May 2008
12 posts
first love letter
Dear Annie,
I won’t get my hopes up. I’ll just write what’s in my heart and you tell me if it’s something you want to see more of. I can’t speak for anyone else, but in me is enough depth to last someone forever, probably. Just get past the barbwire.
avoiding fires
Once burned, twice shy, she would say. I didn’t know what that meant. I kept thinking it had something to do with like really being burned or something, and avoiding fires and stuff. But I never asked her about it and I wish I had because we don’t talk anymore.
watch
My first storm. The sea is a caldron of dark, rippling scales and the inky clouds overhead have stained even the stars shut. We are wet and trembling, but the Captain is steady at the wheel and watches an invisible horizon. Sometimes, he tells us, that’s all you can do.
the east wind
It comes and goes, like an unpleasantly pleasant breeze, ruffling my hair and stinging my eyeballs and fluttering my pants behind me. I keep walking into the blast, hoping that heaven is watching my diligence, waiting to turn the east wind of sorrow into the west wind of comfort again.
european sunrise
He had never seen a European sunrise before. The valley drew the pink beams of light over the houses and fields scattered there, a bowl filling with the glow of morning. Now the camera panned back to her face and she smiled. He couldn’t tell what was prettier to him.
seeing stars
The car engine warmed the hood and their backs as they lay in awe under the glimmer of stars. He’d wanted to buy a star for moments like this, for girls like her, but he’d never had the money. The stars still visible to the naked eye were gone. Sold!
the view
Wanda was looking out again. She clutched her walker, pressing the silver lines into split tennis balls. Her gray hair lay strewn across her humped back. The window framed a courtyard of weeds and rusted junk. But, ah! She could still see a sliver of sky where clouds passed through.
runaways
I’ll sing the words and you write the music, he said. We’ll drive across the country in my dad’s Honda. We’ll run away from everyone and everything, just like you wanted. How about you sing the music and I write the words, she said. That’s what I meant, he said.
morning
He is putting on socks over feet barely shower damp. Now he is sitting on his bed, his shoulders round, his hair wet and slick. The sun is a pale yellow light in the window. No one is thinking of him at this moment, no one in the wide world.
the discovery
He was afraid now. He left everything untouched, for they would take photographs. He would be interviewed and put on magazine covers. They would hate him. They would love him. The stars from the window made the test tubes glow hot and bright. He had made them confess unspeakable things.
chick flick
“Love is real whether you believe in it or not.” He didn’t believe in it. “You know that, don’t you?” He did not know that. “Letting go isn’t giving up.” He had given up. The tear-stained faces on the screen were smiling now. “Yes,” they said together. “No,” he whispered.
retirement
His hands typed. His mouse moved. His body sat. From his office window, he watched the old men and women weeding, digging, pruning, mowing, painting, planting, jogging, running, and hammering at their yellow-brown houses. Their cracked, sagging skin jiggled in the hot sun. From his office window, he saw retirement.