What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Anne Wright

When Susan saw Bill crumble saltines into his tomato soup, that was the moment she knew that she loved him. And when Bill tasted the beef stew that Susan made he said it reminded him of his Grandmother’s cooking. They loved each other and loved to eat, sometimes naked in the dining room chairs, with cloth napkins in their laps.

It was hard to talk about love sometimes because it wasn’t polite with a full mouth. So they learned to talk with their eyes and the hand that was free of the fork or spoon. Susan’s eyes crinkled at the corners when Bill smiled as he twisted the fettuccini on his fork. Bill’s nostrils flared when Susan licked the chocolate mousse from her lips. Susan brushed back the long blonde hair from her cheeks so it didn’t get buttery as she bit into the fresh French bread he baked each morning, and Bill lifted his hand to slip the kernel of corn from her chin to her mouth. Susan, from where she sat, next to him, fed him bites of wild salmon poached in white wine, capers and garlic, each morsel teasingly smaller until he was begging for just one more taste. Over and over he would twirl his finger in the garlic mashed potatoes and she would lick it off, her rough tongue exciting him. They loved each other more than they loved food.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Maria Robinson

He's older. He calls me honey. I call him by his name. He's breathing over me. It's labored but hot and full of hope.

He wants me to stay with him. I want him to adore me and leave. I like to pretend to banish him. It makes him anxious and ardorous. When he feels he is back in control, I pretend to surrender. Then, I punish him and push him away again. This makes him want me more. This game goes on for hours. Then we go out for dinner at an Indian restaurant.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Jennifer Baljko

When I was younger, “we” talked about love the way college kids talked about love. We were in love because we went to the movies on Friday nights and hung out together all weekend. We blushed when we sneaked kisses in the kitchens of parents’ houses, and prided ourselves on doing the nasty in public places without getting caught. In the eyes of my 18-year-old self, love was a physical thing defined by the fairy tales living in my mind, and held in check with society’s expectations.

Two decades later, the “we” has changed, and so have the musings of my heart. Love is pregnant with comfortable silent pauses, a knowing look and soft caresses. Compassion, understanding, compromise, forgiveness, honesty, companionship, respect and unity fill in the gaps. We steal kisses all the time without a flush of embarrassment, and make love with spirited enthusiasm and unrestrained appreciation. In the eyes of my 38-year-old self, love has moved into a soulful state of being, made perfect only with daily practice.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Darcy Vebber

That night, Lisa found out Sam was already in love. Crazy about a girl named Deena who went to Central and had been the star of their senior cabaret show. He said she was amazing and he sounded so happy it was almost impossible not to share his pleasure. “She just glows. I saw her and I had to meet her. I went right backstage and introduced myself”

“How do you do that?” Bobby asked. He didn’t seem to expect an answer. “I mean, how?”

Lisa tried not to sulk. They were sitting in the dark on Bobby’s patio, drinking sun tea from the big jug his mother kept out there and smoking a joint. Heat rose from the cement beneath their lawn chairs. The temperature wouldn’t drop below eighty until dawn.

Bobby wanted to know what happened to their friend Rachel, who brought Sam to the show. Sam said Rachel was a pal, really. A friend who understood. He insisted that Deena was unlike any other girls he knew. “She’s not just beautiful, she’s confident. She knows who she is.” He lay back with his hands under his head and sighed.

Lisa made a little dismissive noise. Later, when she lay in bed and replayed the conversation, she couldn’t decide if she had meant him to hear her or not.

Sam said, “What?”

“Well. It just seems kind of limiting. To know who you are when you’re like eighteen.” She leaned back in her chaise to look up into the night sky. So endless and beautiful. She pulled her attention back to the patio and felt irritated. Right. One of those impossible girls who were already complete, who didn’t get lost in the night sky or her own thoughts. A girl Sam already was in love with. She thought she could feel Bobby watching her. “You might be disappointed.”

Bobby laughed. “I told you Lisa was smart.”

Lisa turned to look at him. Had he? Had Bobby talked to Sam about her? She felt a wave of anxiety.

“She’s got you figured.” Bobby sat up so he could lean a little closer to Lisa. “Sam is a romantic. Every new girl is amazing, every one is going to change his life.”

“And you?” Lisa felt bound to ask.

“I’m a pragmatist.” He sounded solemn and even a little angry. “I don’t believe love is going to change anything.”

This time, Sam laughed. He had just finished taking a final toke of the joint and smoke burst through his nose as he coughed and sputtered. Finally, he leaned up on one elbow to look at Lisa. “What about you?”

She was startled. This was the first conversation she could ever recall having about love. The idea of answering Sam, of looking in to his handsome face, meeting his eyes and saying anything about love froze her brain. The word naked came to mind. That wouldn’t help. In school she had learned when you don’t have an answer, ask a question. “You mean like romance?”

He shrugged. “Yeah. I guess romance. Attraction, sex, all that. Are you waiting for Prince Charming?” He smiled.

“No,” she said as if she had been accused of something.

“I told you,” Bobby said again. “She’s not like that.”

Lisa was surprised to feel tears come to her eyes. It was as if something had come into reach and then been whisked away again. “Of course I believe in love.” She sounded completely unsure of herself. Clearly, she had no idea what she was talking about.

Alone - Donna Shomer

I am standing at the side
of the pool of independence.
my daughter swims laps,
back and forth,
I can see her turn around in the distance.
sometimes, on her swim out
I leave my vigil
or turn my head away –
trusting that she can swim –
Or just called away
by my insistent life.
I am mesmerized by the
sometimes irregular returns,
by whether or not she will
let me make her tea,
by the good path out that she chooses
each time and
by how much it hurts to watch her go.

Alone - Kaye Doiron

It is snowing on the Southern side of Canigou. The wind is biting cold. He walks in knee deep snow and turns to gaze upon that fairy tale village that winds it’s way down from the rocky mountaintop. Eus. His caravan is parked on the Southern side where the winds are less fierce. It has been snowing for days now and his home is surrounded by piles of his own fecal matter as it is much too cold to wander off the beaten path to relieve himself. He torments himself with the shameful knowledge that he has travelled for one hour in the freezing snow with numb feet for hash. It is quite a magnificent hash, he admits. Black, soft, from Afghanistan, he puts his hand in his pocket and rubs it between his numb fingers. He quickens his pace.

The caravan has been out of power for days and if not for the snow he would have run out of drinking water over a week ago. The fire is ready, the embers still burning underneath the blackened wood. He goes inside to get another stack and in record military time he has a warm roaring fire to warm him. He warms his hands, his feet, and he rolls a sweet, hot joint. His ritual smooths his wrinkled soul. It takes away the edge of the cold, of the pain, of the loss. It tames his dragon like she once did. He does not allow his thoughts to linger here for long, on her, for if they linger too long his heart will awaken. That, he can not allow to happen.

Like the way the wind slightly blows into a sail on a calm day he allows his thoughts to dance upon his children, his memory of them, it is certain they have changed considerably, it has been over a year since he’s seen them. Bella climbing up on his back to jump into the sea off his shoulders, her white blonde hair blowing in his face, her sweet little girl smell. Ah, but here it comes, the void in Danny’s eyes, the way Sean looks at him out of the side of his head, not sure what’s coming, soon he will check out too. His love is a dangerous one, he is not to be trusted. He pulls a deep, long drag, savors the sweet bitterness in his mouth, closes his eyes and knows he is resolved to stay alone

Alone - Patricia Spencer

Marcus has been living in the park since Natalia moved away. She took half of everything. Said she needed space, that they’d always be friends. Marcus knew better. There’s a bench under the hundred year old elms where he sleeps at night. At dawn pigeons arrive. Marcus feeds them potato chips. In the afternoon he drinks cans of beer from a paper bag. One night Marcus dreamed of Nikola Tesla. Next morning he heard pigeons whispering to him from the branches above. When he answered back, they all flew away.

Alone in Front of Everyone - John Fetto

He was never alone on stage. During those magical moments, the camera focused only on him, capturing each inflection, noting each shift in manufactured mood, preserving the performance so it might be projected large in darkened rooms. But no scene, however well played, lasts forever. Eventually the camera pans away, the lights dim, pulling him into the obscure darkness of his lifeless audience.

Alone - Judy Albietz

“How can you stand being alone so much?” Lily asked Sam after he described what life was like for him—with all the time traveling back and forth to the past and the future. Lily and Sam were walking up the hot dry path to the volcano cinder cone, where the Elders lived.

Sam’s collar was glowing a soft gold hue as he responded, “Lily, before I met you, I didn’t even know what it was like to have a friend for more than a day.

Lily knew if she tried to say something, she would burst into tears, so she threw her arms around Sam’s neck and hugged him tight. She thought how Sam totally accepted her for who she was. He would do anything for her, even give his life. Because of Sam, being the single only human on the island hadn’t been that scary. Lily felt as close to him as any person in her life. It was hard not to think of being separated from him—what would happen after they met with the Elders at the volcano and retrieved the Amulet.

Sam continued, “I have time-traveled, living apart from the other dogs for so long I can’t even remember what it was like to play with my brothers and sisters. Before my mother and father died, I tried to get to know them, but our visits between travel were too short. I have a feeling that in some form I will meet them again. Their stories are not lost to me forever.”

“After I leave with the Amulet and the Time Portal is fixed, will you go back to constant time traveling?” asked Lily.

“I thought I had gotten used to the loneliness, but now I am not so sure—so sure I want to go back to that life of isolation. Nobody will force me. It is my choice. But I feel the weight of responsibility. There are only a few of us who can travel so much and still remain young and strong. This teenage body is older than you think.”

“Hmmm…About that….maybe I don’t want to know how old you are…I like thinking of you as a teenager, as my friend…” Lily said.

Sam smiled and said softly, Lily, you are the best friend in the whole world.”

Alone - Carol Arnold

Willa is still in the house. My orange baby dolls didn’t do the trick with Johnny. He just told me he’d take care of it when the time comes. Sure, when hell freezes over.

The board and care papers are still laying on the kitchen table, now covered over by a pile of napkins. Like everything else in the kitchen, there are dozens of napkins, some fine old linen, most of them rags. Everyday Willa irons and folds a few, then piles them up in a neat stack next to the dishes. I’ve never seen her even use a cloth napkin. It’s Kleenex for everything, damp wads all over the house.

