He didn't know that yesterday was the last day he would see her. He had no doubts about the marriage, but he knew that his life would change in a way he wasn't sure he was ready for. He couldn't live without her; he knew that. He couldn't go a day without hearing her laugh or seeing her smile-her smile that made her eyes twinkle and her dimples flash. He thought about how much he loved her smell. Whether it was the smell of her herbal shampoo, the smell of her sweet sweat after she got back from running, the...
He set the plate before her. It steamed, smells of carmelized meat and cinnamon wafted up to her nose. "This is my lust."
He still spoke with inflection, they had not dined upon his theatricality, his sense of timing, his desire to surprise. There was an order to these things, and while he still had that order, he would continue. The assembled guests mumbled their appreciation, though Dowager Harriet was still chewing through the last bites of his shame.
When the Boddhisatva-to-be had announced this meal, the good and great had tittered that he had finally lost his mind. Spent...
The drugs were beginning to wear off. Minute by minute the butterflies, those glorious, evanescent, friendly butterflies, were fading. She pressed the earpiece of her headphones to her ear. Pink Floyd were sounding like a noisy nightmare. As she gazed out across the valley, with its endless vista of trees, trees and more trees, she came down to earth with a bump. She should get back to work - artificial props might give her a brief respite, but she had a deadline to meet and a quota to make. Sighing, she pressed stop and slipped her headphones down round her...
It was inexplicable that two latino, hipster twenty-somethings from East Los Angeles would talk like 85-year-old Jewish retirees from Queens, yet that was how it was.
"Pull ovah and ask fuh direck-shuns," shouted Isabel.
"I know where I'm going!" Ricky replied with a Yiddish accent that seemed to come from nowhere. "You always do this! You always want to undermine my AUTHORITY!"
He exclaimed very loudly, mostly because he was hard of hearing and couldn't monitor his own pitch. Isabel was silent for a second, silently mouthing words to herself. Then, as if in an afterthought, she said, "You just...
Black and white. I couldn't believe Dad had done it again.
I know I'm lucky, I do. You can say I'm spoiled if you like, but it doesn't matter - I'd asked for ONE THING this Christmas, and it was colour.
I looked up at my father, tried to fake a smile, and said 'Thanks'. As soon as he turned away, I rolled my eyes, and unwrapped my next present.
A sweater. Great. I wondered what colour it was - if I went out wearing this and one of my friends actually GOT what she asked for and could see...
Absent.
He sat right at the front, but would never once look up at the board all while knowing full well the snippy teacher would think him rude. He would only doodle inside his beat-up notebook he'd kept since seventh grade, and I would never know what exactly it was he was so intent on drawing.
It's a project, he would say.
He is not here today. He and I do not interact much, but I know he is beautiful. He is beautiful and I have loved him since I laid eyes on him. I have loved him and loved...
I slowly made my way through the rows of seated people desperate to get out of this ceremony. The elder slowly pushed me on, slowly sighing with defeat i trudged through the long narrow line of people anxiously looking around the crowd only to be met with a sea f unfamiliar faces. Upon my arrival to the temple, the elder smudged glowing paint onto my face whilst chanting words foreign to my ears, he stood up and lit the large pit with fire before the crowd made weird hand gestures and chants that grew louder as the seconds went by....
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.
The cool water soothed her. She had to get out of the stifling heat, and the stifling company. Why she had agreed to this trip she would never know, but he had insisted.
'It will be good for us,' he said.
No, it won't, she thought. It will be sheer torture, because we both know we're flogging this horse beyond it's natural lifespan. But she packed anyway, not realising that lying beside his sweaty body would be the final nail.
She floated for a while, staring at the stars. They were bright in the cobalt-blue sky, pin prinks of brightness...
I hadn't been doing anything out of the ordinary, but what happened that day was definetly out of the ordinary. I was simply sitting at my kitchen table looking out the window at the busy morning street, when all of a sudden, everything stopped. Just like that, everything was frozen in its place. Everything - except me.
At first I panicked, the steady stream of worried thoughts interupting my unsettled feelings about the heart-wrenching break-up that had taken place between my boyfriend and I the night before. After a few moments, I stopped too, although, I was still able to...