Creative Caffeine

In a Room Alone - Bonnie Smetts

2011-05-06T14:57:00.001-07:00

Marjorie and Renee recovered their composure. They stopped laughing, the tension of the language lesson dissipated.

“That was fun,” said Renee, dabbing her eyes with a silk hankerchief.

“The lesson or the laughing,” Marjorie said. They were still sitting like schoolgirls at Renee’s dining room table.

“Both.” Renee got up and moved toward the sitting room. “Let’s have some tea. I’ll go ask for tea.”

Marjorie followed her friend. She plopped down in a soft chair and looked out at Renee’s garden, a fantasy of flowers and shrubs bearing red and orange blossoms. Even the path was lined with blooms as pale as fresh snow. How did Renee manage to make this all for herself, Marjorie wondered. She could barely point to the space around the pond and say flowers. Not which kind, not what grows here, not what is possible. The view of the garden was a view of her own failure. Another failure here. She lacked imagination. Had she ever have it.

“You look so serious, my dear. The tea will be here in a moment.” Renee said, and sat down opposite her friend. “So should we do our homework together now?”

“God, I can’t think any more. Eleven vowels, how will I remember them? Actually not the sounds, the letters.”

“The first time I studied with a tutor, I put my book next to my bed. That way I looked at the chart when I woke up and before I went to sleep.”

Another easy solution in Renee’s life. “Perhaps I’ll try that. I can imagine Ash’s comment when he sees these scribbling lines next to the bed.”

“He’s the one who wants you to speak.”

“Only because he doesn’t want to have to come fetch me from the police station when I get lost again.”

“Planning on getting lost, then?” They laughed together. It hadn’t been funny, getting lost. Marjorie had never been so frightened.

“What would have happened if they hadn’t found me, or they hadn’t figured out how to reach Ash.”

“Stop it, everything works out. There’s a way. Maybe another year here will wear down your fears.”

Now Marjorie did more than laugh. A choking sound came from her mouth. “Another year here and I’ll be mad.”

Now Renee laughed.

In the Middle of It - Jackie Davis-Martin

2011-05-06T14:56:00.000-07:00

My daughter died in the middle of the night, in the middle of the month, in the middle of her life. The following things were tilted, off balance: her placement in the country—the opposite coast from where I was; my own placement in life—on the far side of a lifespan; her placement in her parents’ life--parents she’d never seen in the same house, her attention split between her mother and her father; the fact that she was the youngest in the arrangement she grew up in: her brother and I alternately nagging at her or leaning on her.

Her library’s physical position was at the far end of the upper hall of the elementary school; it sat over the offices, the gym, the cafeteria. It was the central hub of all the classes. The young, and younger, children rotated through each day, learning research on the bank of computers in the middle of the room, checking out books from the circulation desk, sitting around the bright blue rug with alphabet letters she’d persuaded the school to buy for the reading circle.

She was relegated to be in the middle of her friends’ romances, marriages, the family frictions, covering both sides, staying safe; she was never a central player.

It seems odd.

She absorbed my mistakes, my discards. She visited from time to time another man I’d married; she felt bad for him; she attended the funerals on my behalf of parents of my friends, of old relatives. She kept my old brownie pan, the colander, clinging to an order that would be there if she stayed in place; she kept peace with her brother, keeping us all in touch. When I stayed with her, he’d call, and she’d pass the phone to me, back to her, to me, to her.

I think she felt something would happen, something had to happen, if she just kept at it, kept up the balancing.

Her life ended in medias res, in the middle of things. It was intrusive to invade that space, to catch her caught off-guard, as we all did, walking into the middle of her life, pulling through her closets, her drawers, her papers. We—her friends, my husband, my sister, I—all jumped right in, right in the middle of her life and got rid of it once and for all.

“But I wasn’t finished—” I can hear her say. “I’m in the middle of boards; I’m in the middle of paying for this computer; I’m going out tomorrow!”

I found out in the middle of the morning, between the two classes I was teaching, in the middle of my own petty life. “I wasn’t finished!” I cried in my head: “Our relationship has been so worked out; I think we’re really friends, now—it can’t be, it can’t be over yet. We’re in the middle of our plans—”

We were. We’d just talked about what we’d do when I flew out in two weeks: Longwood Gardens, maybe the Philadelphia Orchestra. On the chair of her bedroom were arranged clothes for the evening she never got to see: new slacks, a sparkly top.

She’s been removed, strangely. I remain in the middle of the loss. There is no journey; there is no destination; there is only the coping, the staying afloat, somewhere here in the middle.

In the Middle of It - Kate Bueler

2011-05-06T14:55:00.002-07:00

In the middle of it. I am the middle of a conversation of reunited lovers after twenty years. I find myself by the happenstance, the providence, the fate of life. I am not either said lover. Just a bystander who can't move from this seat. Stuck here. Because what will happen next seems like it might be too good to actually move. Scene begins as: man walks in start of beard sprouting, motorcycle helmet in hand, he glances at me and gives me a half soft smile. He finds a seat behind me. A moment or two pass. And then she walks in. In the business causal attire of work. Full of movement and talking. He raises up to meet her. Embracing her around her shoulders. I just never thought I'd see you again. In person. He confesses. In quickness she responds guess you have been giving that a lot of thought. And I'm in. In the middle of this. Because what will happen next is what movies are made of. Not the kind you can rent old school at the video store or netflix or hulu. No the real life of reuniting. I must watch. And see.

And so it begins. The man waits as she orders. She refuses his offer to buy her coffee. She talks at a rapid pace to all those around her, a co-worker, the barista, and even me when I get up for a moment. He sits waiting patiently. To sit across from her again. And then she returns to the seat. They are behind me so all I can hear is their words now. No facial expression or movements. The NPR radio show of love affairs lost. And found.

She begins. And talks and gives the synopsis of her life the last years. Fast and furious and the gentlemen rarely speaks. He tries to give her a morsel of him. But she refuses. The bio of places she has lived. The CV of jobs she has acquired. The snapshot of starting her witty yoga site and her current job. He takes the pause as an opening, when I was shooting those kids. My own eyes crinkle. Oh he is a photographer. And then it gets interesting when the job interview pauses and real life begins. It begins in a story where she realizes her sister set him up with someone after they broke up. I can't believe she did that. I am still going to talk to her about it. Years past not mattering. Are you single? The nod happens but I can't see behind me just in the pause in the back and forth. Next to the discussion of marriage and kids. Have you done it? Will you do it? Conversations of years had before. And had again. She never married and never wanting kids. Until now maybe. I would shit my pants every time I thought a serious boyfriend would want to get married. I would freak out around the holidays. I am not a commitphobe, but scared. Him marrying a woman due to the realities of immigration. I did get married. But it wasn't a real marriage. We treated as dating plus legality. And more words in between until he said we treated it as a real marriage. Everything was great expect the one part that always worked with everyone else. The sex. I thought she would come around. I thought she would open up.

And as I listen and write down on my napkin my only piece of paper a great on the fly notebook. I can't help but think what happens next. Next for them. In this talking. In this reuniting. In this thing called love. But although I am in the middle of it, I got to get up and go. To do what I have to do. In the middle of their thing, I needed to move on to mine. And in watching them. I find faith and remember my own lost loves. Reuniting doesn't mean happily ever after but it fixes the space broken in disconnection. I walk away and feel lucky to have seen. Someone else's reality. In remembering my own.