Johnny has grandiose plans as usual. He’s going to tear down the crooked walls of the dining room, put a beam in the living room where the ceiling is falling in, replace all the rotted windows, unstuck the doors, remove the plaster and restore it with what he calls a Pho look. You name it, he’s going to do it. Where the money is going to come from is a mystery he’s leaving to God.

So here we are, the three of us alone in our own worlds, Johnny ranting about the renovation, Willa making stacks of things, and me, well, I’m just trying to keep my spirits from going down the drain. All this water! The rain’s constant drip, drip, drip, the charcoal skies, the green on the trees so dark they looked bruised, what’s a girl to do but think about grabbing a knife and killing herself?

Johnny tells me this morning the first thing we need to do is rewire and replumb the house. He’s right about that. Every time I turn on the light in Bun’s old bedroom where we’re sleeping on the floor (I wouldn’t touch his bed if you gave me a million dollars – well, maybe for that, but only that), a spark jumps out of the fixture on the ceiling. It makes a noise like an insect getting zapped. And the toilet barely flushes. I have to do it three times to make everything go down if you know what I mean.

But what do I know about wires and pipes? I tell Johnny I need a special project, something I can call my own, something I know how to do. He knows I’m a pretty good housekeeper, that I can even make our “country cottage” in Petaluma look pretty good. So tonight he tells me the attic needs a thorough cleaning out. I’ve been afraid to go up there, afraid of what I’ll find. But I jump at the chance. It’ll get me away from his rants and Willa’s stacks, at least during the day. At night I’ll be so tired I’ll just fall out next to Johnny and dream of sunny climes.

Alone - Camilla Basham

To be alone is to be different, to be different is to be alone.”
~ Suzanne Gordon ~

The lark sang a song bright and free
Fluttered wings with so much glee
There rose a breeze through every tree

It traveled over every hill
And banged upon her window sill
Whispered soft and sweet: Camille

And even though the breeze had blown
It landed at her feet like stone
Reminding her she was alone.

What She Collected - Darlene Nelson

My grandmother collected buttons. I do not think it was a planned collected. It was really rather random. Still, she had jars and jars of buttons tucked away on her closet shelf. I was instructed not to touch them. It was a rule; never bother your grandmother’s things.

After my grandmother’s death, my mother could not bear to part with the jars. Eventually, when I had grown to a height that allowed me to reach the shelf, I took the button-jars down. At first, I held the cold glass in both hands, one jar after another. I shook each jar lightly; they were full to the brim. The top layer of buttons made a chinky-chink type of noise as they knocked against the lid. It was as if they were tired of being contained, begging me to free them.

Slowly, I opened each jar and then dumped the contents out. The buttons spilled out in a wavy whoosh sound. On the floor were thousands of buttons in all colors and cuts. Some of the buttons were clear and looked like diamonds others were fabric covered. Some of the buttons looked like shells, some were huge, and others so tiny I wondered what type of garment they had once been affixed to. My favorite buttons were the sets. In order to keep the matching sets together forever, my grandmother had run a thread through each buttonhole and then and tied it off.

That was the kind of woman she was smart and frugal – keeping the sets of buttons together eternally.

What She Collected - Marigrace Bannon

What she collected was her memories, fragments, pieces of dialogue or just a moment in a grocery store, so many years later and feeling that wretched grief by just seeing a box of Lorna Doone cookies in someone’s basket could bring it all back, they were his favorite. Was Lorna Doone a mythic figure or someone real?

There were so many moments and growing up in a big family those memories are shared and sometimes you can forget if you were in that fragment or not, just because you heard the story and felt like you were in that frame and you could very easily have been somewhere else.

Like the time in the freight elevator at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. It wasn’t you, it was your brother Eddie, and sisters Eileen and Kathleen. And it was Kathleen’s idea as the best way to sneak into the hospital because you had to be 16 and you were and got to go the hospital almost every day with your mother and sometimes by yourself to visit your sister Elizabeth on her leukemia ride. You saw all the balding children and the hemophiliacs that seemed to disappear overnight.

So your brother and sisters couldn’t come in the front door during visiting hours because they were underage, 13, 14 and 15. And Kathleen’s 13 year old mind always knew you didn’t have to bend the rules you just had to defy them with bravado and nonchalance.

What I Collected - Melody Cryns

Piles of paper abound everywhere in my life – at home on the kitchen table, on the desk, here at work on my desk. I can’t help it. I collect papers and I can’t seem to get rid of the piles no matter how hard I try. Oh I can get the piles down – throw away the junk mail I thought I needed but didn’t, but I can never get rid of the piles of paper.

But it’s not nearly as bad as it used to be when I collected mail. It was almost an unconscious thing. I’d have my ritual of opening the mailbox and checking to see what was in it and even bring the mail into the townhouse I lived at with my three teenagers and my young daughter at the time. If the piece of mail looked even just a little bit menacing, like a bill or some notice, I’d throw the mail unopened on to the coffee table. I’d mentally tell my stuff, okay, I’ll deal with this mail later. It’s been a long, hard day at work and I just picked up my daughter from daycare and besides, the townhouse is a mess and I have to figure out what we’re going to eat for dinner. The teenagers are all stuffed into a bedroom upstairs doing heaven knows what, and now I get this menacing looking mail?

Oh this mail is from the City of Palo Alto. I wonder – oh no, don’t look at it, throw it into the already growing pile of unopened mail. Oh this is definitely a bill, there it goes into the pile. It got to the point where the pile was getting so big, it would topple over and some of the unopened mail would spill out on to the floor. Then my older daughter Melissa, dressed all in black in her Gothic garb, would roll her eyes at me and say stuff like, “What are you going to do with all this mail? You’re not even going to open it! What’s wrong with you?”

“I’ll go through it one of these days,” I’d say, “When I have time.”

Then Melissa wearing that dark makeup surrounding her beautiful gray blue eyes, looking stern and motherly like would say, “Yeah, right! Whatever!” Then she’d walk away, her long black flowing skirt swishing as she walked revealing black Doc Martin boots.

The boys never even noticed the mail sitting there and neither did little Megan who was way more interested in rollerblading or playing her imaginary games or watching Sponge Bob Square Pants on Nickelodeon than a bunch of mail piling up on the coffee table.

The boys were more interested in playing the latest video games and hanging out with their friends and doing who knows what – smoke pot, whatever it is the boys did in the bedroom.

Only Melissa noticed – she noticed everything about me. She noticed when there wasn’t food in the house and blamed me for not buying enough food even though it was the teenage boys who ate all the food up and it was almost impossible to keep up with it all.

“You’re hopeless!” she would say rolling her eyes. “Aren’t you even a little worried there might be something important in the mail?”

“Well, if you think it’s so important why don’t you open the mail?” I’d retort back.

“Are you kidding? You really are kidding…oh man, you seriously need help!”

What He Collected - Karen Oliver

His shelves were full of old bottles. He still had the milk bottles from his old aunt Weedy who died years ago. She had saved them since the depression, each one filled with small pieces of aluminum foil and tatters of string. You couldn’t find those shelves though because the most amazing things caught your eye. A full- length portrait of his wife by Thibaud, an original Mozart score on the grand piano, the dining room table was a Gaudi. This was the collector of collectors. The whole house was filled, floor to ceiling with art, some valuable, some probably not. There was the traditionally valuable art as I just mentioned. There was lots and lots of early American signage, big wooden signs with images like eyeglasses on them. The weirdest stuff was the tribal art though. Shrunken heads from obscure tribes, nail fetishes accompanied by wild stories. The piece de resistance was the jar of pickled penises. That always “got them”.

How did he live there all these years? More astounding, how did his family, his wife and children, live there? I spent several hours in that house, just marveling, talking, feeling the energy of the place. I liked it there. It felt safe and quirky and very carefully thought out. It shouldn’t have. I asked myself, who is this man? What is this about, other than art collecting or a serious case of packrat. Then I knew. He brought all this tribal art together to save it. He was offering safe haven to the spiritual icons of the world, the ones that others would not cherish. He was protecting them and they were protecting him.

The Breathings of His Heart - Carol Arnold

We sit silently at the chipped Formica table, the three of us chewing in unison. Willa has fixed us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches which sit on cracked Lone Ranger plates, another item left over from the carny, a whole set of them. I don’t really want to eat in that kitchen, but it would be rude not to. I know how to act. My mother taught me you don’t refuse food when someone offers it to you. Anyway, there’s not much else to do with our mouths.

I watch jelly drip down Willa’s chin and wonder if I should bring it up, the board and care homes. What would I say? The words form in my head and come out in a cartoon balloon. “What about it, Willa? You’ll love the color scheme, and the plum trees must be lovely in the spring,” or, “A woman like you needs someone. Just think of all the hunks that must be in there. Ha ha.” The balloon bounces off the greasy ceiling and falls on the table with a thud. This needs to be Johnny’s job. He needs to tell her this decrepit house is no place for an old woman.

“Johnny,” she finally says, the jelly drip on her chin now suspended over her plate. “Bun knew you would do the right thing. He didn’t think women could handle much although God knows I handled everything, but he left the house to you so you would handle the details, then pass it on to me.”

The jelly falls on the plate and splatters a little. I hear the breathings of Johnny’s heart, air squeezing out of an old bellows at a dying fire to warm a cold room. “Sure, Willa,” he says. “I’ll handle the details. Leave it to me.”

I know now what I have to do. I will have to put on my orange baby-dolls tonight (things are at least still hot in that department), wind my fingers through what’s left of his poof, tickle him just under his ribs like he likes, and let him know exactly what the details are. “Here they are, Johnny, one, two, three four. They all point to one thing. Willa moves out. As decrepit as it is, Johnny, the house is ours. A hundredth of a loaf is better than none.”

Heart/Breath - Darcy Vebber

Lisa put her hand to her throat. She imagined vines wrapped around her heart, twined in and out of the ribs pulling, then, up at the base of her throat, tight so it was not quite possible to breathe. Her first impulse, and who knows maybe the best impulse, was to walk away. Family, friends, all of it. Somewhere there was a life that was simpler and more true than this one. Better. She recalled a conversation she had with Sam about this very thing, about monasteries, retreats, desert hermits. She'd been reading about a woman in North Dakota who was attracted to the monastic life. He'd been curious. He'd said he didn't think people were meant to live in ones and twos. Hollywood was making him lonely. That was what Lisa thought at the time. He was just lonely, not on his way to conversion.

