"Pull!" Erin directed us. We pulled.
"Argh, it's no use!" Ted lamented. "He's never getting unstuck."
Paul's head and chest might as well have been fastened to the tree by some kind of industrial-strength Krazy glue.
"Dammit," Erin said, winded. Even the three of us, with our combined strength, had no hope of dislodging our companion. "Whose idea was it to bring that stuff to our picnic, anyway?" she demanded, scowling at the wicker basket full of the white adhesive.
No one said anything. In truth, we'd all agreed, even Paul and Erin. We thought we needed it to keep...
Ridiculous. That's how I feel. Every time that I look at my phone.
I know the sodding thing hasn't gone off. Of course it hasn't gone off. I put it in my line of sight so that I will know when it lights up and it's on my desk, I will hear it vibrate when it goes off and yet, ridiculously, I still press the button to check, just on the off chance that I've missed the buzzing and the flashing.
And why? What am I waiting for?
Do I really still expect him to text me when he's been...
Wine. The worst nights always began with wine. We never stopped to put two and two together. Mornings after, needing to shave our tongues and send our stomachs through the car wash.
No matter how clean the apartment had been the night before, once the cork was pulled, and the wine dribbled down our chins, the dishes would pile up on the counter. The hamper and washing machine would explode, spewing filthy clothes all over the floor. Ashtrays would overflow, sending half-smoked butts and burnt filters flowing away like lava from a volcano.
We'd hold our heads betwen both hands...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. Two potted cucumbers stood to the left of the doorway, vines climbing twined round trellises up the stucco, the few cucumbers skinny in the middle from lack of rain, though it rained now in gusts and sputters, droplets momentarily darkening her gown.
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. There was scant shade from the clear noonday sun in the inset door. Two cats lay lazily in the sun. She idly stroked one, the calico, under the chin.
Once,...
Beep, Beep, Beep
It's Monday morning, ignore the cell phone alarm.
Two minutes later the radio comes on.
Commericals, dammit, I need to change the time it comes on every morning to avoid them.
Five minutes later they will play the daily question game.
Shower time. Eat a bowl of cereal.
White Tee, button down, khaki pants, black belt, matching shoes.
Key in the door, no, forgot my name badge.
Lock the door, start my walk to work.
Scan to get in the door, walk up 3 flights of stairs.
Turn on laptop, think about saying Hi to coworker, decide...
Deluxe. Five bedrooms, four baths. Swimming pool.
So are they all. Four solid blocks. Beach all the way to the highway. Green roofs and white polyurethane fences to separate properties.
The mall, when I was young, Had three shops and a bar. When we stopped going, they had a movie theater built.
And there were horses too. Wild horses. The shit you see in movies. Harming one carried a $50,000 fine.
They moved them out to an island off the cape, I've heard. The developers weren't happy when they started getting hit by Excursions.
The mall is gigantic. It has...
The Moon would never be the same again. I don't know what happened. It's my job to research and study the Moon, but not even I can explain why the Moon was bright pink in the sky. All we saw was a flash and all we heard was a huge loud ZAP! A laser beam of some sort hit the Moon and now it's pink. The rest of my team of researchers and I can't explain it. It's just pink. It's probably the guy who shrunk the Moon. It would make sense. But what kind of science can make the...
"I feel boxed in," she said.
"I'm sorry?" he replied, not quite understanding.
"Well, the basic thing is this: the image is quite boring, and the color scheme is obnoxious, a weird, misguided attempt at the painterly surrealism that Richard Linklater's Waking Life first presented in film. Add to that two gigantic butterflies, and the whole thing just falls apart. But despite the silliness of the painting, however, there's really no room for absurdity. Characters can't wave pistols around or smoke cigars or get hit in the forehead with boards. I'm boxed in. I have nowhere to go. It's too...
We are there. We are in the shadows, in the gaps, in the spaces between words. We are in every moment where you pull away, where discretion replaces narrative, we are there.
We are there in the knowledge that you do not write all things that happen, we are there, waiting in the wings, filling in the gaps, in the spaces.
You did not write us - you never write us, nobody writes us (and who would read us, who would read every banal moment, every second, what soul could stand the painful inevitability of one moment following the next...
She opened the envelope and screamed. Sweepstakes? Her? She never dreamed it could happen, but there it was, after countless magazine subscriptions to periodicals she never intended to read: Guns and Ammo, Creative Quilting, Fantasy Football Insider. Piles of these damned things lined the hallways and rooms of her small, two-bedroom house.
She didn't intend to read the magazines, but at the same time, she couldn't part with them, just in case, just in case one day she could sell them or donate them or look something up in one of them that might, just might be of some importance...