In the Middle of It - Jennifer Baljko

2011-05-06T14:55:00.001-07:00

He sits on the couch, comforting her with long strokes through her blonde locks. He knows she’s prone to momentary lapses of insanity. He’s been in the middle of this before. Not just with her, but with other women too. He doesn’t understand this frequent emotional imbalance. Strong women weakened by the world, not the whole world, just their narrow sliver of the world. An only when something seems to spin off its axis. Something they can see, something he almost never sees. He’s learned it’s better to just sit still and hold her. While he sees the black and white answer, he leaves the whole thing in whatever shade of gray she’s in. Better for him to keep quiet, not offer a new perspective or a solution until she asks for one. And, even if she asks, his answer, he knows, will be influenced by the tone in her voice, and if her claws are drawn. She walks the feline line between lioness and kitten. He must do the same. Or so he thinks. His experience says so. He lets her ramble on, but stops her before the tears come. That’s too much drama for him. Instead he offers to make her tea. He rests her head on the pillow and lets her wander down her darkening path. He won’t let her see him rolling his eyes and secretly shrugging his shoulders. He takes a brief refuge, knowing when he returns, he’ll have to say something – something she may or may not want to hear.

The Most Private Thing - Maria Robinson

2011-05-06T14:54:00.001-07:00

The most private thing that you can destroy the photos, the pictures of your lover that you once savored and slept with under your pillow. They can all be flung into tiny floating pieces at the end of the relationship. They could be torn brutally dissected and cut up into tiny black and white dice with your mother's sewing scissors, or you could rip them up as tears are flowing down your cheeks in between shuttering heaves. Instead of utter destruction, you might also isolate them in your house, that is to say purposefully hide them while you're tipsy and then forget where they are hopefully forever. You could also save them, close at hand, to remind you of your youthful folly, your baby love and the life that you dreamed of that got away.

The Most Private Thing/Skin - Elizabeth Weld Nolan

2011-05-06T14:53:00.001-07:00

This private thing
lives in public
wrapping blood
and liver,
heart and bone
in fragile armor
to guard us.
Sensing enemies,
it hurls armies
against invasion.
We hardly know
our resident warrior.

It transmits bulletins
by the second:
soft chair, rough floor,
smooth shirt, harsh seam,
cold foot, warm hugs,
cream on sores,
rash from leaf,
forefinger smoothing
quivering bird wing,
thorn alert. This messenger,
this Hermes, speaks
privately until death.

The Most Private Thing - Donna Shomer

2011-05-06T14:51:00.000-07:00

A Death in the Family

Tied to my finger
is remembrance.
Acid-colored
ribbons so tight
there’s no removing them.
So I make fists, or
put hands behind
my back or sit
on them.

Jeweled dagger through my heart -
it protrudes.
To pull it free would mean
bleeding out. It would be
fatal. So
no tight blouses
and not too
low-cut.

The Most Private Thing - Judy Albietz

2011-05-06T14:50:00.002-07:00

Lily’s older sister Mary was the most private thing in her life. Mary was eleven years older than Lily. When Lily was really little Mary sometimes let her sleep in a cot in her room where she read stories—sometimes making up some of her own. Lily loved it when Mary babysat her. When Lily was around 6 and Mary was 17 years old, Lily started noticing a few odd things about her oldest sister. Nobody in the family said anything, not even her other older sister, Grace, who was eight years older than Lily and who teased her relentlessly. Lily somehow knew she couldn’t ask her mother about Mary. And she wouldn’t dare say anything to anyone outside her family. Mary dressed differently from other girls her age. Her skirts were too long. She wore glasses that weren’t in style. Mary was the slowest walker in the world. It was always as if she was wading through molasses—but in a graceful sort of way. Lily was 7 and Mary was 18 when she left for college to become an artist. Lily was crushed that her favorite big sister just jumped up and left her like that. She wrote letters to her to try to keep her in her life. Mary wrote back, sometimes with funny stories she made up.

She missed Mary’s funny way of eating her cottage cheese, scooping it with a spoon she held like a shovel. When Lily was 10, Mary came back from college with someone named Andrew, who Mary said she was going to marry. That summer, two days before the wedding, Andrew drove in from Detroit in a snazzy convertible. He asked Lily if she wanted to sit in the car. Lily really didn’t want to, but decided to be friendly. Sitting in her parents’ driveway with Andrew didn’t seem so bad. But then Andrew leaned over Lily and opened the glove compartment. He reached in and pulled out a gun. “This is a very private thing,” he said. “Don’t tell anyone about it. It will be our secret.”

The End - Anna Teeples

2011-05-06T14:50:00.001-07:00

Melon wrapped in prosciutto seemed so ordinary now. My mouth was still savoring the best pesto I had ever had in the little Cinque Terra town of Vernazza Italy. Now the melon appetizer hardly registered on the delight scale. Morsels of our late lunch were still lingering and I secretly hoped we might want to have dinner in the same place to inhale more exquisite creamy pesto.

To my left, Dee laid on one of $2Euro yellow and white stripe cheap cotton beach towels that she bought in the equivalent of an Italian 7-Eleven store. The difference was this happened to be at the end of white sandy beach and inside an ancient soft pink salmon stucco building and oozed character and stories from every shelf and display. I looked down at the $5Euro bathing suit that I was wearing and was grateful I would not ever wear it again in front of anyone I knew.

Kevin, CeCe, Dee and I had decided to hike from Vernazza to next northern town of Cinque Terra, Montrose al Mare. We knew the five Mediterranean towns were connected by a hiking trail. We did not know several important details before we began our spontaneous and whimsical hike. First, this trail was the steepest of all the trails and I was certain we were on a billy goat path since there were several spots which one slip of the foot on the uneven rock path would result in a deep plunge onto small rock ledges. We decided to hike right after lunch in the bright sunny, humid part of the July day and forgot to bring water. Last, we were wearing flip-flops. Not exactly the right shoes for steep rock hiking. It was an adventure yet full of breath taking views of the multi color deep blue sea, the olive orchards and vineyards. We stopped to find shade and take pictures often.

Ninety minutes later, we landed in the tiny fishing village parched and determined to immerse ourselves in the beckoning water. It was like a siren from the sea was luring us directly to her. CeCe had discovered the $5Euro one size fits all bikini bathing suits. The three women, all very different shapes and sizes, chuckled as they compared how the string bikini covered certain areas better than others. We all opted for the swim top not ready to bare our breasts to the world. Our one rule for the rest of the day was the pact of no photos. We agreed to tell the story but absolutely no evidence would exist of the humiliating skimpish suits.

Before landing on the towel next to Dee, I floated for what seemed like hours in the sea. My arms dangled to my side, feet drifting below the cool water and my belly and chest stretching upward towards the divine sun, spilling happiness all over my softly closed eyes. I floated far away from the shore and people. In that spiritual moment, a voice awakened inside and cooed at me,   “You will leave your life of computer work behind. Today.”
I did not panic as warmth moved through my body like honey. I did not want to ever move from that spot in the sea. The voice whispered again,
“You are an artist and will trust your path. Trust your journey from here forward.”
My mind was still in the hypnotic state. I would agree to anything. The worry and panic was over. This is all I needed to know right now. The rest would come later. I was moving on.

“George, I am on a beach in the Mediterranean. Can you hear me OK?” I said.
“It’s great to hear from you. I can’t wait to hear all about your sabbatical.”
“I know, there is so much to tell you about. Listen, I have decided, I am not coming back to work.”

That was it, the end of an eighteen-year career in the computer industry that had served me amazingly well. My summer retreat to Italy had been the exact prescription for restoring my life. I could finally breathe and felt the pressure leak away from under my shoulder blades. Feeling the inner declaration still resonating inside, I knew I could keep worry and doubt away for a long time. Divorce done, son off to college, career quit, heart healed, I was ready to live again.

The End - Christa Fairfield

2011-05-06T14:49:00.001-07:00

It is the end my friend.
The circle at the tip of the i.
The cross at the end of the t.
The dot at the end of the sentence.

It is the end my friend.
Like the blue caboose in my long lost favorite book.
Like the red reflector of the bike my great grandma gave me.
Like the dented bumper of my first car.

It is the end my friend.
The last gondola ride of the evening.
The final day in Rome.
The set down of the plane in San Francisco.

It is the end my friend.
It is the final tear of the romance.
It is the first sign of forgetting.
It is the lighting of the candle.

The end my friend.