"Do you think it's serious?" she asked Kate now. No point in asking about the other, the nasty implication in Kate's familiarity with Sam. Alice would say, no point in giving her the satisfaction. "I mean, lots of people here go through a Jesus phase."

"Really?" Kate raised her eyebrows. "In 'this town', do you mean? Little people? Below the line? Or talent? Is this the kind of thing talent gets caught up in from time to time? Like the Tom Cruise scientology thing?"

"Well, yes. Exactly. Not that they're not serious but …" Lisa had forgotten how much Kate professed to hate Hollywood.

"He's serious, Lisa." In a moment, all the fight that had been animating Kate went out of her and she leaned forward, elbows on the table, forehead resting in her hands. Her hair was dirty, greasy at the scalp. "Crazy serious. Visions, sacrifice, purity, the whole thing." She looked up and caught her sister's eye. "But he was nice about it. Sweet. Like he is. Always wanting to share."

For a lovely fraction of a second, the two of them laughed together. Then it was gone and there was only cooling potato soup, waiting in the plain blue bowls.

Hawley's Heart - John Fetto

Hawley had a good heart. He would help people not just Johanna, but some nights, it would race, beating so hard it would burst from his chest, and she’d lean over him in bed and find him staring wide-eyed at nothing as if there were someone in the room, threatening him, so powerful he dared not move, and she’d touch him and ask what is it, what do you see, but he would just stare, hyper ventilating, sweat running down his forward, staring at something she couldn’t see.

“What is it?” Hawley didn’t answer. Johanna got up, rolled out of bed and a ran to the bathroom, filling a glass of water and wetting a towel, then rushed back into the room. He was crouched on the floor. She heard a drawer open and metal snapping together, when he raised up, he was holding something the length of a broom, but made of black metal. He held it still with both hands, elbows out.

“Shhh,” he said. “Do you hear them?”

“What?”

“Quite. Maybe they’ll pass.”

Johanna heard them walking outside. Kids from the high school after Friday’s game. Probably drunk. They must have parked far away because they the parking gets so crowded. Their voices rose as the marched by and Hawley pivoted, pointing the piece of metal toward them, still crouched still ready. They heard a car door slam, an engine start, and a car roll away.

Slowly Hawley lowered the black metal, he sat on the bed, and then lied down, back to her, cradling the piece of metal between his arms.

In the Middle of It - Marigrace Bannon

In the middle of it you don’t know, because you can’t know. That your father is dead @45 and you wonder what your remaining teenage years will be like with no daddy. Your introduction to Shakespeare and Frank Sinatra, but in the middle of it there are wrenching tears and an emptiness in your belly that feels unlike any hunger you have ever known. In the middle of that phone call 2 years later…. The college dorm. The hallway. The black phone attached to the wall that rings for those Southern bells, calls from Mother and daddy. You have no Daddy anymore except a raw memory and it’s your Mother. “Your sister Elizabeth has passed over.” Why can’t she just say dead? You know what that means. Passed over sounds like there’s still hope for that 5 year leukemia Ferris wheel, swaying in the middle, stopping for a minute at the top, going around and around and then stopping at the bottom, someone opens the door and you have to get out of that ride. It’s over. It went so fast you say. I was only scared a little, but I liked swaying in the breeze, I saw so much.

Invisible Ink - Maria Robinson

August
Sean's writing in teal ink on the gray vellum stationary that he left under the door at the El Minzah Hotel in Tanger.
the scrawled handwriting of a man with intent.
The drama of the romance to be. The characters meet at the Al Haifa Cafe overlooking the straits of Gibraltar.

Next March

Sean's hand on a letter to Vera in Santa Fe asking her for her to return. For another try at it.
Can she really read into the invisible ink, what is he really trying to say, what message is in this blue envelope with
stamps from Morocco. Vera will return to Tanger and they will meet again at the Al Haifa.

Invisible Ink - Kaye Doiron

She wrote I love you in the sand and then the tide washed in to erase any proof. She looks for any excuse at all to wash the proof of him from her life. It is too painful to love, to grow. It is too easy to drown herself in the bottle each night and believe she isn’t worth it, he isn’t worth it, love isn’t worth it. She’s let herself not only go soft in the middle, but she has become downright massive, packing on the pounds to keep any kind of love away, self loathing is easier. She does not really see what she’s become. A once nationally ranked swimmer, now swimming in the bottle of lonely, full time married to the job, come home to the dog that cuddles up beside her as she sips her whiskey on the rocks. Her voice now mimics her girth, it is full and heavy, husky, sluggish. She knows her clock is ticking. She wants to change. She might just be letting real love slip away instead of realizing how rare it is and grabbing and hanging on for dear life not matter what the outcome. She does not realize that without love the story of her life will be written in invisible ink.

Invisible Ink - Donna Shomer

I have a friend
she writes stories
some of take up residence
in my mind’s ear
they crinkle like
old paper
they rustle like
subtle fire I have
inherited their people
like one does certain
homeless people like the one
at the Venice intersection or
the one right where I get
off the freeway with my
dollar ready I really hope
one day that homeless
woman will be gone
for all of the right
reasons. She always says
God bless you. And maybe
God does. For a
dollar. But back to these
stories. There is one
that features writing in
the margins of books
that belonged to the mother
or the grandmother
spidery writing in
old thin pages sometimes
the ink is invisible and
only the dent
remains. I wonder what
happened to those books –
to their people.

Invisible Ink - Melody Cryns

“Hey look at this!” I shouted to anyone who would listen holding up a piece of paper that looked like it had nothing on it – just a blank white piece of paper. I was outside on the front marble steps of the wide marble porch or our flat on Second Avenue on a cool, foggy morning. It was one of those deliciously lazy summer days that would start out foggy and most likely end up sunny when we had days stretched before us filled with fun and adventure without the regimen of school. David Hirrell from around the corner sat in his usual perch on the stoop while Ricky Solis, one of the Solis boys from the street and my brother Michael lounged on the steps, and Barry Hirrell and sister Jennifer ran up and down the street in front chasing each other around.

“Okay, so what. It’s a piece of paper,” David said.

“Yes, you may think it’s a piece of paper! But, for real, it’s magical because there are words on this paper!” I said excitedly. I had gotten these magical invisible ink pens from my Dad and tried them out and now I was going to show everyone just how wonderful this was.

No one looked particularly interested. “I don’t see anything” my brother Michael said.

I sat down on a cool, marble step and stared into a crevice in the bricks where a snail we’d put inside it months later resided. We named him Fred the Friend. I think that snail lived in there for at least a year feeding off the damp mildew I guess… we weren’t always that kind to snails which our downstairs neighbors paid us a nickel to catch and kill because they ate up all the vegetation in the back yard, but there was something special about Fred the Friend.

In my other hand, I held a couple of crayons – dark purple and magenta. I was going to show them.

Everyone laughed as I began to color on the page, filling in the page with splashes of color by swirling the crayon around over and over again until words began to magically appear in white right through the coloring.


“Wow!” Michael said, as he saw a word in big letter appear. “That is cool.”

I kept coloring until almost the entire page was colored and the huge printed words appeared mixed in with the purple.

“What does it say? Lemme see,” Ricky said. “The world is your…your what?”

I proudly held up the page. “it says the world is your oyster! That’s the secret message!”

Everyone laughed and David Hirrell grabbed the paper from me. “How stupid! What’s that supposed to mean. But how did you do that?”

“it’s not stupid,” I defended grabbing the paper back. “It’s magic.”

“But what does the world is your oyster mean?” my sister Jennifer asked jumping up and down on one foot. I heard the loud screeching scream that was our signal from up the street and we all instinctively answered the call – our special secret call.

I shrugged. “Not sure – I read it in a book I just read, The Moffett Family.”

“Ohhhh.”

“Let’s write secret messages!” David said.

I ran back in the house to get my magical pens, the box of crayons and a bunch of paper and we all sat around on the front porch before the fog lifted writing secret messages on white paper and coloring them in – there was something fun and special about the words not appearing until we colored them in, as if they HAD to be colored in so that they would come to life. When we first wrote the words they didn’t show up – something had to be done to get them to appear.

What Was in the Closet - Judy Albietz

Lindsey set aside that Sunday afternoon for the next home improvement project on her list: the bedroom closet. Nights were getting chilly and she had been feeling a cool breeze coming from that closet. Fifty years ago they put windows and vents in closets. The window didn’t open, but the vent brought in fresh air. On top of the vent was a shoe rack, so maybe that was their way to dry out their wet shoes. Lindsey decided to tear out the rack and vent and seal up the wall. After emptying the closet so her clothes and shoes wouldn’t be covered with drywall dust, she opened the box of solid but somewhat antique tools she had inherited from her mom. She loved the feel of the hand-made wooden handles of the screwdrivers.

Kneeling on the wooden closet floor, Lindsey removed the two screws holding the shoe rack in place. Once she removed it, the vent behind it fell out on the floor. Three inches away from the vent was a wire screen, almost flush with the outside of the house. When Lindsey saw how the screen was attached, she decided it would be easy to cut it. Then it wouldn’t get in the way of her exterior stucco patch. Leaning over, with ancient wire clippers in hand, Lindsey looked down and saw a white box lodged in the hollow space below the opening. It was eight or so inches long and thin enough to fit. There was something about the box which sent a chill down her spine. At first she didn’t want to touch it, but knew she couldn’t just bury it in pink insulation.

Taking a deep breath, Lindsey pried the box out with a screwdriver and opened it. The necklace inside of bright red beads fit the description Lindsey had just heard the day before when she spoke to Rosemary, one of Diedre’s friends who worked with her at the elementary school. Rosemary said Diedre had shown her the necklace in February before her death. When Diedre said it was a Valentine’s gift, Rosemary assumed it was from her husband. Yes, she thought it odd how Diedre took the necklace out of a gift box, wore it at work, and then put it back in the box before leaving work. Now Lindsey had a pretty good idea of where Diedre put the necklace when she got home.

