill a bit with the coming of fall. The door was unlocked, and...
100 feet away. He is only a hundred feet away. That's all the distance that I would need to cross to be in his arms, to be able to kiss him, to find the comfort that I am missing and to feel safe.
A hundred feet.
I have never wanted to move so much in my entire life.
He knows me. It has only been a few weeks and yet I feel it, He Knows Me.
He knows that when I'm unhappy I need to write, he knows that I believe in God for the small things not what they...
I slowly push myself up from the place I lay crumpled on the ground. My head is throbbing and I can't quite think of why I'm here. Or where here is. I check myself over. There is a little blood seeping from a cut on my head but everything seems to be in order so I do the only thing I can think of to do. I walk. I walk and walk until my legs are sore but still nothing in this town seems familiar. I sink to my knees against the brick wall of a bakery and allow myself...
She'd have preferred the electric chair, at least that one bloody moved. She could get up a good speed on that one, maybe she could get out of it, escape their sympathetic looks. It was bad enough losing the power in your legs without their condescending looks. Idiots.
Apparently it was a "power chair", but, frankly, bollocks to that. Jokingt that she was living out a death sentence was one of her few pleasures left - that terror in their eyes, the "oh god how do we respond to that" was what she was living for right now.
Actually, that...
It's not easy being funny.
People expect things of you. They come to you down in the mouth, looking for a laugh. Most of the time you can oblige them, but it's hard creating something from nothing. I'm not a music box that you can wind up and expect to hear a tune. At least say "please."
I guess it comes from watching too much television. Sitcoms really mold a kid who spends half his day on the couch. That, and a willingness to tell the truth to people's faces.
Anyway, it's easy to ask for a laugh. It's just...
The window was a lot harder to get open than I expected. I guess they aren’t really designed to be opened, but they do open if you pull hard enough. The air felt good; fresher higher up than on the lower floors. And I could see the cityscape below, half hidden in morning mist. It was going to be a beautiful day.
My office was private, not one of the cubicles most of the employees occupied, like rows of Dilberts enjoying only partial privacy. I had earned my space by bringing in the numbers. I had worked my way up...
I stare at the row of perfect houses resting on the perfectly manicured lawns beneath a perfectly blue sky by perfectly green trees. I am surrounded by perfection, but I have not been given it.
Sometimes I wonder why I'm doing this.
I bend down to the ground. There is a ball lying there, perfectly out of place. I pick it up. My son could've played with this ball. He would have been good at sports, I'm certain. Slowly I curl my fingers around it, and feel the perfectly creased leather, shiny with memories of sunny afternoons and perfect throws...