What She Remembers Best From Childhood - Christa Fairfield

2011-05-03T16:25:00.001-07:00

“You know what I remember best about my childhood?” Liz asked her youngest daughter Debbie.

“What?” she asked with a tone of actual interest. Debbie’s thirteen year old frame was petite and athletic. Her blonde waves were strapped down with a red bandana to keep them out of the way of her Monday afternoon chores.

“Going fishing with your Grandmother,” she answered. “Here let me take that.” Liz reached for the wet cloth Debbie had been cleaning the refrigerator shelves with.

Debbie’s strong red hands dropped the cloth in the kettle full of warm water her mother extended. She rubbed her hands together. wiped them on the denim shorts and tucked her hands in the pockets.

“I don’t really have many memories. Not like you girls.” Liz dumped the water in the sink. “We didn’t have the money and my parents didn’t care what my childhood was like.”

Debbie had moved to the dinning room adjacent to the kitchen. Her mother’s word circled around each piercing like some school yard taunt. She smiled at her mother but wanted to reply, you mean unlike you who takes us places then makes them hell.

“You and your sister have seen so much.” Liz continued. “Here sit next to me for me a minute and well take a break.” Liz pulled out one of the wrought iron stools tucked under the counter that divided the kitchen from the dining room.

Debbie started to pull the stool out.

“Honey, get my cigarettes for me. They over there.” She pointed to the counter next to the frig. “And the ash tray out of the dishwasher. Thanks.”

Debbie sat down on the stool next to her mother. I could use a cigarette she thought. Wonder what she would do if asked her for one. For a brief moment Debbie imagined that her mother would say sure and then recount how she started smoking at an age earlier than Debbie’s thirteen years.

“Why don’t you get us some of the fish to snack on.” Her mother said. “And some lemonade.”

“Sure,” Debbie said. She took the Pepperidge Farm Cheddar Fish box off the pantry shelf where it was filed next to the Graham Crackers and Triscuts

What I/he/she remembers best about childhood - Donna Shomer

2011-05-03T16:24:00.001-07:00

hot uncomfortable sand
sun in the eyes
protected with
lies and half truths
and chocolate icebox cake

up the steep stairs
father’s study
the crow’s nest
warm wood
deep chairs
an attic
a man’s place
to hide.

What I Remember Best About Childhood - Jackie Davis-Martin

2011-05-03T16:22:00.002-07:00

To get to The Carr Sisters School of Dance we had to take, from our house, a bus, which we caught at the bottom of the slag hill, then a streetcar from the intersection near the Westinghouse plant, to Braddock, where we got off on the main street below and climbed several blocks up the brick and tree-lined streets to the dancing school, to the house. I say “we” but it was “me,” “I,” that made this trip several times a week from the time I was eight to maybe sixteen.

My sister went to dancing school some years, and some years she didn’t want to, although I can recall standing with her, our little suitcases in hand. Maybe it’s because she, an old woman now, too, has recreated the scenes. “Do you remember standing at that roadside alone for the streetcar? Wasn’t it dark? Wasn’t it lonely? How could mother have let us do that?”

I widen my eyes and shake my head. I’ve no idea. “Times were safer then,” I volunteer. Now that I think about it, my mother probably saw us—or again me—as capable. My sister was three years younger and, as I said, in and out of dancing school. Or maybe my mother was saving the carfare.

The Carr Sisters School of Dance was run by two of the Carr sisters—the oldest, Marguerite, whom we called Margie, who was thin and had a pointy chin and curly light hair and who always wore black trousers that draped and a black top. She had skinny legs, she told us; she never wanted to be in tights. The youngest Carr, Audrey was shapely and cute and wore tights and dancing outfits. Audrey taught acrobat or ballet, but mostly Audrey played the grand piano for our exercises and our routines. Between Margie and Audrey were about six or seven other sisters, none of them affiliated with the school, but whose pictures, with those of their brothers, adorned the vestibule. “The Train of Carrs” the captions read of old news clippings, of the dancing family: 7 girls, 3 boys, all lined up in stages and dressed alike. Sort of Vaudeville, I guess.

The school was in an old Victorian—a place so grandly different from our own tiny house—that we were happy to be there. One had to walk up a sidewalk from the street; there was a gate or iron fence around the house. The front porch was broad and held two large swings at either end, those wicker sofas suspended from chains. Inside the door—a glass insert, like Tiffany—was a small hallway, a vestibule, with Audrey’s desk, (we paid Audrey; she kept the books) a fireplace, a small sofa, a table. It was elegant, even there. Behind the vestibule was a dressing room—a room surrounded by sofas where we changed our shoes and left our coats.

If we had to go to the bathroom we mounted the great curving staircase that separated these two rooms to a bathroom larger than our living room at home. Some of the family (Margie? Audrey? Who knew?) lived in rooms up there—off that hallway—up more stairs, but we knew we weren’t supposed to go exploring.

The dance studio itself was the conversion of the house’s parlor and dining rooms that made up the rest of the first floor. It was all mahogany and high ceilings and mirrors and windows, the grand piano at one end; the barre along another. The floors were wood and there were pocket doors. Audrey hammered out the exercise music on the piano, which I can still hear in my head, while we did warm-ups. Margie was skilled at tap. Their belief was that one had to study it all and so we dance students went twice a week, alternating between tap, which I loved, ballet which was pretty, and then, when we got older, toe, which I was never good at, always being heavy, and acrobat, where I watched the lithe gymnast types effortlessly do their backbends, their splits. I struggled.

But I stayed with it.

My Dad had once gone to school with Margie or one of the Carrs, the reason he thought of the place when I asked, at six, for dancing lessons. We lived closer, then, and then we moved to the place that necessitated all the traveling.

There’s a certain irony to the elegance of this school, to the discipline and love that came from it: it was located in Braddock, Pennsylvania, a town so dilapidated it almost fell off the map when the steel mills closed.

My husband once sought me out while I was cooking dinner. “Hey, Hon!” he called. “Come here! There’s a show talking about revitalizing Braddock. Didn’t you grow up around there?”

What She Remembers From Childhood - Anna Teeples

2011-05-03T16:22:00.001-07:00

I liked her name, Karen. So different than my own which to me, sounded like it was from another country or an ancient time period. Her name represented all the things that I wanted to be. She was spunky, had a chestnut color to her skin that was sprinkled with freckles and her soft wavy brown hair lightened in the summer. She was like a little fairy pixie with attitude.

If the week went well at school and home was too chaotic, it was easy to convince Mom that I was asked to spend the night at Karen’s. It only took a little more creative manipulating to get a real invitation for a sleep over. One thing that I remember most about being at Karen’s house was a car. Her dad drove the most beautiful car I had ever seen in my life. It was a pale yellow convertible 1970 Alpha Romeo Spider. We would watch him drive down the street from a long day at the newspaper with the top down and I thought, “He just is not your regular kind of dad.”

Years later my husband and I would try to describe an average regular dad. These are the men that would finally take a few days from the office to cart the kids to the local amusement park. They would don a pair of madras shorts, with a clean t-shirt and pull the outfit together with their black work socks and a pair of dress loafers. I always wanted to pull them aside and suggest a nice pair of comfy Fred Perry tennis shoes.

Karen and I went for a ride one time in ‘the car’ after we had our license. It was pure pleasure, feeling the air whip our hair and shimmer over our faces. We sang out in terrible harmony the words of Michael Jackson’s “Rock with You” and re-glossed the lips with Bonnie Bell lip-gloss at every red light. The Alpha would haunt me for years. It was the car that would cause me to stop in the middle of a sidewalk. I would re-live those moments of pure joy. I still secretly desired to own the senseless but gorgeous car. Perhaps it's a bucket list item.