I Knew You'd Call - Patricia Spencer

I didn’t answer the phone because I knew you’d call. Even though I haven’t known you long enough to recognize your number, I had a feeling it was you. I think you should know I’m kind of a jerk. This whole dating thing really brings it out. Consider yourself lucky we didn’t get involved. Two dates doesn’t really constitute a relationship, does it? I was a little surprised when you showed up in a kilt for out first date. I thought you knew we were just meeting for brunch at my sister’s café. Now, I get it that the little knife in the front was a traditional part of the outfit, but my sister was very freaked out when you got drunk and started waving it around during your little demonstration of the Highland Fling, and then, how does a person get so drunk on only two mimosas? Oh, by the way, I’m not Scottish and neither are you. You’re not fooling anyone Mr. Haruki Tanaka. Well, I probably shouldn’t have invited you out for a second date but I was desperate. My bad, but my friend Lisa was getting married and I did not want to show up solo at the wedding because her cousin Henry was going to be there. Last year I had to get a restraining order because he was stalking me. He’s back from the mental hospital and ok and everything, but I didn’t want to risk it and you were the only one around since the guy that I actually like, Tom, was out of town, and my other guy friend, Timmy hates Lisa because she always makes fun of him for being gay even though he’s not gay. At least that’s what he says. I guess it was bad of me to lead you on after the reception but I was a little drunk and hey, you just never know. The sex wasn’t so bad. Really, it was ok. I’m sorry I ran out of the room like that. But I did come back and we finished up all nice and normal, yes? And you looked so sweet after. Curled up on the floor with my dog Snuffy. He really likes you. I hope we can still be friends. Well, not the kind of friends who actually go out and do stuff together, I’m way too busy, and not really the kind that chat on the phone, again, too busy, but maybe you could sometime send me an email. That would be lovely. Might take me a while to respond, but it’d be super sweet.
Best,
Michelle

I Knew You'd Call - Karen Oliver

I knew you’d call sometime when you got over whatever weirdness was keeping you silent. The problem is that I notice your absence and it has a presence in itself. Funny how that works. The space becomes an entity and fills space. Seems like a paradox but the statement gives energy itself the heft it deserves. We think of space and of energy as invisible, and maybe not really present. One has to feel them, to know they are there. They can be dismissed and you can be ridiculed for mentioning them because they aren’t materially present and you cannot “prove” that they speak to you. However, anyone who has had a friend stop taking her calls or had someone give her the silent treatment knows the power of the energy of silence. It can be more powerful, by far, than words.

I think about passive resistance, the Gandhi kind, and the power of that energy, that space. I recall the mothers of the “disappeared” who brought down the government by silently walking around the town squares at lunch, day after day. Nothing was happening and that “nothing” filled everyone with strength, power and grace.

Where is the source that this “not calling” comes from? In me, it leaves a void that my mind wants to fill. Could it be this reason, could it be that? I could analyze and worry it forever, allowing you to use your silent weapon as long as I cooperate. However, I think I will just go on with my life, realize that your problem does not have to be my problem unless you choose to enlighten me about it. For now, I will just know that you will call, or not.

I Knew She'd Call/Cover Girl Day - Darlene Nelson

When I was young and still hopeful, I looked for you everywhere. I looked for you in the faces of women I knew – my neighbors, my teachers, and my best friend’s mother. Eventually I began to look for you in the faces of strangers. Once, before my sophomore year of high school began, I was with my adoptive mother in the local drug store. It had been a good summer, long and hot in the Texas heat, and I had accomplished a lot. My reward was back to school make-up at the drug store.

My mother had driven me to the store in silence; the car’s air-conditioner was the only noise. I had never shopped for makeup before and my mother advised me until I picked out a frosted-pink lipstick, black mascara, and foundation in a glass bottle. As we walked to the cashier, a fellow shopper caught my eye. She was my height and her skin was so tan – startling with her light blonde hair. Her lips were already colored pink, much like the pink my mother was buying me. I stared at her, wondering if my birth mother might be, at that very moment, shopping for pink lipsticks too. I wanted that dark skinned blonde-haired woman to be my mother, I silently prayed, but she never noticed me.

As I sit writing this memory, twenty something years later, I can still remember the way the Cover Girl foundation smelled, something slightly sweet and a little medicinal. The pink lipstick lasted for months, the mascara not so long. In the history of my life, Cover Girl Day was when I stopped searching in the faces of other people and began to think of seeing my birth mother in person. It was when I began to pray that I would come home from school and find her sitting in the living room, waiting. On the other hand, maybe she would be standing on the front porch, ringing the doorbell. In my heart, I knew that was too much to hope for and so I began to think that one day she might call me on the telephone. I convinced myself that a phone call was possible. I knew she would call. But she never did.

I Knew You'd Call - Camilla Basham

He is prone to rants, brought on by, among other things, the Alanis Morissette song “Ironic”.

“It doesn’t actually give one bloody example of irony. It should be called “Isn’t it a Coincidence” or “Isn't it Bad Luck.” Or better yet, “Isn’t That Just A String of Unfortunate Events that Truly Suck” but there is no irony.” He says waving his hands through the air.

It's one of his pet peeves: the mass misinterpretation of irony; as is the abuse of the word literally. “I will literally kick your teeth out of your head the next time you misuse the word literally?” he jokes with his interns. He can go on for hours about such things and sometimes does. When he does, the veins in his forehead raise and his hands become animated. He looks like a college professor lecturing a class.

I lay rolled up in hotel sheets watching him pace at the foot of the bed and I feel so turned on by his mind, his conviction, his passion for such small matters that I want to pull him on top of me, and I do. “Hey, we don’t have time for this,” he protests, “we still need to pack up and I thought we’d grab a quick breakfast at the diner.”

“We don’t have to leave until one o’clock.” I tell him.

“I knew you’d call and request late check out.” He kisses my forehead.” Well, since you’re now making me late for the morning meeting you need to help me with some ideas for my column this week; any news items that you might find particularly interesting.”

My head plops into the pillow, my mind blank. It suddenly dawns on me that I have no idea what is going on in the world outside of the four walls of our hotel room. Now that I’m sleeping with one of the editors at the New York Times, I am completely uninformed on current events. “How's that for irony?” I ask him and he literally laughs until he cries.

I Knew You'd Call - Anne Wright

Beyond the flat desert floor rose a tumble of giant rocks as high and wide as a mountain, and Paulie liked to think that god just dumped them there one day, and had forgotten about them. He could see a black dot walking toward the base of the mountain; it was Samson. Paulie figured he was just about twenty minutes away, and he knew that he had to open the pack. Find out more about Samson. See if he had anything of value in it.

He held his hands over the brown canvas pack and waited to see if he could feel anything different in the air around it. Living in the desert so long, away from everyone except Sue, he had learned that he could sense the essence of people through their belongings. Like the empty plastic purse he found alongside the road. He had felt sadness when he touched it, he told Sue. But she had laughed at him, calling him crazy full of bullshit because of course a lady would be sad to have her purse ripped off and thrown away somewhere.

His fingers quivered right before he touched the pack. He knew that when he pulled the leather strap away he would see Samson for what he really was: some kind of larger than life animal. He couldn’t figure out if he was a real man. Samson and his thick muscular arms and legs, and his barrel torso reminded Paulie of the stories he’d read in grade school about otherworld creatures.

He untied the leather belt. It had a broken buckle and Samson had needed to tie it with a square knot, and Paulie made a point to remember the exact pattern of the knot so when he closed the pack Samson wouldn’t know it had been disturbed. He lifted the flap and opened the pack. The first thing he saw was a folded brown sweater tucked around the edges, so he felt with his hand down along the side of the bag until he touched something. It was made of metal, and thick, cold and rough. It made him draw his hand away and stand up, backing away from the bag. In the center of his forehead, inside his brain, he saw a bright flash of light that turned dark red, like the blood of a bull he’d seen once, dead in the rodeo rind.

Sue’s voice interrupted his vision. She was calling something from the other room. He didn’t want her to know he had opened the pack so he closed the top and tied the leather belt just the way it was. He put the pack back in the same position that he had first encountered it, and went to see what it was that Sue was babbling about.

Washing Dishes - Jennifer Baljko

I stood at the sink, practicing being present
The hot water cascading down the side of the glass heating my fingers
Bubbles swirling around the drain, lingering, waiting for the next wave to wash over them

He stood behind me, also practicing being present
A long exhale warming my neck, sending a wave of pleasure through our bodies
Hands reaching around my waist, undoing the button on my jeans, searching for whatever came next.

Staying Drunk - Anne Wright

I make good pie. This time I was making and apple pie with the tart green apples from my little overgrown yard. I had trouble getting to the tree because of all the weeds and brambles out there, but I could see at the top, some beautiful apples glistening in the morning sun. I pulled the ladder through the shrubs, damning the gardener I’d fired last fall. It was his job to keep all this growth at bay.

In the kitchen I washed the apples and piled them on the counter. It used to be that peeling the apples was the part I hated. But I learned to slow down, stay drunk with the loveliness of the way the peel came off the apples, in a long ribbon of green flesh cascading, spiraling as I cut it away from the juicy ivory sphere.

Next I sliced the fruit. Most of the pieces landed on the cutting board, but a few fell onto the floor. I left them down there until I’d finished cutting them all, and putting them into a big yellow bowl. When I bent down to pick up the fallen slices I saw two, turning brown around the edges, that had landed together, that had overlapped in the shape of a heart.

Stay Drunk - Camilla Basham

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ~Ray Bradbury

Mr. Bradbury, have another drink and tell me
Can reality destroy you?
It is seen through different perspectives,
Therefore, is there even a basis for it?
It doesn’t exists as anything
More than a concept created
By the small ten percent of our brain
That actually works.
It is nonexistent and yet can be altered.
Would you agree?
Ramped up and made more vivid with stimulants,
Slowed down to become gentler with opiates,
Made more bearable with love,
More painful with hate
at times it comes to a complete standstill.
Like now, sir, standing before you lost in such thought.
And at this very moment, Mr. Bradbury,
This empty, quiet moment of nothingness
Shhhhh….
You and I are the closest we’ll every get to reality.
So, I pour you another wineglass of words, sir.
And ask you,
Should not reality fear our sobriety?
That we, in our musings
Might reveal it for what is really is:
Nothing.

Stay Drunk - Donna Shomer

If I thought that staying drunk would help
I would try it.
But two days into the New Year
my party survivorship
clearly was not up to snuff as I
swayed erratically while standing in line at Starbucks –
The woman behind me thinking maybe
I was going to topple –
And even the teenagers
declined alcohol that evening.

