The audience stared open mouthed at me. I sat motionless for a moment, lost in the dazzle of it all. The lights, the people, I had never sang in front of so many people before. I sang a long song, filled with passion, and sang it like I was starving to sing. After I had finished, there was not a sound in the theatre. You could have heard a pin drop. As I sat still, I grew more anxious by the second. Until finally I saw a lone figure in the back, slowly rise and clap. The clap was slow,...
As I sat in the grass, surrounded by the darkness, I saw them all around me. Millions.
Their lights twinkling all through the forest, creating a dancing wave of color. The creatures move silently, using their lights as a path to find each other. I sit silently watching in awe, wondering how such a perfect thing could exist in nature. I admire the beauty, and lay against the soft earth. The fireworks of the lights cross against the dark sky. I smile, and let my mind wander along with the lights. I could not ask for a more perfect night,...
He stared at his reflection in the water for a long moment. He studied his eyes (the same dark brown that they had always been), the breeze rustling his sandy blond hair, the chisled, strong shape of his face. As he stared, trying to make sense of who was really staring back at him out of those deep brown eyes, the face began to change. The water that moments before had acted as his mirror now rippled and swirled, captivating his attention. He watched as the water changed his reflection to appear not as a young man with brown eyes...
We are made of fluff and light.
We are made for a continuing struggle to come together in our floating.
When I fell in the garden and you laughed I knew it was not from cruelty, I knew because we are the same you and I. Unable to keep out the beauty that is the terrible world.
We whisper the standing wave form that is the one true light.
We will collapse back upon ourselves and drift into the unrecognizable dawn.
But today
My love
We will kiss with muddy knees and full laughing hearts, and God will smile.
Set down the light
set it down anywhere
The pure clean of a random weeknight on the coach staring at the white ceiling. So many balls in the air so much that I can not control. I have given control to others.
It is my human condition.
I will set this ball here on this perfectly lit field. Void of trouble. Maybe someday I will throw it to you and wonder, as I lay here in this white clean apartment,
will you throw it back?
He sat in the truck parked on the gravel drive, his arm hanging out the window, a cigarette dangling from his finger. The radio was on and Bon Jovi's Bed of Roses was blaring.
She watched him from the behind the closed screen door.
He lowered the visor so she wouldn't be able to see his reddened eyes. Def Lepard's Pour Some Sugar On Me came on next, and he tweaked the volume nob. He could tell she was still looking at him.
He finished his cigarette and flicked it out the window. He took a long drink from the...
Daring to be noticed for the first time in her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up.
"Malcolm, what are you doing?" The teacher frowned slightly.
"They're not freaks," she said, quiet but emphatic. "And they're not faking for attention. It's not a disorder, and it's not an illness. It's just a way of being."
The words had been running through her head for the past twenty minutes as the teacher had started talking about gender identity disorder, in which people didn't identify with the biological sex that they were born into.
"I'm sorry, Malcolm, but it's in...
Twisting, turning, bending, breaking. Well, I haven't broken yet, but I sure can't bend much further without snapping in a million pieces. I mean, how many lies can a person twist before they break? I've been living this life for so long that you'd think lying would just be part of the job by now. I mean, come on. I'm a spy. It shouldn't be this difficult anymore. At the beginning, sure but not now. They stand in front of me and I can see in their eyes that they aren't quite as clueless as before. Oh boy. The boss...
The Potentate surveyed his creamsicle tower cooly.
"Were my instructions not clear," he asked in the calm manner so many of his associates found so frightening. "Was the language I was speaking truly so difficult to decipher?"
Nobody spoke up at first, though everyone knew two things: the longer he went without an answer, the angrily the Potentate would get. The second fact, whoever spoke first stood a good chance of receiving the brunt of his displeasure. As was often the case, everyone opted for an intense anger spread over the whole group, then face being a direct target of...
We never spoiled that. We visited it, claimed it, and then we left it as is. We may not have meant to, but we did. We left something alone.
She smiles through her bleeding gums and plucks some more skin from her face, just to pass the time. She was young, so she'll last a little longer than the others. But in a day or two, it'll all be over. That tree won't last long either.
But the moon is still the same as it ever was, save for a few bits of scrap and a flag.