Unmasked - Jennifer Baljko

2011-05-03T16:21:00.002-07:00

Soon, in a few weeks, there will be a big Baljko event in Barcelona. Two of my siblings are coming to visit me. One has been here before. The other decided, on a whim this morning, to join the fun, and make her first transatlantic flight. It will be great to see them, but there is a slight apprehension starting to seize my heart as well. Too many Baljkos in the same room can be a dangerous unmasking of primal, territorial clawing. We tend to play nice most of the time, in three or four hour stretches. But a week together could swing us straight back to the 1980s when the seven members of my immediate plus the dog, two cats, and whatever other mascot happened to find it’s way through the floor boards or into an empty cage duked it out for a sliver of privacy and a healthy does of personal expression. As adults, we live in vastly different worlds, and often have little in common except blood ties. So the momentous task of understanding who we are in the face of each other becomes a strange tilt-a-whirl ride set up on a tightrope dangling over a cliff. Each eccentric behavior brings on a heightened sense of black sheep weirdness, united under the umbrella of collective upbringing.

With Kid Gloves - Judy Albietz

2011-05-03T16:21:00.001-07:00

“You don’t have to treat me with kid gloves,” Lily told Sam. “Tell me everything about what happened to Josh. Don’t leave anything out.”

“I do not understand what you say. I cannot wear gloves. I do not have hands.”

“Sorry. That’s just an old expression my mom uses. It means I do not want you to treat me like a child. I want you to tell me everything you know about Josh’s disappearance. Don’t leave anything out … no matter how awful it is.”

“Lily, the only thing we know is that Josh’s brain was captured by people living outside Borealis, in the future.”

“How did they do that?”

“We know these people do not have the power to travel through time. Therefore, they could not bring his whole body into the future. However, it appears they have the technology to capture and bring brain waves from the past. We think they did it by following the path of the radio signals from the cell phone Josh used when he communicated with you from the past to the future—through the Time Portal.”

“Why did they take—him—his brain? What do they want with him? How do we get him back?”

“We have not figured that out yet.”

With Kid Gloves - Bonnie Smetts

2011-05-03T16:20:00.001-07:00

No man can possibly admit this. You like your wife to need you. You want her to be delicate, easy. You want her to stand on her own feet as well. But not too much. You don’t want her to complain and whine. You want her to have ideas and not acquiesce too quickly. But in the end you want her to agree.

You want to watch her from afar as she charms your friends with her quiet humor and quick wit. Her beauty of course, that’s never been a problem with Marjorie. She’s lovely: light and elegant, long-limbed. Her hair is a bit bland, but bountiful with just enough rebellion to get loose from those tight chignons she’s taken to wearing. I guess that’s Renee’s influence.

Renee’s not an especially good influencey. Good in that she’s full of life and doesn’t complain. Bad in that she’s got too much of a mind of her own. I doubt she consults Jacques when she changes Nico’s nanny or orders furniture from Paris. Or decides to take my wife to see the native festivals.

Now I’ve got Marjorie a ball of nerves. I hate feeling like I must handle her with kid gloves, lest she explode in anger or fear or whatever causes her to cry and lash out at me. I don’t want to spend another moment on this. I’ve got people who are misbehaving up and down my command. Not just the native workers, some of my best. Not just the lower workers but the managers. Men who I thought were dependable, at least would follow the company protocol and our plans. Letting a whole team start building another line miles from where we’d designated. Impossible to accept, and yet they’ve begun. What am I to do? Call them off it. And lose the work they’ve done. The metals would be stolen in a fortnight. No, and so I seem weak. I must reprimand the manger in a way that sends a message to anyone else giving favors to their village, their relatives, whomever else they want to pay off.

I must keep up appearances so home office never learns of this. How to write the progress report and hide exactly where the construction is being completed. My secretary must write something for me. He knows how to hide and change the truth.

Marjorie will never understand what goes on, here in the company, here in this country.

Keeping It Secret - Melody Cryns

2011-05-03T16:19:00.000-07:00

Tonight I walked into my favorite coffee shop in downtown Mountain View and ordered a double mint mocha, just like old times. And Blue House, the acoustic rock band of two gals and a guy are playing their lovely music and singing…

“It’s my life, here I am…take a moment to share my history!” Brian sings…it’s a song he wrote and I love it. It reminds me of writing, sharing our history, every time I hear Brian sing that song, Marline playing the other acoustic guitar and singing harmony and Amy on bass…

Aaron is working at the counter – he’s been here at the coffee shop ever since I can remember…when I used to bring Megan here and she was just a little red headed, freckle faced kid. He always threatened to sell Megan to the gypsies and she’d laugh and swing on his outstretched tattooed muscular arm…

Now Megan is 18 and that young girl has disappeared, and I haven’t ordered a real double mint mocha in about two years – you know, all the calories and the sugar. But tonight I decided I had to get a double mint mocha. Aaron said, “with whipped cream?” And I said yes, with whipped cream.

It’s just one of those nights. I’ve had a rough day filled with car trouble…overheating issues. I haven’t had car problems like this for a while now. Ever since my kids were younger and I could never afford a decent car.

So I sit here at the coffee shop listening to Blue House remembering my little girl who is now grown…and how it was, and how some things just never seem to change.

I look out the window and see the tree branches and the shining lamps and the tables and chairs outside, just as they always were…and Aaron’s still here, and so is Shadow…and Blue House is still playing. And I’m still sipping on a double mint mocha. And my car has air bubbles, so they say…at least it’s not a blown head gasket.

Blowing Off Steam - E. D. James

2011-05-03T16:18:00.000-07:00

He moved quickly through the galleries absorbing the intensity of the work lining the walls. In half an hour he would meet the woman and rid himself of the weight he’d been carrying. The tourists around him stared at the pieces listening to some over educated voice tell them why they should like what they saw. Arch had no such filters on his mind. Every second was crystal clear, illuminated by the adrenaline surging through his veins.

They were following him. The watchers in the galleries would pretend to take no notice of his passing, but he would see them discreetly hit communicators at their belts and whisper as he passed. This made him feel comfortable. He wanted to lure them into complacency. Wanted them to feel secure that they had him under control, knew his every movement. He wanted them to feel that way right up until the moment he lost them and made his move to meet the one who had been chosen to receive the truth.

He allowed himself a moment to wander back to the days his mother would drag him through these very galleries in her endless quest to raise him up with culture and knowledge. She had instilled in him a boundless curiosity, and it was that curiosity that led him to this day.

Seven months ago it had just been some random streaks on his plates. Satellites were always crossing his plates and at first he took no notice. But then a pattern emerged. His scans for other planets that might have the conditions that were right for life to exist had instead exposed a network of satellites in geosynchronous orbit over the major cities of the world. A network that the government claimed didn’t and couldn’t exist. And yet it did.

They had made it clear that they would stop at nothing to protect their secret. First his privileges at the observatory had been curtailed. Then his grant had been revoked. Now they stalked him day and night.

Blowing Off Steam - Kate Bueler

2011-05-03T16:16:00.000-07:00

Blowing off steam. Blowing of steam has been my newest favorite pastime. I spent many good years of my life running and swimming and doing it for fun but mostly within the confines of team and invitations and flip turned into a baton hand off until I reached adulthood. I loved sports. I loved the ability to feel freedom in the pounding against my legs as I speed up at the end of every run. My father had taught me this trick that even after a jog you run fast and hard at the end. And believe you me it came in handy in the races of life both competitive or not. The wheels of myself going more quickly and feeling as if they might give out but on the brink of letting go- the freedom of speed- the freedom of myself. That I could get it anytime I needed it. And running. Running became a way to pound out the discomfort of adolescence and the way I spent my afternoons for many years of my life. And it helped that I was good at it. Not the best of the best but good enough to be choose for the relays and to place.

But somewhere in my relationship with running we became distant in our feelings toward one another. I dreaded doing it. And did it. Only for that scholarship. I didn't feel freedom anymore. When I put on those shoes to run- I felt dread. Dread for being awake so early. Dread for not being able sleep in. And dread for the practice I'd have to later that day. Running became a job. And the chore of it sucked the pleasure and flying from my bones and muscles and left was the feeling of contempt. Contempt I had for one of my first loves of my life. We had changed. We both had. So after my final season of my running career, I did what anyone would do or so I thought. I gave up exercise. I took up drinking and partying and smoking and being an undergraduate like everyone else. Reverse psychology on myself didn't work as I planned. Me and running broke up and she didn't come after me when she saw the back of my body sway back and forth surrounded by friends and the smoke of ways to forget her.