The Intoxication of the Wise - John Fetto

Leary watched Barrows head snuggle the knotty table top and her eyes flutter until she fell asleep. Amateur, he thought, and finished another shot. Still the arrogance of his gesture didn’t even out last the burning in his throat. Before the waiter refilled his shot glass, he found himself admiring the way in which Ms. Barrows passed out. She really thought she could keep up with the professional alcoholics, just like she thought she could walk into another tropical war zone and keep up with all the veteran journalists. So young and naïve--so American. But wasn’t even Leary ambitious once? There must have been a time. Perhaps in London in thirty nine when he queued for a uniform and boat ride east. Perhaps Leary thought he was smarter now because he was one of the few that managed to survive the boat ride boat back.

The waiter finally filled Leary’s glass. Barrows shifted her head on the table, covering his eyes with an arm. Connie shouted something from the other table, reaching up so his bright shirt lifted to show his hair belly. Sid joined in, one eye crooked behind his thick glasses. Others too, all ready to laugh at the intoxicated Ms. Barrows but Leary waved them away. This wasn’t something to joke about. A young woman passed out passed out in a Honduran rat hole. Innocence tainted by what? Leary’s intoxicating cynicism? Did he not stay drunk on this, the cheapest drink of self proclaimed worldly men? Yes after decades of practice, amid horrible, worldly events, they could drink whisky like water? Just as they could, consume war, famine and disease with no emotion than it took to pen a two hundred words post. But was that really preferable to someone who was still intoxicated by liquor, grand dreams, perhaps life itself?

Leary tipped his glass and yelled for another. He’d drink enough to quench his dark thoughts then stay drunk so they’d never return, but Connie and Sid were still making obscene comments and he wouldn’t let his friend be insulted. Abruptly, and awkwardly he stood up, staggered to the bar, grabbed the phone and made a call. When he staggered back, Connie and Sid were standing up offering to help him with the young woman. He pushed them roughly away. Gently, he raised Ms. Barrows up to her feet. She leaned close, hugging him around the waist, so close he could smell the scent of her bath over the whisky. Leary guided her out the front door onto the dark street and listened for the sound of the diesel engine of the vehicle that would safely carry her home while he planned an entirely different trip in another direction, a direction only a naïve foot or Ms. Barrows would choose.

Stay Drunk - Patricia Spencer

Papa stays drunk most of the time since he lost his job at the bullets factory. Mama still has to go in so papa and me walk to the fish market every afternoon. Even in the morning I can smell the sour on his skin like garlic and dirty feet. It starts out small and gets stronger through the day. Mama makes him take a bath every night even when he comes home late and wakes everyone up singing song from the old days, “before this bloody war,” he says. I don’t remember what it was like before the war.

Last night papa came home a little before it was time for Mrs. Tanaka’s rooster to start crowing. He wasn’t singing but he crashed into the neighborhood’s rubbish bins and woke everyone up. I saw mama run out and pick him up by the collar of his kimono and push him into the back garden to take a bath. She wouldn’t even let him in the house. Her face was all red when she came in. I kept my mouth shut and put the morning’s rice on boil.

Papa wouldn’t get out of bed this morning until past noon but when he did we left straightaway for the fish market. We stopped at old Mr. Shiyama’s shop on the way and he gave me a tiny ball of mochi and refilled papa’s tin flask with his special homemade sake. He always takes little sips when he thinks no one’s looking, but everyone knows. I don’t mind. It makes him happy. There wasn’t much fish at the market today but we got lucky and found 3 sardines and a small piece of hamachi. Papa smiled. I bet he was thinking this would make mama happy.

Whispers - Jennifer Baljko

Her curls fall over my face.
His hands cup my ears.
The duo has something important to share.
They can’t say it too loud.
No one should hear.
Their mother watches from the kitchen,
Wondering if she should stop what surely will be a raucous.
“Do you know what we know?” the older one asks, her face close to mine.
“Aliens love underpants!!!!” the younger squeals, breaking my eardrum.
They roll to the floor, giggling the way only kids can.

Whispers - Karen Oliver

I heard the door open and the unique weight of Ian’s steps as he came down the stairs. When he saw me, his smile was genuine and warm and a bit shy and I was touched that my son was so happy to be home. He dropped his bag to give me a hug and went right to the refrigerator, looking for mom’s brownies and telling me about trying to make them himself. Behind him, the rest of the family made their appearances. My husband Charley burdened with stuff from the car, talking about the cold weather and traffic and Sarah, recently moved home, who coincidentally floated in from River Ranch, like the star of the show, drawing all like a magnet.

Kitchen table, wine opened, Sarah already “warmed up” by her visit to her aunt and talking loudly, interrupting. Everyone pretends to find it amusing except me. Ian leaves to unpack and Sarah finds him and verbally drags him back to the group. She wants to paint and party and have “family time”. Right now. I realize where this is going, decide not to put my body through it, continue on the path I was on when they arrived and go to bed. They are used to this; dad is the fun one. Mom is mom. She holds the space for everyone to be safe. She keeps the boundaries intact. She is physically weaker but strong.
Glad. Sad.

Hunger - Kaye Doiron

There is a look in her eyes that I recognize. A wild panicked look like I see in the horses on a dark brooding day just before a thunderstorm when the sky turns all but black and they pull their ears way back. There is an energy that is crawling under her skin and seeping out that does not put me at ease. My heart beats faster when she is around and I speak just to fill her silence. Her jaw is working fast on gum, I suppose, every time she is here. It is easy to see that she was once beautiful. Remarkable, almost. But now her agonizing has left a road map on her face and her hair lacks any luster of fullness that I’m certain it once had. Her skin is merely decoration, covering her bones as she stands a full five foot seven and weighs 92 pounds. Her clear blue eyes are twinkleless...The only thing left is her smile which I see but only on rare occasion.

I remember the first time she came into the clinic. She said that occasionally she smoked pot, would that effect her participation in the study. I said, no, and jokingly added, “but if you’re shooting up heroin, that’s a different story.” She met me solidly with her panicked eyes and I knew. It was hard to get the needle in the veins, they were scarred so badly, hardened and in order to draw her blood I had to push the needle in deep, go beneath all the scar tissue.

“ Believe it or not, I hate needles.”

What do you say to that?

She leaves the clinic and I know. She fights her demons every minute of every day. There is a devil on her shoulder waiting for her to have a moment of weakness, waiting for her to give into her hunger.

Hunger - Marigrace Bannon

Why is it you can remember hunger and not all the times you were satiated and content? Is that just the human nature aspect? Sure I remember no food in the house, when some people say that they might have crackers. Crackers? We never had crackers. But no food means no food, maybe a mayonnaise jar, Hellman’s of course and some mustard. I do remember some mayonnaise sandwiches until the day old white bread ran out. There were those three days of candy corns, nowhere near Halloween, in fact I think it was summertime and these candy corn were wrapped in individual cellophane wrappers and were definitely a manufacturer’s holdover, but for a few sickeningly sweet three days those little orange triangles were our sustenance. Another no food in the house memory. I think my mother called my grandmother and it was the same day, Kathleen was invited to a birthday party and we had family plans for her. She wore a pair of overalls, which fortunately were fashionable for girls those days, a kind of anti fashion statement, and they had so many pockets in which she knew she needed to fill and bring home the goods. She stuffed those pockets with potato chips and Oreo cookies. It wasn’t feasible to put cake in those pockets, not with the icing and all. I don’t know if anyone watched her stuff her pockets, but she blithely skipped home to share the goods. But in the interim my grandmother arrived with 2 brown A&P bags. And by the time Kathleen arrived home we already had at least 2 Bologna and cheese sandwiches and her confiscated crushed potato chips and broken Oreos held no allure.

Hunger - Melody

The hunger gnaws at me constantly no matter where I’m at or what I’m doing. I’ll be sitting at work trying to get a huge project done or driving down the street trying to get stuff done or headed out on a mission. I’ve gotta get it done the gnawing says…I’ve gotta work on my writing, pour more words on to the page, edit my pieces and do something with them.

Then something happens – either good or bad. Maybe I’ll have a bad date with a guy who normally is super nice or I come home from work and cops show up at the door. Now we’ve been given one more chance by the property manager – one more complaint from anyone in the tiny complex about noise and we’re out – I’m to give 30-day notice. Can we suddenly become quiet and not be annoying neighbors? I didn’t even know we were annoying until two days ago when the property manager called and said I should leave… Like I’m just going to move out and leave tomorrow.

Although this is just a funky apartment and I’m sure I can find another one, or at least I hope I can, we’ve already made this place home – how many times must we move and uproot – again? Most of my friends have their own homes and they’re settled. They’ll stay in their homes for the rest of their lives, but me – I’m still trying to figure out where we’ll end up, me and Megan, and I have no idea how long Megan will stay with me because she’s 17 now and she wants to be with her boyfriend. I can honestly say that I’m not sure where we’ll be living in the next few months. We can’t live on egg shells wondering what will happen, having to be so quiet…

I hunger for the words, for a life that’s more settled and not so uncertain – yet isn’t writing itself uncertain? When I pour the words on to the page, how do I know the words will be any good, that anyone will read them or listen? Sometimes they’re good and sometimes they’re not so good. That’s just the way it is. Sometimes life is good and sometimes a few rocks get thrown down on the road and I’ve gotta either cross over them or around them.

What to do, what to do… It’s like that John Lennon song, Instant Karma’s gonna get you…and we all shine on, c’mon, everyone, and we all shine on, like the stars, the moon and the sun, and we all shine on…!!!!”

No matter what happens, I’ll never stop writing any more than I’d stop singing, playing guitar or listening to music (especially the Beatles). I’m not the best guitar player or singer in the world, but somehow it doesn’t matter. And no one can ever take one thing away from me – my words. No matter what my words will always be mine…through the good times, the bad times and the tough times. I can always count on my words and my writing…

Self-doubt - Judy Albietz

As a dozen sets of glistening fangs completed the circle around them, Lily huddled against Sam’s warm unconscious body, which was sprawled out on the rocky soil. Lily wondered what was dripping from the dogs’ mouths. Was it saliva or blood? Whatever it was, the smell was more than disgusting. Growling in unison, the twelve dogs also shared the same furious look in their red eyes. Their heads were way bigger than the rest of their bodies, making them seem more artificial than real, whatever real that meant in this future world she had landed in. Lily thought somebody must have messed with them, pumping them up with something. Whatever … it wasn’t good.

Like swarming bees, over the last half hour, the pack of canines had moved back and forth, slowly making the noose tighter around Sam and Lily, who shut her eyes tight and hugged herself, shaking with fear. The dogs were definitely moving in for the kill, and alone, she couldn’t fight back. How could she, with these overwhelming odds? It was one thing to be brave and deal with a problem … but here, she was sure there was no way she was going to get out of this alive.

