He cantered lifelessly along under the silver bean’s moonbeams feeling beaten and broken. Once unique, he’s now a freak, and he’s only that horse with the sickhorn.
Youthful Optimist
How quick the skycotton cloud goes through a relentless remould while retaining it’s totality. How honest the unendomed sky reflects our going of grey-and-gold and life’s futility.
Exclamation Mark!
Some girls I know were playing a game where they joked about what punctuation each of their friends most resembled, for example comma, period, semi-colon, etc. They told me I was the exclamation mark, and I smiled at them while thinking: that one’s the most phallic!
Dialogue
Conversations between “the past” and “the future” usually have a slightly uneasy quality about them. The past nervously babbles too much, while the future smiles enigmatically, betraying nothing…
Different Opinions
“Daddy! A mime!” the little boy jumped up and down clapping with joy. “No, an idiot,” his dad said pushing him forward.
Anger
I looked at her angrily. While my memory, in seconds, took me back to things happened earlier, I instantly recovered my consciousness and saw a dead body before me.
Loving Embrace
She remained quiet and still as he held her tightly and cried.
“Know that I will always love you.” he said while breaking his embrace and letting her body fall gently back into the casket.
If Wishes Came True
He looked worried, so she couldn’t help but ask, “What’s wrong?”
The seven year old boy answered, “If wishes came true, I’d hate to be the kid in the Oscar Meyer Hot Dog Commercial.”
Three Days Later
Looking back, she realized that where she went wrong that evening wasn’t the alcohol, the sex, the drugs, or even the second round of all those things. It was when she yielded the right of way to that damned taxi on 34th.
Progression
The first time I slept over, we were sober and did not make love. But in the morning, there was warm skin under the covers, then coffee, then trust.
“You see?” she shrieked, “You see what you’ve done?”
“No, but I wish I could.” he replied.
Winter’s Embrace
Nika looked up at Abner, lassoed her arms around him and squeezed. The snow-matted branch of a wind-mangled pine tree scratched against the window as another gust of wind stretched the linking wooden beams of the nearly buried cabin.
Laid on his deathbed.
“Did you ever love me?”
He was as cold to me as always.
The Breakup
The photographer showed one of her works to her lover and asked what he thought the people portrayed in it were like. She quietly walked out a few moments after he—feeling flustered and taken off guard—replied, “I don’t think photographs can tell you anything.”
Self-improvement
For decades, she tried to win over friends and lovers through the relentless pursuit of perfection. She was well into middle age before she realized that everyone she knew just wanted to be around people whose myriad flaws made them feel more comfortable with their own.
Bad Move
On their first and only date, he tried to compliment her, “I wish I’d met you twenty-five years ago, because, you know, you’re pretty now and all; but you probably could’ve stopped traffic then.”
She narrowed her eyes and cocked her head to the side as if examining him and then replied, “I can’t tell about you—were you ever attractive?”
Legacy
In the twenty years since my mother died, I had never known what to do with myself. Now, seeing my father marry his high school sweetheart, I realized what had to be done.
Pride and Prejudice
Before boarding the train to a beach town, I once laughed heartily at a guy with oversized glasses and over-gelled hair. Weirdly, on the evening train back into town, he attempted a Back Street Boys’ medley in broken English and somehow won me over to the idea of sharing a gelato.
Apostasy
She entered the religious school a true believer. She graduated an atheist.
Vision
I confess that when this all started, you were like a picture out of focus to me. And it took time for my eyes to adjust to you, to make sense of you, to really recognize you.