I didn't miss her. I didn't care about her. And I kept my relationships with my new and more exciting friends until one day I woke up and realized. Something was missing. The blowing of the steam. Could never be replaced in alcoholic binge drinking that left me more clueless than I began and apologetic and hurting the next day. Smoking could only be cool for so long and soon the honeymoon wore off and I was addicted. Me the athlete addicted to cigarettes. Blowing off the steam- I needed it. I needed the release and freedom of the movement of my feet faster and harder and longer than I thought I could. I needed the pound of my chest in and out and rattling me to let go and learn again. I needed the sweat pouring down my face and head and limbs with my reddish face to remind me. That I am athlete and the blowing off the steam has always been my freedom. So I didn't call up running. I decided to try something new someone who would give me everything I had before because I was too scared to run. And that is how I found yoga. Yoga and one day I would find myself when I needed it most after a hard day of hearing others pains of life that I laced my shoes up and ran. Again.

Changing How it Turned Out - Kate Bueler

2011-04-27T14:17:00.000-07:00

Changing how it turned out. I didn't know how it would turn out yet. But I had pieced together snapshots of scenes in my mini series of my mind. A melodrama of my heart and hope for the future. The qualities I liked in him played perfectly in this short by me. See I have a girlhood crush syndrome that my early 30s hasn't seemed to break. I get crushes on strangers. On the barista. On the neighbor. On the friend. On the dude I made out with once. Excitement from the first time, the first time feeling the taste of infatuation dances around me as I skip on the way home. I can't shake the excitement I feel for someone in the beginning. The beginning of anything. It might be my favorite part of it all.

I guess part of my giddiness is for the lightness I feel for the real thing. The real thing that does warm me beyond the beginning to the depths of companionship. I used to fall hard and fast but took a vacation from the every moving fast bullet train to the very slow one making every stop. And it first it was fine. It was okay. But boredom started to seep in through my pores. I still wanted adventure. I still wanted intrigue. I still wanted to feel my heart pump with excitement. The slow train was slow. And I wanted more. But how to walk of the line of want I want long term and what I desire short term? Can I have both the excitement and stability as I walk on this tightrope of love with my heart jumping in and out of my chest to my sleeve and back again?

I don't know. But I do know. I need vacations. Vacations from the slow train. I pull the stop and jump out and try something new. Unplanned and spontaneous. And so easy just to be. And then I feel the warmth of another around me soothing the need for now. But later as the scenes of the future play out. Sometimes I want more scenes. I want more snapshots. And I can't help but wonder how it will turn out. In thinking about it, can I change how it will? Or the faith I feel in things coming together allows me not to change anything at all. See sometimes you meet someone while on vacation from the things you are supposed to be doing that makes the excitement and wonder grow inside as you think what will be next. For you. For him. And the excitement tastes good and I force myself not to wonder how it will turn out. Or to change the ending. I just want another line. Another paragraph. Another chapter. Of this book.

Changing How it Turned Out - Anna Teeples

2011-04-27T14:16:00.000-07:00

I need to fry some bananas. I got nothing on today's prompt and I know that when I am stuck on writing, you write anyways. It was a day full of tough messages to people who needed to hear things that they did not want to hear. Somewhere in all of this muck, I know I am changing something. Like a giant splinter stuck in my soul needing to work it's way out. And now, the splinter is out and there's a small tender wound needing attention. I finally have that space to rediscover some of me that has been caked in mud. At the end of a long day, when you are feeling worn out and broken, you gotta change the day.

I picked up my little battle worn skittle, turned on the gas burner and sprayed a fine layer of oil. I peeled a banana and sliced the knife through the long length of the yellow meaty center. I placed a half on the hot surface with a sizzle. Sprinkling a dusting of cinnamon while smelling the sweetness ooze into the air, I wait patiently as the sliced side caramelizes just a bit before turning it over. In a matter of minutes, my mouth is watering and anxious for the first bite of warm banana. The beauty of this wonderful delight is the un-necessity of any other accompaniment, no need for chocolate or ice cream or warm dripping caramel. Just bananas, fried bananas. A perfect ending to soul shifting day.

Changing How it Turned Out - Melody Cryns

2011-04-27T14:15:00.000-07:00

We live in a lovely little home amid trees and flowers with a garden, slightly unkempt in front. The house looks like an English cottage – it’s the house I passed by almost every day those few months we lived in San Jose near the Rose Garden neighborhood. But the house isn’t in San Jose – no, it’s right by the beach in Santa Cruz. We can walk to the beach with the harbor and the lighthouse.

My mother, who thankfully quit smoking when she was younger, is still around and comes to visit often. Megan invites her lovely friends over. She’s almost finished with high school and is graduating at almost the top of her class. My older kids are all very successful and happy, well adjusted young adults. I am making a living as a teacher and a writer, and I’m not stressed out about work at all. Every day I walk down to the beach with my ukulele and the dog and let her play in the waves – and I play my uke on the beach, sometimes alone and sometimes with all of my uke playing friends.

We make trips to San Francisco often, and usually stay at the Seal Rock Inn which overlooks the Cliff House and Land’s End – or we stay at Melissa’s house in Twin Peaks. I always travel down Highway 1 to get to San Francisco because who’s in a hurry?

Although I do have to teach at certain times, I’m pretty much free to do what I want and go wherever I want – I can always make ukulele jam get togethers and acoustic jams, and of course, there’s always time to sit and write.

If I want to take a nap in the middle of the day, I do it – lying down on a hammock in my lovely backyard.

Of course, I have a wonderful dependable car that never causes any problems at all – a BMW that gets me to where I want to go in no time at all, a zippy little car with all the bells and whistles anyone could want. Sweet car!

I’ve already published a book and another one is coming out soon. I’ve got it made in the shade, oh yeah! I’m going on a book tour soon with my ukulele so I can play music, sing and read from my writings. Life is really good – there’s always someone at the house to take care of the animals, and my daughter is so incredibly responsible. I trust her totally and completely. Oh and how can I forget my wonderful, hot loving boyfriend who is always there for me? He even travels with me and pays his own way and everything!

Sigh…

As I sit here and listen to Beatles music, I smile – thinking of how my life could have been, wondering if I truly would have changed the path if I could have.

I live in a one-bedroom apartment in Sunnyvale off El Camino with my incorrigible 18-year-old daughter Megan. She needs to get her act together and finish high school – and get a job of course. Our little dog likes to bark at everyone that walks by our apartment, and I had to leave her alone today because Megan’s off gallivanting around in Monterey, or Santa Cruz – not sure where. And she doesn’t want to come home. Not that I blame her, but still.

My little car overheated on the way to Sacramento for no apparent reason and the last time we lived in a house was when we lived in Oregon – but it was a sort of run-down house on a cul-de-sac just outside Salem, Oregon.

Mom passed away back in 1997 when the older kids were teenagers and Megan was only four, right before I fled from Oregon and moved back down to California with all of my kids – driving a piece of crap old Chevy Cavalier car that my son’s friend had given us – that was after the last car had broken down before that one.

We ended up having to move several times to dodge the high rents in the San Francisco Bay Area, and one time just because there were too many teenagers hanging around my place. There were always too many teenagers hanging around my place.

Now here I sit listening to Beatles music, wondering where Megan is and if Jen will be okay – that’s Jeremy’s girlfriend. She was so stressed out about the pregnancy and moving that she went on disability and she’s having a rough time. Now that my older daughter Melissa is getting a job, will she be able to start paying me back? Will she be able to pay off that bail bond I still get phone calls for because apparently they have my name and number?