Lily forced her mind away from the impending attack. She needed to look at things in another way. Her dad had always said to think in different terms if the going gets rough. He probably didn’t have this scene in mind: killer psycho dogs on steroids. Several times in her twelve years Lily had surprised herself by getting out of one or two tight situations. And, in the last two days, Sam had saved her life several times. Now it was her turn to protect him. But how to overcome her trembling panic and go into action… how to push the self-doubt back down to where it came from?

Self-doubt - Darcy Vebber

Lisa wrapped each piece she took from the china cabinet in newspaper. The tips of her fingers felt greasy and strange. So odd to be rolling all these things up in words. As soon as her mother got down to Phoenix and started unpacking, the words would be balled up and thrown away and the things would go in to another cabinet.

Her mother looked over her shoulder, critically as if she was appraising someone else’s treasures not her own. “Is it worth taking all this?”

Kate suggested taking it in to Russell’s, the trading post store in town. She had never been past the soda cooler at the entrance and only knew it as a place other families took their old things.

Alice laughed.

“That stuff is pawned,” Lisa said. “They come back for it.” She examined a figurine, a boy in a top hat. On the bottom there was a watery green stamp that seemed to say it had been made in Germany.

“And it’s worth something,” said Alice. “This stuff is junk.”

All Lisa’s life, this boy had been in this china cabinet, on this shelf across from a girl in a head scarf and a white porcelain dress scattered with tiny red flowers. This was the first time she had ever been allowed to touch it. They were her grandmother’s things but she had never met that grandmother, her father’s mother. He went down to her funeral in Tucson, when Lisa was a toddler and Alice was pregnant with Kate, all alone. She finished rolling the boy up in newsprint and made a space for the ball of paper in the cardboard box of plates and bowls. “I don’t care,” she said.

She picked up the girl and looked into her round white face. She had big, dark eyes, rose colored lips and blonde curls beneath the scarf. When Lisa was small, she wanted desperately to taste this whiteness, to feel the smooth cool surface with her tongue. Now, it hurt to recall even things like that, things that had nothing to do with her father, really. It was as if any looking back was dangerous.

Self-doubt - Maria Robinson

The blaring phone awakened Chris, who was splayed on the kitchen floor like unlucky roadkill up in the Canyon. The open bottle of Tequila was still at his feet.

It was Zina calling. "Chris, Maddy is having the child." Everyone at the Yoga Shala called the unborn baby, " the child", as in the Christ Child or Child of Reincarnation.

Chris shrugged and fell back onto the floor, dropping the phone. "It's not mine. It's the Child of God, of Krishna of Moses. I've been had by that wicked Yoga witch", he screamed into the air.

She Was Very, Very Bad - Patricia Spencer

I’ll never forget that night driving down the interstate with that woman Jeanne last Christmas eve. We were headed to my sister Gina’s place over in Chickasaw County and we were all gonna go gambling at the Indian Casino over by the lake. Gina and Jeanne were best friends in high school. The whole time in the car Jeanne wouldn’t stop talking about how she thought her husband Jimmy was cheating on her with some red head at the bingo palace down in Okmulgee County. I told her, I said, “Why are you worried about some piece of white trash from the bingo palace when you’re a perfectly fine looking woman and you got a job and a nice car. He should be thanking his lucky stars he’s got a woman like you so stop worrying.”

She just smiled, twirling a couple of strands of bleach blond curls and blew smoke from her menthol ulta lights out the little crack in the window, and she had these long pink fingernails that she kept waving around to help get the smoke out the window. I could tell they were fake they looked kinda crooked. Then she starts going on about some guy at the Gas ‘n Go she said was gonna get fired because he was paying too much attention to the high school girls that come in after school. She just likes talking I guess. Don’t matter about what. Just so she gets the attention and a little drama don’t hurt.

She Was Very, Very Bad - Judy Albietz

Lunch at her desk. With her tongue still coated with the last teaspoon of yogurt, Lindsey’s mouth watered as she pulled the large peach out of a brown bag. She was going to take her time. This was dessert. To be eaten slowly--the only way to enjoy a piece of fresh fruit. Lindsey had picked it out yesterday when she went to the Monterey Market. Yes, she had gone there with David. Nothing wrong with that. They were both just doing some grocery shopping, so they car-pooled. At the fruit counter, Lindsey had held the perfect gold and orange fuzzy peach high in the air, declaring, “Boy, have I missed California fruit and vegetables…they don’t make these on the East Coast.”

“Go ahead, eat it now,” David had said.

“No, I want this for my lunch tomorrow. It will be even better, even sweeter because I have until then to think about it....you know, the anticipation thing.”

Now, the office clock above her read 12:15 p.m. Plenty of time. Lindsey shoved away case files on her desk. Slowly she unfolded white paper napkins to cover the cleared work area in front of her. There she carefully placed the ripe fruit. Reaching over to her old purse/briefcase on the floor, Lindsey pulled out the Swiss Army knife she still carried around. David had given it to her back then. He also had been the one to show Lindsey how to cut and eat fruit. He said to chew slowly so your taste buds can expand as the juice rolls into your mouth. Holding the peach in one hand and the knife in the other, Lindsey closed her eyes and imagined the sugary taste and how the soft fleshy fruit will feel on her tongue. As she made the first cut into the delicate skin, she recalled David saying to cut bite-sized pieces so that no juice will be lost. But Lindsey had covered the desk just in case she had lost her touch.

He Was Very, Very Bad - John Fetto

No one really know how very, very bad Tate was. The Colonel thought he was just tough. The Colonels aides would add mean. They didn’t know what went on inside when he was beating his face with a shovel. The anger would give way to something else, more than curiosity, a kind of excitement. People say that real killers don’t care. Well then he wasn’t a real killer, because there was something more when he did this, no matter what the weapon. Knife, gun, wire, stick, brick, especially his fists. He enjoyed it. He felt excited. Sometimes afterwards he would almost want to giggle and chatter like a school girl, did you see how I fucked that guy up? See the how his head cracked open, first one line of blood and then it gushed as his eye’s rolled back? Did you see how he struggled against the garrote? Kicking, pulling at the wire until his fingers bled? Did you see what he did, how he killed him? This is what he wanted to say, but he couldn’t really talk to anyone. He was too flush with excitement, adrenalin maybe. No, other guys get that adrenalin rush. They’re not excited the way Tate was excited. There was only one thing he could do afterwards, and he had a list of telephone numbers to call to help him do it. The woman would answer to. They knew what they were in for and that they’d be well paid.

She Was Very, Very Bad - Maria Robinson

Back in Sante Fe, under the desert night stars, Chris was sobbing in the bed next to Vera about Maddy.


Maddy, the forty-five year old owner of the Yoga shala and Chris's boss, the divine Maddy, the tantric Maddy, the multi-divorced and
young man magnet Maddy, had fallen into an affair with Chris during Vera's hiatus and found herself fully woman, meaning fully pregnant by Chris.


Maddy had publicly declared the coming of the miraculous child at the Reiki Outreach session last week accepting belly blesssings from all in attendance.
A Fertility Celebration Session was planned with Maddy and the infertile women in her Earth Surrounding workshop.


And finally, Maddy has decided on a "Men's connection with Universal Growth and Passion" session, head by Chris, announcing him the father of her child.


Maddy was very very bad or very very something else, accordingly to your rank in the Yoga Shala.


Crying into Vera's arms, Chris said" Vera, if you hadn't left, if I'd been ready for you..."

I Must Have Been Very, Very Bad - Kaye Doiron

He is a walking contradiction. Beautiful to feast the eyes upon with a smile that lights the darkest hour. His path has been paved with failures and successes of the worst kind. She remembers the fly. Hours spent rescuing a small fly that had fallen into the honey for his tea. He talked in a soothing seductive voice to the small fly that he called his beauty as he slowly wiped the honey off her little wings and her little body. At first the fly struggled to fly away as her wings were heavily burdened with the sweet sticky substance that attracted her. Then she just gave up and sat rooted to his palm as he worked her free. From where she sat the sunlight hit the glass of water... just so... that the fly was magnified and it’s true, she was beautiful. She had never noticed how beautiful flies are up close. When she was clean she flew but not far and slowly she returned to his hand and climbed up and down the beautiful strong fingers. The same fingers that went through the plaster on the wall last night, the same ones that wrapped around her throat and called her a whore because she was alone in the house with the carpenter.


The fly flew away too, just as she knows she must.


He sits quietly today, the morning sun still reflecting off the glass the same way it did that day with the fly, except today it is catching the depth of his eyes. His tea is slightly to his left, his arms are crossed, his brow is bent. The smoke traveling up from his unsmoked cigarette dances in the light and it is easy for her to distract herself in it’s dance. Her eyes move across his face, the scar that travels down the the middle of his forehead and through his eye, the broken lip slightly askew on the left side, the brown curls that toss across his forehead and give him the careless young boy look when he is in a playful mood. She can still feel the anger boiling under his skin. He is no longer her love. The dragon is awake and she can not tame it with love, nor kisses, nor reassuring words, she can not heal the wounds in him, she can’t reach him. She knows she has to give him up. In a few hours he will return shameful and sweet, self aware and claim that he can change, that their love can save him. She can not allow this to happen. She has to give him up.


“ Can I do anything for you?” she hesitantly asks. “Leave.” he says so quietly she has to strain to hear. “ I’m a monster. You deserve better.” She wants to take him in her arms and forgive him. She knows she shouldn’t. He has killed and it will take days for him to recover. He needs to be out in the field where his dragon can be unleashed instead of playing house with her. She knows he is trying. She knows he loves her. He is ill. Killing will make you sick like that. She knows that it will kill everything good in him if she leaves. She also knows that just as he recovers, he will be called out to task again and it will start all over. She has to leave. She has to move on. It will be the hardest thing she has ever done, but it is proof that she loves herself and him, she can not bear to see him suffer any longer. Whatever she did to deserve this, to have to walk away from a love as strong as theirs, it must have been bad. It must have been very very bad.

Can't Sleep - Jennifer Baljko

Evan watched the stars twinkle from his bedroom window He slouched in the nook where his mom read to him, under the quilted blanket his grandma has given him before he was born. He liked the way that old blanket smelled. His mom didn’t know he was awake. If she did, she would tell him to go back to bed. It was too late for a little boy to be up, she would say.

