Sarah sat down on the concrete bench and stared at the couple locked in an embrace.The city lights across the water blinked glowed and highlighted them against the dark sky.
The light also highlighted what Sarah lacked.
"Lousy tourists," she said fumbling through her purse for her pack of cigarettes.
She found the pack and pulled one loose and lit it.Hoping to get the bitter taste out of her mouth.
The couple hugged and kissed each other's cheeks foreheads and ears. They whispered softly and then laughed.
They stared out at the city skyline, they hands searching desperately for the...
I couldn't sleep, so I went out for a late-night walk around town. When I got to the bridge, I stopped to look out at the bright lights in the city.
Suddenly, a woman came up to me and gave me a hug. Not wanting to be rude, I hugged her back as we both looked off in the distance. I'm not sure why, but she began to move her hand lower down my back. I tried to hint that she was making this even more awkward than it already was by moving my arm up, almost to her neck,...
There's somebody standing in the corner of my room. He tells me things. He tells me to do things. Sometimes, he tells me other people are lying. He tells me not to tell anyone he's there. And I listen, because he's scary. But I think they're starting to figure out.
They see my eyes dart his way when he speaks. They see my confusion when I try to separate the voices. They see my hesitation when he tells me they're wrong. I think they're starting to figure it out, and I can't let that happen. He told me I can't....
The attic was stuffy, of course it should be. It is May, and they are preparing to move into a new house.
She is hunched over a box sifting through the items time seems to have forgotten.
She sees kids medals, awards and photos from the ceremonies. She finds trinkets and grade school crafts. Making sure they are in tact, and making sure she wishes to keep the memories, she places the items into the box with care.
The boys have been out of the house for years now. These items are all that pretty stays here. They have their...
She wasn't the kind of girl who kept love letters, wrapped in pink ribbon, locked in an inlayed wooden box. Not that anyone sent love letters these days.
She would have no wild stories of her youth to tell her neices, no lost loves, no ones who got away.
She was, as she always had been, just her.
She had got so use to being on her own, the proverbial independant woman, that she ended up so afraid, afraid of being any other way.
And so , even though she was still young, she had stopped looking for love letters...
Bobby had lived in his imagination as a child. Within the universe of his mind, he was an action hero, an iron-willed daredevil. He could meet any challenge, snatch victory from the jaws of any defeat, bravely pull off any stunt.
Now that he was older, he was learning more and more that he would probably never trade tracer bullets with South American guerillas, or infiltrate the secret Appalachian hideout of a band of communist child kidnappers, or balance on the hood of a car, guns blazing, while pursuing Somalian bank thief pirates across a perilous frozen lake.
But maybe,...
She was a goddess.
Her sacrifices were mostly time; her father was procrastination, and through him most of her sacrifices were received. Her temple was the internet, the pub, every conversation which began "I read somewhere - ", or "I saw the other day - ", or "Am I right in thinking - "
Quizzes were her festivals. Celebrations of (arguably) useless knowledge. The glory of simply knowing something, with no comprehension of whether it was to be useful or not, the pleasure based in facts.
She was worshipped frequently, albeit unbeknownst to most.
They called it co-dependent. They labelled it, the need to go from one relationship to another, to never be alone - they labelled it like it was bad. Like it wasn't what everyone did.
Alright, maybe - just maybe - she took it too far, maybe she was a little too reliant on whoever's hand was (by rights) hers at that moment. Maybe it wasn't what they had decided was healthy, but their healthy? They could keep their healthy.
Their healthy was not her healthy, and it wasn't what she wanted. They decided all of these things, using test after...
The Bronx Zoo in my mind was empty. Maybe the gazelles were milling around Yankee Stadium, waiting for Catfish Hunter. The green grass of memory, my synapses folding in the sweeping July breeze, beheld the sweet roots of my birthday candles, climbing the kitchen air like lithesome monkeys, nimble as the imagination.
I think it's number nine. Eight maybe. All I know is my face is slightly tingled.
"Another," she asks as she walks past me.
I give an affirming nod. She has to know I am nearing my limit, but I have learned to play this off well.
"You had the Green Line, right?"
I nod again.
The Cubs are on, and they are losing. Nothing new there.
A couple sits in the corner talking about important couple things.
Two friends sit the right of me, discussing how much their lives and the Cubs suck.
The glass ends up in front...