Death - Jackie Davis-Martin

2011-04-27T14:14:00.000-07:00

In general...there's no point in writing hopeless novels. We all know we're going to die; what's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.
-Anne Lamott

Claire didn’t know what kind of woman she would be in the face of death. She hadn’t thought about it. It was even an odd consideration, later. I will be strong. I will be the sort of person whom others will marvel at. I will be private.

Anne Lamott was more likely referring to the characteristics one exhibited facing one’s own death. And, more likely, she was using death as a metaphor for crisis or catastrophe, or the “trouble” that the character faces. And in a story it’s not death that’s important, it’s the character’s reaction. Will she be noble? Will she be a mess?

Claire was a writer, one who had dodged real death in stories, substituting instead some other crisis—money, sexual tension, even, as she got more philosophical, the meaning of life, of certain actions one would take. Some of her friends wrote stories where family hovered at bedsides, or consulted anxiously with doctors. A few had near-death experiences, of high risk.

In these stories, the risky people survived to tell the tale. The family dealt with the bravery of the old man or the old woman who had lived a long and meaningful life and spoken something important at the end.

They could all discuss the reality of what had been written.

What happened, though, was that death came to Claire, and Claire had to face it. She didn’t know that facing it showed what kind of woman she was one way or the other. Take today, for instance, a small anniversary of that death. If she were writing about it, or re-creating such an event, she would certainly substitute something other than the golden sky outside her windows, the light tingeing the houses on high hilltops, sun glinting from windows like the spangles on the dance costumes both she and her daughter loved. She wouldn’t use that detail, though, because it didn’t fit the sadness she felt.

In a story she would have her character stand at the window and marvel that the beauty of the sky turning pink and blue and gold was still hers, that the birds’ chirping was comforting, something to truly listen to, and therefore of great value. She would have her character note the majesty of the lighted pillars in the garden across the street, the lights lighting the light of day just breaking, the stillness and silence of a day not quite under way.

In reality hers—Claire’s—was underway and, although she looked out the window at these things, she looked past her daughter’s pictures, and thought two things: Who was she? And why isn’t she here? Mostly she thought, Is it possible, really? Claire’s character wouldn’t mention that she couldn’t bear to look at those pictures, nor bear to remove them, since such wavering would show unsteadiness. People who looked for ready themes would pounce on that: denial. Claire disliked ready themes, exhibiting, at times, another of them: anger.

None of these behaviors was pretty, or of high character.

She’d pour herself another cup of coffee, strong and black and halved with milk, and write what she was trying to understand of life and death.

Anne Lamott. Claire didn’t know anything about Anne Lamott. What had she endured? But a writer didn’t have to endure, first hand. The writer’s job was to imagine.

And imagining, pretending, was the reality that made sense. Claire could pretend to be Claire, for instance. She would be brave because people liked to be with others who were brave, who were gay, who showed strength of character.

The other characters would like Claire better, feel more at ease, if she became a character, and not her true self. They’d like her better if they didn’t truly know the importance of what she was going through; they’d prefer her character to show strength in the face of this.

This.

This.

The Place Where She's Most Uncomfortable - Elizabeth Weld Nolan

2011-04-27T14:13:00.000-07:00

I am visiting the house of a stranger. The couch and chairs in the living room are covered with plastic made to fit their yellow contours. Doilies and coasters cover each little table where family photos stand at attention in their upright frames.

A purple and black portrait of Jesus over the fireplace shows him hanging from the cross in a drawing that could be taken from a graphic novel, so lurid are the colors. The only cabinet holds china dishes and a collection of girl dolls, their little bow mouths bright red against their white faces. They are dressed in long gowns of another century. The legs of the furniture stand in little cups on the pale carpet.

I press my knees, clad in blue pants, together. My ankle bones touch. Then I notice: There are no books. Not one. No, there is one. A large Bible with a white leather cover, sits on a round table by itself on top of a lace runner. I smile at my hostess, the mother of my college roommate who is rebelling against everything. I have been listening to her for a year, and I see, in this, my first visit to her house, that with all her opinions and philosophical rants, she has told me nothing about her family.

``I don’t usually invite people,’’ she had said in our dorm room, pulling on her (illegal) cigarette.

``Thank you, Mrs. Whickett, for having me,’’ I say.

``We’re glad to have you, dear,’’ she says. ``We’re so curious about Mary’s friends from college. So you’re from Massachusetts?’’

``Yes, ma’am. The Boston area.’’

``What church do you go to there?’’ She looks excited and a flush comes across her pale cheeks.

``The Unitarian Church. I helped run the Sunday School in high school.’’

``Sunday School!’’ She looks pleased and glances at Mary who lounges (or slips off the plastic?) on an armchair. ``Do you read Scripture with the children?’’

``Well,’’ I shift on my own plastic, ``we make sure they know the Bible stories.’’

``The New Testament?’’

``Both,’’ I say. ``We study all religions.’’

``Unity Church, did you say?’’

``No, Unitarian. We believe in one Creator. That’s why that name.’’ She sits up straighter. I think she’s actually wearing a corset under her flowered dress. It’s hard to believe she’s the mother of my casual roommate or that my intellectually voracious friend came from this house.

``Do you take Jesus for your Savior?’’ she asks sternly, suspecting the worst. She’s right.

``Well, not exactly,’’ I say, realizing I’m about to go over the edge. ``We believe he was a great teacher and historical figure.’’

``Oh my dear,’’ she says, ``let me help you understand the truth.’’ She reaches for the Bible and opens it. Mary sits up quickly.

``Mother,’’ she says, ``we have to go out. We’ll be back for dinner.’’ She stands and signals me.

``Uh – thank you, Mrs. Whickett. See you later.’’ As we go out the front door, I go limp with relief .

``Did I do all right?’’ I ask.

``Great,’’ she says and grins at me. I can see we are not going to talk about this, and that we never will. ``Let’s go to the movies.’’

She puts her arm through mine, and we swing into the freedom of the fresh winter air.

The Place Where He's Most Uncomfortable - Maria Robinson

2011-04-27T14:12:00.001-07:00

It was Stan's second full day in Tel Aviv. He'd woken up in the middle of the night and walked into a wall. He smashed right into the reality that he was not at home in New York on West Side Drive. Miriam had screamed when she heard the thud and turned on the bedside light. " Stan, Stan, are you alright? You're in Israel, Stan". Stan had found his way to the toilet and she could hear with sound of a light fountain. Holding him by the forearm, she ushered back into the unfamiliar bed in his wife's 'sabbatical" apartment.

The Place Where He's Most Uncomfortable - Francisco Mora

2011-04-27T14:11:00.000-07:00

At the top of a hill, the lane next to the taxi was moving in a steady stream. The taxi waited, twenty cars away from the light in the left-hand turn, waiting for a covered green. In the taxi, Jason turned to look looked at the cars flowing by. His thinking entered into that momentary disorientation that happens when you look at a moving and stationary object simultaneously. He didn’t say it, would he, he couldn’t know without saying something, or would that send the cabbie into rage like the one yesterday? Jason would be late though, and they would say ‘you’re always late’. He hates that but slightly less than sitting in a cab that’s going to be late and not making a suggestion he knows without doubt would make them early.

Jason’s thought had to, so it did get out, “you know, it’s a lot faster if you go straight here and turn left up at El Dorado a couple blocks because,”

“But you can get stuck right there in this intersection if someone crosses the street. That’s why I didn’t go that way.”

That’s true. But how many people walk in LA? He didn’t say it.

“You’re the boss, man, I’ll go straight, no problem.”

“It’s your call, really. I’m always open to new ways of getting around to avoid jams, which you guys always how to do.”

Jason stared and tried to focus on the poster behind the passenger seat in front of him of local restaurants in Silverlake and Los Feliz near downtown. The driver wasn’t unfriendly, assertive maybe. However, the exchange was enough to make Jason’s neck automatically go into spasms–side effects of chemotherapy on the brain’s command center. Then the neck and the shoulders started.