He wondered where the moon was tonight. He couldn’t find it. He didn’t really know when the moon would show up. Some nights it was there for a long time, lots of nights in a row. Other nights he didn’t see it at all. He thought he even saw it in the afternoon, but couldn’t figure out how that worked either. That didn’t seem to make any sense at all.

His dad had told him the moon circles the earth, and the earth circles the sun. Then, he started adult-speak, and Evan lost track of what was doing what and when. Those grown-ups… they never say anything important that kids can understand. But they use a lot of big words to make it seem like they know what’s going on.

Regrets - Camilla Basham

Dodge ball was invented by the devil and introduced to our class by Sister Claire. Why this is the chosen activity on a perfectly good Friday afternoon when everyone would rather be making daisy chains in the shade of the oak tree or lying stretched on our backs in the middle of the wooden merry go round as the clouds hypnotize us, I can’t figure out.


Maddy got cloths-lined last Friday during Sr. Claire’s dodge ball drill, and now she tries to hide behind me as we all line up and hold hands on the imaginary goal line. The fact that she’s thirty pounds heavier and three inches taller than me, doesn’t seem to dawn on her.


“I don’t want to play, Ruthie, I don’t want to play, I don’t want to.” So close to my ear that it is soon covered with her spit.


Sister Claire begins dragging her clubbed foot across the heat-parched grass, her heavy black robe and rosary around her neck swaying in time with her steps. Her glass eye looking toward the merry go round, but her good eye launched straight at me, or rather at the shivering bulge of navy and white behind me.


“Oh, shit, what do I do?” Maddy spits in my ear.


“Heat Stroke, Maddy, and don’t say shit.” I say in my best Edgar Bergen impersonation.


“Huh?”


“We read about it in science last week. You have it.” I say.


“No, I don’t.”


“You have about thirty seconds to come down with it.” I warn her.


As Sister Claire makes her last few steps toward me, I feel a weight hit the back of my legs causing my knees to give out and throw me forward face first onto Sister Claire’s orthopedic shoes; on top of me Maddy doing her best heat stroke imitation; the other kids moving quickly away in confusion.


“What in the world is going on with you two?” Sister Claire asks.


Maddy remains silent; I’m impressed with her acting ability.


With a mouth full of shoe and grass I mumble in a weak, last breathe kind of way, “Heeeeeat stroooooke.”


The secret now is to remain convicted to our rolls, so Maddy and I lie in a limp pile atop Sister Claire’s feet. She yells for some other girls to get help and soon Maddy and I are escorted into the rectory and put to rest on big comfy sofas in an air conditioned room with cold towels on our heads as we wait for Mrs. Roy to come in and pray on us.


Just as I feel a tinge of guilt for causing such drama and begin imagining how mom will react when she gets the call from school, Maddy turns to me and whispers, “Thank you, Ruthie. I never knew you were so cool.”


Neither did I. Suddenly I have no regrets.

Regrets and Resolutions - Melody Cryns

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking Words of Wisdom…
Let it be…

As the new year begins to make its ascent, or the new decade with a full blue moon in the forecast, I sit here and listen to Paul McCartney croon, “Let It Be,” all these thoughts float through my mind. What if I had stayed married and my kids could have grown up with a father and a mother? Maybe we’d never live in Oregon where my mother was – and our lives would have been completely different.

Let it be…

That’s all I can do – is let it be. Those kids are grown now and I love who they’ve become – wonderful young adults, both boys with fabulous girlfriends and all of them so compassionate and loving. Okay, so they still make fun of the guys that I go out with when he’s not around. Like when I saw Stevie and Melissa the other night and Stevie asked how my “werewolf boyfriend” was doing because he has so much hair. And Melissa said she couldn’t believe what a big deal he made out of his pesto that had to be put on ice immediately upon arrival, transferring the pesto from a small ice chest. But they said David was nice enough in a weird way, but that was okay because I was weird anyway. I was a little shocked that David smoked pot with my daughter’s 18-year-old boyfriend at my apartment while Megan and I were at the grocery store.

Let it be…

No family is perfect, no matter what. I may not be rich in material possessions – I don’t own a home and I don’t have a nest egg and live paycheck to paycheck – we live in a funky apartment here in Mountain View and I can only dream of living in that cute house across the street that’s for rent – with the huge fenced in yard – for only $2,000 a month. I can’t go back to struggling like that again as we did at the Avalon Mountain View, house or not. Yet we’ve made our apartment our own little cozy haven in the world and I am not moving again for a long, long time.

Let it be…

There’s love in my family, so much love. My kids and I still say “I love you” to one another when we talk, whether on the phone or even in a Facebook message online. I am rich because I’m surrounded by LOVE…it’s wonderful when all of my kids are together and I always feel just a small tinge of sadness when they all leave because their essence is so wonderful…I don’t think that any man in my life will ever be able to quite replace that feeling I still get about my kids – like when Jeremy lost his beloved floyd-the-Dog, I could actually feel his sadness and I wanted to take some of his pain and make it my own because I knew it was too much for him to bear – he called me at work one day and cried, “Mom, it hurts so bad that I can’t breathe. I don’t know what to do…” Okay so Jeremy is 25 now, but the feeling of being a mom and wanting to be there never goes away, never.

Let it be…

So this was a year of new beginnings, of creative caffeine writing, eating healthy and losing 60 pounds so far, completely curing my diabetes, moving to a new apartment, being a teacher’s aide in a community college class for the first time in my life, going out and having fun and actually going out with guys – still trying to figure out exactly what I want.

The saddest ending was losing our beloved Floyd-the-Dog who has been with Jeremy and all of us through thick and thin, through being without electricity at the duplex in Porterville, to being almost homeless yet always having to make sure there was a place for Floyd-the-Dog, moving back up to the San Francisco Bay Area – he and Jeremy have been all over the place – to Marina for a while, to the hills of Santa Cruz for a while, back down to share an apartment with his sister Melissa who grumbled because she had to find an apartment for them that took a dog but who did it because she loved Jeremy and Floyd-the-Dog. Floyd-the-Dog was a part of all of our gatherings, a family member who was always there wagging his tail, so happy to see us, knowing we’re family and loving us…protecting us by always guarding the front door.

Let it be…

So the new decade arrives with more beginnings and perhaps more endings – I’ve gotten rid of the heavy load that I’ve carried for so many years – 60 pounds of it…finally letting go of the pain, of the struggle, of all the sadness associated with being left alone to raise a baby and three older kids by myself, the load is slowly being lifted, one step at a time.

I can’t think of a better way to bring in the new year and decade than at the Claremont Hotel in the Berkeley Hills. I won two tickets to the new year’s eve bash with the Sun Kings, the best Beatles music ever – watching the blue moon rise into the sky…It’s gotta be a good omen because Beatles music tends to follow me everywhere…

Spreading the joy and love to everyone – happy new year!

And Let It Be…

Regrets or Resolutions - Donna Shomer

Silent sunlight
on my GuanYin
White porcelain
of tourist quality.
She was my mother’s.

No sign of the
eleven heads
or the thousand arms
of the fierce protectress.
She’s a wholesale beauty.

I’ll take it.

What He Wouldn't Say - Darcy Vebber

He held something behind his back, where Lisa couldn’t see it. He was frowning, moving a little side to side, loose like an athlete, in case she tried to get around him. He was not normally a playful man, never the kind of man people call boyish, and so his daughter was confused. Was what he had for her good or bad?

He was much taller than she was then, although later she would realize she had grown to the same not so startling height, and he was broad shouldered. In pictures from his childhood, he was slight, almost sprite like with his dark curls and dark eyes but as a young man he had settled into this physicality, this weight and thickness.

She would not challenge him, would not snatch at the air, reaching for whatever he had. Instead, she watched his face. They were in the entry hall, the shadowy place between the brightness of the sky outside and rooms of the house designed to keep the light and heat out. She thought it was a letter but she wasn’t sure.

Suddenly, he was angry.

She felt afraid, the kind of afraid that comes in dreams and that kind of paralysis, but she would not remember it. Once he was dead what point was there in that? She would not recall his anger or her own although she might wonder, when she was wondering what was wrong with her, if she had ever wished him dead.

He stopped his side to side movement and stood still. He told her she was thoughtless, unable to see anything through the eyes of another. He said, “I know what it’s like to think you’re smarter than everyone else.”

She was not quite twelve. The fact of others had only recently begun to occur to her.

He told her she had no respect for what he and her mother had given her, the opportunity they had given her to be part of a bigger world.

She blinked. It was true to her that the world they lived in, the endless sky and the stories of unfamiliar spirits in the rocks and hills, wasn’t like the world she knew from her cousins down in Phoenix. She felt it, as he named it, like wind in the stillness of the house. There may have been the sound of it, rushing over the door frame, crying at the windows. Later she didn’t recall any of that.

He spun the big white envelope at her, like a Frisbee and she caught it as it touched her just below the ribs. “Go on then. I give up on you. You’re just like everyone else, just as small minded, just as afraid of what you don’t know. Turn your back on us. You’ll see what it’s like.”

It was the envelope from the school, of course. The forms, the brochures, the list of what to pack, when to appear, what she would be studying. She took it into her room, the room she shared with Kate, and spread out the contents on her bed. This might have been the moment, when she imagined making new friends at school and it came to her for no reason that they might like her right away, if they thought her father was dead.

Confession - Kaye Doiron

I confess that I did not write not one single time last week, nor did I read anything anyone else wrote and I feel like an ass about it.

I confess that I ate McDonald's twice this month and I feel like a big fat pig about it.

I confess that I do actually look for the pediatric orthopedic surgeon at CC's Coffee house in the morning, just hoping I might run into him. I love that he wears work boots with his scrubs. I confess that I have a fetish for work boots.

I confess that I'm keeping the tall dark handsome one around because I love his ab muscles and quite frankly I didn't ever think I'd see those again. Jesus, the thought of giving that up, well, I confess that I know it's inevitable.

I confess that the divorce was selfish and I've caused my kids to suffer for my happiness and that makes me feel like a terrible mom.

I confess that I have no fucking idea what I'm doing at work and trying to fake my way through is exhausting.

I confess that this big beautiful house I wanted might just be too much for me. The thought of sanding it, shoring it, painting it, caulking it, planting it, decorating it, when will I ever have the funds or the time.

