Its iron heart broke in two each time it welcomed a visitor. Ironic.
Its sign was officious but it's symbolism romantic. Just like any heart, it was forged by mixed signals.
"Enter me. Break my heart in two. Leave. Break my heart again. I am only whole when I have nothing or everything."
"But once you get inside, if you have ignored my words and pulled open my heavy gates, you will still be facing a brick wall. And you may feel a moment of blank indifference that reaches inside of you and takes your hope. But before you turn...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.
Passersby ignored the frail, shivering thing, their eyes never dropping, their heads never turning. She might have been a doll in a window, or something someone left behind. She wasn't any of their business.
A little round boy with a little round face in his little grey jacket wrapped around his little round belly poked at the girl with his little round foot.
The girl, who wasn't much older than he, looked up from the protective valley of her arms and smiled at him. The little...
The medicine man had always talked about the circle of life that continues unbroken like the circling stars in the heavens, but Mousaf had never been very religious. His village was small, but he was happy with what he had - the woven cloak on his back given to him by his long dead mother, the cello his brother had given him before the accident, and the breath in his lungs. What more could he possibly want?
So Mousaf made his living as the ancient bards had, traveling from village to village. His voice may not have captured hearts, but...
Swing.
Pump your legs, stretch your shoulders back, breathe the joyful rush of air, and swing.
Lift your front leg, lean back, transfer your weight towards the ball, and swing.
Grab a partner, shake your hips, move your feet, and swing.
Mind your temper. Think back to happier days: swing sets and baseball games and high school dances.
Be calm. Forgive. Consider the consequences. And if that fails...
Say your prayers, keep your dignity, savour that final sensation of the rope around your neck, and...
swing.
Your foundation was laid a long time ago. You said it was always the same, just before. His voice offering up your name with a percussive beat, "James," and the sharp hammer blow of "short for nothing." that always followed.
When you left you took ownership of it: patching the walls and putting new paint on it to try and make it different. A thin veneer of you, built on the framework of someone else.
When I moved in you made room for me. You let me fill some of that space, as you did for me. I think she...
I jumped. I blacked out. When I awoke, head ringing and eyes spotted with colours, he turned round slowly.
"You ever heard of an Ox Bow Lake?"
"nuhuh" I said. Mind you, the gag would have rendered the same result as a Shakespeare soliloquy.
"sahwiwochee" Hell, it was different. Maybe if you were a dentist, this conversation would be less one sided. I eyed the man who had broken in to the lab, wondering if he'd had orthodontist training. He knew his way round a physics lab alright, but fiddling with the quantum accelerator probably wasn't the best idea. That...
White sky. The sky was so white. Sky-white. Sky-writing white smoke in the white sky.
But the bayou was blue. I'm humming it now. Bayou-blue. The snapped crayon read "you-blue."
I wanted to say something. What do I want to say. I raced through my mind looking for a word. Where is it?
What is it?
Sky-white? Bayou-blue. Nah, neither of them. I want to say "succumb" or "parse". Maybe "grenadine"?
I peeled the surface of the bayou up like a t-shirt transfer. But too soon. The corner wrinkled.
The sky went blue
What happens when life finally becomes too much to bear? He thought about it a great deal - but was unable to put hiself into those shoes. What happens when you feel death is more important than life? Or is that the wrong question to ask, he wondered. Perhaps the real question was: why had she decided that death on her own was preferable to life with him?
He had come home that day - an ordinary day like any other day - and been surprised not to find her in her usual place in the kitchen. Every time he...
May crept silently - or as silently as the fallen leaves and cracking twigs would allow – towards the old house. It was one of those places that every kid knows; full of mystery and the promise of ghosts, ghouls, dead bodies, mad old ladies in wedding dresses, or maybe just nothing, all of which was exciting in its own frenzied way.
May would not normally be any where near the house in usual circumstances, but truth or dare at a sleepover was a serious business and since, at eleven, the truths were all about boys and love and kissing,...
"Knives."
"Yeah. And?"
"Pepper. Salt. Ducks. Ivory, but don't tell anybody."
"Seriously? Knives?"
He handed me the duffle bag. "Knives. And everything you need to know is in there, too."
"Everything?"
"Everything. The molecular structure of Ferrous Oxide. The length of a stick. The speed of light under water."
"What about the temperature of Jupiters core? The average age of a bitch collie in its first heat? Foreign exchange rates for all currencies against Bhutan?"
"All of that. Plus the phone numbers of every Mossad agent, and their email address and blog addresses. Oh, and the starting lineup of the...