The cab reactivated Jasons’ authoritative personality and his prowess as a fine driver, professionally trained, to race cars and motorcycles for the fun of it. Driving performance was something Jason had taken for granted until illness made him dependent on other drivers and taxis. Come to think of it, though, taxis might not be the place where he is most uncomfortable.

He thought about the joke with his wife, that the worst part of the chemo sessions (even the surgeries to get tumors out of the neck and the hips) wasn’t the feeling of black substrate moving in his veins instead of nourishing red blood. (That river of void.) The worst thing was dealing with his father’s driving, that lurching tank plodding out of Cedars-Sinai. That broke all records. They had to break the arrangement made when Jason was twenty-four, that Jason would always drive, to avoid disastrous clashes. Dad, according to Jason, used the brakes more than the gas, and created dangerous situations—which wasn’t true.

Keeping it Clean - Bonnie Smetts

2011-04-27T14:10:00.000-07:00

Shadows dancing across his office wall had caught Dr. Sarin’s eye. He stared out the window at the trees whipped by the wind. His hand ran over the familiar grain of his wood desk and remembered his wife’s back and the shape of her spine. A year is along time to miss someone. He missed her company. Why hadn’t he been tenderer toward her. He remembered caressing the thickness of her legs and running his hands over the smooth firmness of her face.

Papers out of order on the far edge of his desk caught his eye and interrupted his memories. The sun shown on the sheets and without thinking he patted them into a stack. He moved the jar that held his pencils just to the right distance from the papers. He moved the blotter to align with the warn edge of the desk. He slid back from the desk.

His bookcase, he’d neglected his bookcase filled with titles from school and everything since. He’d added titles without thinking where they might best go. Someone had shoved several books on top of the ordered ones, horizontal stripes of color fighting the rhythm of the rest. He set about making order, moving one and then another, and then moving one and another again. It was like a game, like one of those games his friends played when they met. Chess or whatever they called it. Move here and move there. Keep the black markers one the white squares, or whatever they did.

It occurred to him that he might like to join them. He usually sat to the side and talked and enjoyed smoking with his friends. Rearranging. Would it be about arranging and rearranging? He pulled two books from the shelf and set them on the edge of the desk. They were of no interest to him. He must find someone to whom they would be.

Keeping it Clean - Arilia Winn

2011-04-27T14:09:00.000-07:00

If you're not a very clean person no one will want to marry you
If your room is not clean no one will want to marry you
If you don't have a white smile, no one will want to marry you
If you don't have a small waist no one will want to marry you
If you can't cook, no one will want to marry you
If you can't get pregnant, no one will want to marry you
If you can't remember to shower and stay fresh, no one will want to marry you.
If you don't remember to be polite, no one will want to marry you.

No one will ever want to marry you. Break any of these laws and you will be just like the rest of the women in this world, a bunch of belligerents.

Madam Ceri was the toughest of all. I didn't realize it at the time but all of here if this no one this nonsense, made sense.
It was her job to set us straight, and she did.

I'm 25 now and I always make sure that I stay clean and look nice. One day I want someone to marry me.

Keeping it Clean - E. D. James

2011-04-27T14:08:00.001-07:00

The stainless steel table gleamed beneath the bright examination room lights. The cranes body was stretched out in the center. It’s feathers gleamed from the cleaning it had been given when it was brought in from the field. The cranes body appeared shrunken to Olivia. She couldn’t tell if it was because it had lost weight due to its illness or if it was merely fact that its death had emptied it of the vitality of life. She photographed the body from several angles, focusing especially on the areas around the cranes beak and anus that were reddened by some unknown irritant.

After she had finished photographing the basic condition of the body she pulled on a mask and latex. She lay the crane on its back and positioned the light so that its breast and torso were brightly illuminated. She picked up a scalpel from the table to her right and then paused for a moment with blade just above the feathers. There was something about cutting into a wild creatures body that always disturbed Olivia. She knew it was irrational. She would chop a roasted chicken with a cleaver without flinching. She loved carving a turkey, carefully cutting the breast meat from the bone and separating the drumstick and thigh with a knife that cut through the tendons and popped the joint of bones apart. But there was something about violating the body of an creature that had been wild and free that was different from preparing a domesticated animal for dinner.

She slit the bird from the neck to the anus, laying it open. She used towels that she placed along its sides to keep its blood from dripping onto the floor. She reached into the body cavity and carefully felt each of the major organs. As she worked her way from the heart and lungs down to the gizzard and intestine she moved from a place where she was wondering why the bird had died to wondering how it stayed alive for so long. The digestive tract was looked as if it had been eaten away by some microscope swarm of piranha.

Keeping it Clean - Jennifer Baljko

2011-04-27T14:07:00.002-07:00

Rosa leaned in the doorway and watched Oriol take out all the silverware from the drawer closest to the sink. He piled the soupspoons, butter knives, forks, and scissors on the countertop, and then took out the plastic container that housed them and placed it on the table. She watched him dampen a paper towel with a spot of soap, and begin the meticulous task of cleaning out the crumbs that may have slipped into the tray these last days.

Oriol had mannerisms neither of them could explain. Some sort of obsessive-compulsive behavior he had inherited from his grandfather, his mother had once told him long ago when he was still a boy. Rosa hadn’t seen many of those traits in her husband, only tiny slivers of oddities in all their years together. Nothing special had raised flags before. But, since the accident, Rosa noticed with alarmingly frequency how instinctively the ticks would suddenly show up. Keeping the silverware drawer clean, for instance, had now become an almost daily pre-occupation. Ten years ago, the poor man didn’t even know which slot held which utensil; Rosa would often find knives in the fork slot after Oriol tried to “help” her in the kitchen.

“So much stress weighing his heart down,” she thought sadly. She sighed quietly. Rosa knew better to interrupt his routine, to sour his mood. She wrung the dishtowel she was holding, and slipped out the kitchen, leaving her husband alone with his mental fixations.

Something Illegal - Judy Albietz

2011-04-27T14:07:00.001-07:00

This afternoon my 2 ½ year old grandson announced, Bubbe, come on … time to take a nap. Read some books.” So, for the next half hour, we read about robots, penguins and trucks. He helped me turn the pages. He filled in some of the words since he remembered the story from last time. Then he wanted us to sing some of the Beatles and Peter, Paul and Mary songs we sang this morning while he ate his oatmeal. He finally settled on his personal favorite, Puff the Magic Dragon. He has most of the words memorized, particularly the part about painted wings and giant rings making way for other toys. His parents told me they aren’t wild about his learning this song. It truly is from a generation they don’t understand. They said they think the song is about pot. They’ve got it all wrong. It’s about a dragon and the little boy who was his friend and how the boy grew up and how the dragon missed his friend so much that he had no choice but to sadly slip into his cave. “Bubbe, what happened to the magic dragon?”

I started to tell him that the dragon was still there, in the cave, waiting for his friend to come back and play with him. But then I saw he’d fallen asleep. He had his bear tucked under his chest and he was hanging onto my little finger. I was glad I could wait for another day to answer his question at least with a partial truth.

Something Illegal - Christa Fairfield

2011-04-27T14:05:00.000-07:00

A nest egg. Yeah that’s what she needed. But unless she was willing to buy a gun and doing something illegal, Vi didn’t see that in her future. And, with her luck she would hold up a 7-11 immediately after their money drop or a bank with an AARP tour of retired FBI agents.

Sitting on the increasingly heated bench, popping gum wads off the sidewalk with the tips of her new Vince Camuto sandels, she concided that maybe she should have bought a cheaper used car and kept some money for car insurance. She should have known that a UPS truck would back up over her precious car fourteen days after driving it off the lot. Who wouldn’t expect such a thing.

“You need to be prepared for the unexpected, Violet.” Her father had told her the night before as she sat drinking the last glass of white zinfandel on her parents four-by-four cement back patio.