I confess that I feel like life is dragging me around by the eye teeth and my feet are having a hard time keeping up and I feel like a big fat failure.

I confess that I'm scared as shit to get on the stage again and it makes me feel like a waste of space.

I was raised a good Catholic girl and I confess that I'm truly great at confessing.

Confession - Darcy Vebber

They were in the kitchen, laughing in the yellow overhead, ignoring the blackness outside the curtainless windows. Hot drinks, winter, comfort. Lisa watched them -- her parents, happy, having fun. The air smelled like onions and oil. He was teaching her to make latkes. Holding his hand over hers, his arm around her waist, his head tipped back. It was a small, old fashioned kitchen and he wasn’t often in it. If he wanted to keep her mother company (keep me company! she would call to him) he sat in the little breakfast room it opened on to.

Lisa and Kate were sitting there doing their homework. Chanukah was not the kind of thing they got to skip school for. As far as the girls knew, it was private, something that had to do only with their family. The brass candle holder in the center of the table, with its lions and Hebrew letters, was a family heirloom. They filled it with birthday candles and lit all eight before dinner, but no one got to make a wish.

“It’s a very old holiday,” their father explained. “Light in a time of darkness.”

For other holidays, their mother who was so good at making things made decorations and treats. The manger scene she had made, each figure real and dressed perfectly, was already out in the living room, on the table where they put mail. This holiday just had the birthday candles and dinner.

The girls had been in, and at the table because it was too cold and dark to play outside, when their father, home from work, burst into the kitchen holding up a small bag of potatoes. “For the festival!”

Alice was at the counter, bent over a cookbook. She looked up, startled and laughed. Marc was usually quiet at home, as if he was occupied with great and complex thoughts. She took the bag of potatoes from him and he pulled her close for a kiss.

“My love,” he began. “I have a confession. No, no nothing bad --” He regarded her tenderly. “You are in every way a wonderful woman, an amazing woman … The only woman who I could live with …”

It was the potato pancakes. Alice made them by frying little patties of mashed potatoes in her cast iron skillet and they ate them with gravy from the pot roast.

“This year I am going to take responsibility and make the latkes myself!” He poured them each a drink to celebrate.

Confession - Maria Robinson

Vera received Ted's declaration of divorce by turning and leaving the room. She called Mary Dryvage, the divorce attorney she'd hired nine months earlier.

Vera had confessed that while twenty years with Ted could easily have turned into thirty, she'd already left him in body and mind.

She knew that Ted had been running through graduate students for years and figured one day he'd fall into a pit that he couldn't pull out of.

Between the freezing mornings in the clay studio followed by the fiery nights at the kiln, Vera told Mary that she'd fallen for her seventy year old Japanese ceramic teacher whose wife had recently died. Mary said dryly, the market is up, your sales are astonishing, you've got an agent, we're selling the house and you are moving to Santa Fe where you'll be incredibly happy...and well off. Mr. Horikoshi does not want you anyway.

Confession - John Fetto

Johanna sat but did not kneel. The air thickened with incense and unanswered prayers. She had been how many times? Twice a week for all the weeks Hawley was gone, Wednesday afternoon and Sunday mornings. Chimes. Bells. Waiting for some answer? Waiting for grace? Something that would quench her anger, stop her from glaring at happy people, wishing they burned the way Hawley did. How was it anyone walked around smiling when Hawley had burned? She could read their thoughts in the furrows of their pasty brows, good children, all bending to God’s mysterious will. When it came time for her chance to enter the dark closet where only the priest her words, she was not ready to confess, she was ready to indict.

She was forced to kneel. There was no seat, but she kneeled unwillingly, waiting for small door to open so that she could hear the priest through the gauzy mesh, but no sooner had the door opened then she began her argument.

“Why must Hawley burn?”

“Hawley?” said the Priest, and so she told him. She told him of the fire, the cremated little box with the flag, her long discussion with the nuns who said he could not enter heaven because he was not baptized. Baptized? He barely went to school. He was raised as a work animal on his father’s ranch. But now he was punished because he was not sprinkled with water.

“But he already burned? Why does he burn again and not Tate?”

“Tate?”

“The man who killed him. Why didn’t God burn him?”

Now the Priest talked the same nonsense she heard from the nuns. He said it was all mysterious. It was all part of great plan. He had no clue.


“How was his plan furthered by letting Tate live? Can you tell me that?” Her voice was getting louder. She could hear it echoing outside in the Cathedral and then it became very quiet. “Why wasn’t Hawley saved by who he is, not what words he said.”

The priest muttered more. “You are upset,” he said. “Grief seems endless but with God’s help, there is comfort…”

“Comfort in knowing Hawley burned twice. What comfort is that?”

“There is grace. It will happen if you pray. You must pray. Be patient. God will grant you grace.”

She continued to argue, sometimes angrily, waiting for the priest to lose his patience, but he refused. He would fight with her. He was patient, kept talking and in the end, she walked out feeling exhausted and spent.

It Was a Gift - Judy Albietz

“That necklace with the shiny crimson beads…ah…it was the February before she died,” said Rosemary, one of Diedre’s friends from the elementay school where they taught. Lindsey and Rosemary were seated across from each other in Rosemary cheery living room, where the older woman had agreed to meet and talk with Lindsey about the dead woman. Lindsey had asked if there was anything unusual that had happened before Diedre’s death.

“I’m glad someone is looking into this, I mean, what you’re doing—research on why Diedre killed herself. I can’t imagine why…the police said she was depressed…no… I never saw any of that. You know, she loved the children…can’t believe she left them that way...” said Rosemary, a plump, round-faced woman with tears forming behind her thick lenses.

As Lindsey looked over her notes, she silently forgave herself for telling Rosemary she was a researcher, and not mentioning the attorney part. It’s no secret that people don’t trust attorneys and Lindsey wanted to learn as much as she could about Diedre.

After taking off her bifocals and wiping her eyes, Rosemary continued, “You know, that day, the day with the necklace, Diedre had laughed as she told me it was a Valentine’s Day gift. She didn’t say, but obviously, from her husband. I remember that morning. I was setting up my chairs like I’ve done every morning for 20-odd years when Diedre came in to show the gift to me. She took it out of a pretty box and put it on. She called it something. I think she said it was her “blood-red collar.” I mentioned all this to the police investigator, but he didn’t seem to think it important. I could tell he thought I was just a dotty old third-grade teacher.”

“So she wasn’t wearing the necklace when she came to work?” Lindsey asked, as she watched a new worry line form on Rosemary’s forehead. “Isn’t that odd?”

“Shoot, that doesn’t mean anything—you know... would you like some more coffee?” Rosemary said as she sat forward in her brown and gold stripe wing chair and reached for her coffee cup.

“No, I’m good.…hmmmm….so, did her husband often give her presents?” Lindsey asked.

“No, that was the only one I knew about.”

“So what was her husband like?” Lindsey asked.

“I don’t know. I never met him. Over the two years I knew Diedre, he never came out to the school. He was out of town a lot —traveling for work, you know. Mind you, she never complained. One thing I didn’t tell the police—because it didn’t seem important—but if you’re asking for changes—there was one change I noticed in the months before her death: Diedre started going to movies by herself when he was traveling. She talked about the new movies she had seen. Now, I also go to the movies by myself—I suggested we meet up there sometime, but never did.”

The room was silent except for the cozy sounds of several clocks ticking away in the room. Lindsey cupped her coffee cup in her hands and sat back on the floral print couch.

Rosemary broke the silence, “Lindsey, dear, now that I think of it—there was another thing about that necklace. That day—before she left for home—I passed by her classroom and saw Diedre taking that necklace off. She put it back in the box and tucked it away in her purse.”

The Night Before - Camilla Basham

Sausage roll stomach and marzipan hands mixed with sherry breath and dirty aprons.
Scraps of Scotch tape in the strangest places as the dog eats the holly wrapping paper.
Last minute greeting cards from people you’ve forgotten causing a twinge of guilt, then resentment at the position they’ve put you in. Then there’s the new neighbor who just moved in and refuses to make eye contact; you want to leave a poinsettia on her doorstep, but what if she proves to be the bitch that her lack of eye contact suggests and you end up resenting your kind gesture for years to come. The night finally done, body wrecked, brain fried and as your head hits the pillow, you realize, shit, maybe there’s the off chance that my daughter still thinks there’s a Santa and instead of closing your eyes, you realize, the night has just begun.

Shooting Children - Melody Cryns

I crouched down by the gray wooden backyard fence hoping he wouldn’t see me, hot, hyper-ventilating and out of breath and totally terrified. My body felt as if it would explode at any moment and I shook with fear. I didn’t want him to see me – the one advantage I had was that I could run faster than him. My stepfather was a big, fat slow-moving pig, I thought. This time I’ll tell my Mom everything – I’ll stop this craziness, or I might as well die. I don’t want to see him. I looked around the cut grass and the wild rose bushes which would usually delight me in a backyard. I wasn’t even sure whose backyard this was. What am I doing here? I’m too old to be jumping fences like I used to do as a kid – I’m like 14 now.

But he scares me, that stepfather of mine. I don’t want to see him and I don’t want him anywhere near me. He tries to punish me and say it’s for my own good – yet I know in my heart that what he’s doing is wrong and I need to tell somebody, my mom, my Uncle Jim, but I don’t know how because somehow I think it’s all my fault.

As I crouched down lower, still breathing hard, a feeling of sadness washed over me and the tears began to flow. When will this craziness end?

Maybe I’ll never leave this spot – then I won’t have to go back home or face any of it – face him, face anyone. I can just die here in someone’s backyard, shaped like a neat square like all the backyards here in our neighborhood of San Francisco. Life had been so good and then suddenly it had all changed.

I finally slowly, ever so slowly, lifted myself up and peeked over the fence almost expecting a monster to jump out at me. But no one was there.

I ditched him – again. How dare he tell me I can’t go to the school picnic or out with my Dad because I was bad and being “punished.” I told him so and ran – for my life. I didn’t want to be alone with him, ever again. So I told him off and I ran and he chased me, but he’s too slow and he can’t catch me. He uses children as targets – that’s the kind of person he is – shooting children, taking away their innocence and rendering them helpless…

I wasn’t going to let him do it to me anymore – I’d rather he shoot me down than go through it again. This is it, I thought, I’m running away. I heaved myself over yet another fence and ran – just keep running, keep running…