She could tell I was faking it. After twenty years of marriage, she could read my thoughts like a book. She spoke to me with her eyes and, although she was silent, I heard everything.
"What's wrong? Why won't you talk to me?" Her green eyes shone as she "spoke." I looked down and my eyes fell on my wedding band. How much longer would this last? I knew what I had done. I had lied to her. A marriage can't stand on lies - I know that.
She looked at me again and reached for my hand. I squeezed...
Three pigeons landed near a sleeping homeless person, huddled up in the alcove of a building along 4th Street. The biggest pigeon, Paul, strutted by the slumbering figure as Marta, the medium-sized pigeon, walked by pretending not to see.
Paul said, "Marta, how can you just ignore this man? If I recall, you were homeless once, too."
Marta stopped to peck aimlessly at a crumb of bagel on the street.
The third pigeon, Gideon, was looking across the street at the bustling bakery, hoping to spot somebody dropping a morsel of bread or muffin, preferably banana-nut, because it was his...
She could tell I was faking it. The smile across my face only a slight glimmer of what it once was. Telling my wife I loved her used to be so easy; kissing her face, brushing my fingers in her hair. They were all lies now.
I had only just found out a bit ago about her affair. Long done and over with, it had been with a colleague of mine back in 2002. It only lasted a few months and all the while, I had no idea.
It has been eight years since that time, but only now am...
She always eats oranges in the morning. Awake at 6.30 and out at once to the fruit stall below her window. The sound of the traders' early morning banter is hazy in the grey veil of October dawn and the lines of fruit like a crown of brightly coloured gems awaiting her selection. Two precious oranges in a brown paper bag and back to her third storey apartment. When she slices into the dimpled skin of the orange its juices swell onto the kitchen counter and onto her pale fingers. Her hands are laced with the citrus scent for all...
The old lady was in real trouble now. She did not feel the grey touch of the dark hand as it stroked her wrinkled face, marking her. It would come for her soon, the looming shadow of time, and there was nothing she could do but grow older and weaker. She sat in the back of a black car, and her destination was the foundations of the departed. Accompanying her was her sister, wearing the same black dress. Everything was the colour black today. It was the symbolic colour; the colour of the dark one. The lead weight of a...
Tears formed in Hazel Grace's eyes as Augustus lifted her chin and asked, "Okay?"
Hazel managed to get a sound out of her quivering voice and shakily said, "Okay."
(Prompt is 'the conversation lasted two words')
I walked into the restroom, and relieved myself while reading PEOPLE'S MAGAZINE. I got the latest updates on Bradalina, or Angpitt or whatever, while I was taking a dump. As I walked out my mouth gaped as I found out that Jenifer Aniston and Tom Cruise were hooking up.
TEXT:
OMG! JA and TC ARE TOTALLY HOOKING UP LOL!
L8R!
I called my BFF Malissa and told her about the latest update. After we talked for a while, she sighed and told me she really didn't care. I told her to start caring about things that really mattered in life,...
She could listen all day. The raspy, melancholy vocals of the demo tape was not without flaws, but in this moment, perfectly delectable. Her own voice was breathtaking to her; after all, how often did she experience a conversational sing-a-long with herself? The sound was a breath of fresh air, nothing she inhale here, in the muggy city, at her perfunctory job, or with her otherwise dull life.
This was the sound of butterflies.
My mother never told me you could. But I did. And it was amazing.
I.
Met.
Her.
Now, I know what you are thinking. Some hipster wannabe hooking up with a bespectacled BDSM loving freaky chick over rare Miles vinyl in a second hand record shop in the village. A match dot com advert. But no. Far less interesting than that.
Haribo and limes.
Yes, at salsa class there was a girl I had my eye on. I had already clumsily tried to impress her by doing card magic at her through a window one night as she sat with...
The Moon would never be the same again. Not after the things I saw, the things I knew that were hiding there. I could never again look up at night without a shudder, without averting my eyes from the horror of it.
The Moon's sickly light, reflected sunlight turned mocking and wrong, crept in through my shuttered windows. I had taken to taping them up, afraid to go out at night, afraid of what might be there.
They walked down on moonbeams, those horrible things with too many angles, walked down and fed. I remember the first time I saw...