Big Stories in Two Little Sentences
Grandpa always claimed there was a fork at the end of the path behind his house: Candyland one way, the other a nightmarish landscape with monsters.
He could never remember which was which so we promised to go another day, but he died when I was eleven and I still haven’t picked which way to go.
The two sisters, as young girls, braided each others hair, borrowed sweaters, met boys at dances, and shared endless secrets, dreams, hopes and fears.
The two old sisters, both now widowed, wash each others hair, borrow sweaters, visit their husband’s graves, share a lifetime’s memories, griefs, and experiences and, while holding hands, enjoy the sunset of their lives.
I wake up and see my brother laughing near me and see my other family as well eating dinner.I start to cry because I know I am not in my house but on a table feeding others a piece of me.
Sweetly falls a mother’s breath upon her child’s neck, as softly they touch cheek to cheek, and lash to lash they try to sleep. But her keen ears are ever wary of the sounds that stalk and creep… night has just begun.
Last night we read the elf on the shelf . We then found him and our elf’s name is Frank
Stinking and tired he hauled Christopher from the river then, grabbing the nearest vine, he tied it about his waist and started to search frantically for Emily. The waters were raging as the rain poured down as she swept past him screaming and clinging for life on a splintered remnant of the boat he had built them.
The other day while I was having sex, I think I accidentally said “Dad.”
My dad doesn’t like it when I call him that during sex.
She lay in bed, burying her head under the pillow, replaying the sensation of his fingers on her skin. Two weeks had passed and it would be fourteen more endless days before she saw him again.
All of the writers and singers and geniuses that were blessed enough to be born under the starsign of Capricorn were alcoholics with awful family lives and terrible human skills.
And since I am also a blessed Capricorn, who thinks she can write, sing, draw and paint, and I am so scared of a normal family, I think that I should start drinking, so that my dog can save me from myself when I get too caught up in these shenanigans.
I was asked to be a surrogate drafter for my friend’s fantasy baseball team. I’ll do that — I’ll take a couple hours and create the team — but I refuse to be there as it grows up, and breaks hearts, and teases, and disappoints.
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.
She had always thought of her father as an unreasonably harsh disciplinarian and had little if any recollection of his tenderness. Yet later on in life, her brother reminded her that when she had been very small and made what she considered to be a “gourmet” sandwich of ham, barbecue sauce, Fritos, and Tang sprinkled on top for good measure, their father had eaten it all and told her several times how good it was.
Your mother wrapped her pies in barbed wire and alarms as always, your nieces played hopscotch over land mines being the little daredevils they are, and our cousins did that tricky balancing act they’ve always done on the picket fence. If you promised to keep all those electric eels of yours on their leashes I’d let you come again, but I knew you were up to no good when I saw you wearing those rubber gloves.
The night after his mother’s funeral, as Allen lay in the darkened bedroom heartbroken and feeling alone, a wisp of her perfume wafted by and a soft voice whispered, “Don’t cry baby boy for mother is here.”
Startled, he switched on the bedstand light, only to find his wild-eyed stepbrother, wearing lipstick and his mother’s favorite dress meeting Allen’s forehead with a wood axe.
“Wait – don’t jump!” Carly Ann yelled at her big brother who was ready and poised to plummet to (what he thought would be) his death from the window of his second-story bedroom. “Just give me a minute to get up there and I’ll push you off myself!”
Night after night they grumbled about being hungry and dared her to step foot on the floor.
Instead, last night she set up a trip-wire and watched them drag her rapist step-father into the shadows, and smiled.
I took little satisfaction in watching the convicted murderer trail behind the guards as they led him away in handcuffs after being charged guilty and sentenced to life in prison, as there was nothing that could comfort the tragedy of my husband’s death, and there was nothing that could take away that painful familiarity in the monster’s eyes. I remember when he first blinked open those shiny little marble eyes to me and the world and my husband had looked at him real proud the way fathers do when they first realize their baby’s potential – a quarterback for the Eagles, a wealthy doctor or lawyer, the President; the possibilities were infinitely immense! – but alas, what had happened to this baby I had cradled in my arms thirty-five long years ago?