Sidewalks sizzle after the rain. Everything everywhere glows in a magnificent haze the air so thick deep inhalation an improbability. She sits prompted up on his shoulders, afraid. He keeps promising that she won’t fall that no matter how much she may need to wiggle he will always hold on. Instinctively, she does not believe…
Preservation
Reluctantly, she answered the phone. “Hello?” he asks expectantly. “Hi,” she is calm and he sighs with relief. “What are you up to tonight?” He already knows the answer to his question but asks it anyway. “Nothing. I have no plans tonight,” she wants to leave it at that, to just continue along with her…
Convincing Erin
Gray skies have been threatening storms all day. The air is thick with the promise of thunder. Trees shake in the wind. Windows ramble. A cat nestles firmly beneath the sofa convinced that he will remain safe in the right hand corner while toying with the dead mouse. She is exhausted. Her jeans smell of…
Invitation
i. mommy play with me, the edict yelled from backyards kitchen floors and single paned windows. ii. mommy play with me, a modest request, summons to frolic and for one moment remember again what it is like to be swept away in a hurricane of joy. iii. mommy come play with me often meets not nows followed by…
Dr. Hatshepsut Meagher Warner Grants an Interview
The room is provincial with eclectic styling. There were artifacts from all locations ancient and endangered. It would have been better situated in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History with the African Masks coupled with photographs of Aboriginal Australians, the floor covering a delicate oriental rug complete with hand stitched lotus blooms in fading…
sex and the single mother
Bad sex lingers like pepto-bismal at the base of your throat. No matter how many glasses of water you drink you just can’t seem to shake that chalky pepperminty blah taste. It makes you wonder if you should have just lived with the sour stomach and diarrhea. Hence the case for celibacy. Standing in her…
Pinky Promise
Everything smells of antiseptic and iodine. The counters are graphite but it doesn’t feel sterile or polished or professional. The lighting is distracting trying its damnedest to resemble sunshine but failing miserably. He is uncomfortable and concerned that the two extra large surgery gowns they gave him still don’t cover his girth in any way…
Revelations
She sits on the left hand side of the pulpit mindlessly rummaging through her phone paying bills, making her grocery list and reviewing her ‘friends’ statuses. The sermon is mindless and a repeat from a sermon she heard a week ago. She’s begun to dread ‘Praise and Worship’ which feels more like a cattle call…
Company
She knows what it feels like to be quartered. She’s been pulled in four different directions for so long, she wouldn’t know how to function otherwise. Exhausted still after a day of ‘helping’ and getting four kids where they need to be in order to have one night of ‘me’ time, what she really wants…
Kitchen Duty
He is running. If I had a speed radar gun I could probably clock him at 10 miles per hour. But I don’t so I’m only guessing. I just know that he’s running and in the next 15 seconds he’s going to hit me at full speed. A smarter woman would move. At least sideways…
fearfree living 