“Spect your right, dad,” Vi slurred tipping back the last of the wine and licking her licks. “But right now, I think I’ll go to bed,” she pushed the white molded chair back and dislodged herself, “and dream of better unexpected things.”

How She Imagined It - Jennifer Baljko

2011-04-19T17:17:00.000-07:00

She slid down the hallway, her socks of the fashionable not matching variety providing little resistance against the hard wood floor. One sock pink and orange, the other blue and white. She twirled around in her lime green and cotton white frilly skirt, yanking down at the pockets of her gray sweatshirt sweater. She sang some off-beat song she invented, something how she imagined how lunch would be and how there would be chocolate later. She’s 8 years old. Few things of great importance matter, but at the same time, everything matters and all at once everything is very important. She spins around her heading with foreign ideas she’s picking up in a foreign country. Her thoughts flit between what she thinks she knows what’s real and what she’s learning could be a different reality. Her twinkle with possibility.

How She Imagined It - Anna Teeples

2011-04-19T17:16:00.000-07:00

Three weeks later, Chance walked out of the “Divorce Center” office door. Everything about this place she hated. The stained brown shag carpet, the thirty-year-old fake walnut wood desks that chipped at the seams, the stacks of messy banker boxes in every corner and the awful amber multi-sided hanging light pendant in the corner. Mark wanted to move things along quickly and with a short-term marriage and no children together, they hardly had time to co-mingle assets.

Feeling grimy and sleazy, getting a cheapo quickie divorce, the mediator inferred that somehow she wanted this. Chance didn’t want a divorce. In fact, what she imagined was that at the mid-point of her life she would be settling into a relaxing semi-retired life with her new husband as her only son went off to college. Over the last year, it was clear that Chance was willing to tolerate Mark’s rage. Somewhere along the way she had given up on being happy with her partner and was willing just to ride the dead horse. Mark was absolutely the dead horse. He talked about death, about wanting to quit. To the outside world, he appeared to be jovial and carefree. Yet the more intimate side relieved that he was miserable, and felt he had no purpose. He just wanted out, to walk away, back to his life as man with his own personalized barstool at the neighborhood pub. This life worked for him and he liked it.

What She Got Out of It - Christa Fairfield

2011-04-19T17:15:00.000-07:00

The indulgence was beyond her discipline. She wondered the cobbled streets inhaling the humid aroma of time past swirled with this Tuesday. She licked her lips. Her eyes darted to the rough stone walls that drew her fingers. How could this city have preserved itself while her seventies suburban box was nearly falling over. The difference between quality construction and worthy architecture.

She stepped up to the gelato counter. God she loved this little exterior invitations to indulge in the creamy sweet goodness. What would she have today? She reviewed the flavors chocolate, hazelnut, vanilla. She realized she was working her way through the flavors every day. If she didn’t take anything else out of Venice, she at least got calories. Rich, delightful, stick to your hips calories. It wasn’t just the gelato there was the pasta, the risotto, and polenta mixed with fruits of the sea that she had only seen on the cooking channel back home.

Fragola, she struggled to pronounce to the boy’s efforts at English. Grazie they offered in unison. She turned east seeking the window of carved wooden everyday objects. Was her favorite the bundle of balloons or the coat rack with a man’s coat and hat appearing to hang but actually one with and smooth connected umbrella carved in as if it were propped against the rack. The warm hues of reds and gold’s felt alive. If it weren’t for the ever-present voice of her mother who was long passed reminder her “not to touch”, Carol would have caressed the masculine piece.

What She Got Out of It - E. D. James

2011-04-19T17:14:00.000-07:00

The envelope was the same as the first two. White. Cheap. No return address. Postmarked from Blagoveschensk in Siberia. After the first one she had investigated what connections to her work there might be in Blagoveschensk. She found that the Amur branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences had a facility there. It leant credibility to what the envelopes contained, but it didn’t answer the question of who had sent them.

The first envelope had contained three photographs were notes in ledger regarding radiological experiments conducted in a Soviet gulag prison in the early 1950’s. Audrey had taken the photos to the Russian language department at U. C. Berkeley to get the pages translated. The notes were an accounting of hospital beds, thermometers, spirometers and other equipment that were shipped to an unnamed camp.

The second envelope had contained a list of peoples names with dates. A note accompanying the list stated that the names where prisoners who had been killed in the radiological experiment. The note was printed in block letters with thick black marker. Both of the envelopes had also contained notes written with the same blocky style stating that Olivia’s life was in danger if she continued to be a part of the Arkhara project.

She pulled her simple silver letter opener from her top drawer and slid the thin tip up under the flap of the third envelope. She carefully slid the blade along the fold neatly cutting the envelope open, then set down the opener, and pulled the contents out. A photograph of an old graveyard with a few graying wooden crosses sticking up like broken teeth from a field was on top. She could see nothing identifying where the photo was taken. The second sheet was another of the notes with the blocky lettering. This one was more blunt than the previous two. It read, “You will be killed before you can leave for Siberia if you do not resign from the project immediately. Please heed this warning.”

What I Got Out of It - Lisa Jacobs

2011-04-19T17:13:00.000-07:00

“You’re so American Michael said to me. Michael was Canadian. Canadians are pleasant and genuine. Good people. Canadians are good people. Americans too, but sometimes a bit too arrogant, and not enough aware of what they don’t know.

Michael and I were friends; he worked for a Jewish human rights NGO (nongovernmental organization, sometimes also referred to as civil society organization, or CSO, although this is a more recent label) and I worked for the World Health Organization, or WHO. As in double u; H; Oh. Not “who”. Very gauche to call it “who” in global health circles.

We were at a dance to benefit something in Uganda – I’m not sure what it was, whether a women’s capacity building and empowerment program, an orphanage, a school, but it was a good cause. And, with a lot of partying Africans comes a great dance party. Only problem was, the light was too bright. We were in the basement cafeteria / large room with lots of fluorescent flood lights. Not conducive to dancing. But nobody seemed to be in charge of the lights; nobody took action.

So I went out in search of the light switch. I found a large panel, near one of the doors to the hall. I fussed and found a good combination – hall lights bright, dim lights in the room. More people started dancing.

That is when Michael called me out for being an American. Apparently only an American would have the ‘chutzpah’ to turn the lights off, without authorization. Everyone else was disappointed with the ambiance, but didn’t think it was up to them to do something about it.

Poison - Jackie Davis-Martin

2011-04-19T17:11:00.000-07:00

Poison. How can a veteran English teacher, such as I am, not think of Hamlet when she thinks of poison? Hamlet: The Poisoned Kingdom was the title of one of the reels I borrowed from the Country Library that lent out such things—a wonder, I thought in that day (although “wonder” associates itself with The Tempest)—for teachers to show their classes. That was in the 70’s, even before, in New Jersey, and, as I see it from my old perspective here, aloft in my third-story San Francisco flat, it was a time of Technicolor simplicity.

I realize the time wasn’t simple: life was fraught with tensions, mostly about money, many about sex. Then there was the raising of the children, which I saw as somewhat incidental to my job as a teacher. The classroom always came first; if the kids had school off, they came to my high school classrooms with me. They tagged along behind me to the rehearsals in the auditorium. As toddlers they sat huddled in the back seat as I dropped off the debate team members at their homes.

“You’re always reading Hamlet,” my young son said. “What’s it about?”

So, I told him the story of Hamlet, while he cuddled against me, sucking his thumb. He was probably eight. He sucked his thumb late. And he followed Hamlet.

The king has poisoned Hamlet’s father the ghost tells him. Hamlet must revenge. He doesn’t want to, though, not really. So he delays while the king gets the upper hand. In a moment of frenzy he kills the wrong person, Polonius, by stabbing blindly through a curtain.

(My son removed his thumb, holding it wetly for a moment in front of him. “Polonius. He’s the old guy, right?”)

Yes. The father of Hamlet’s girlfriend, who drowns herself in despair. The Poison? Enter the girlfriend’s brother, seeking his revenge. He’ll use a poisoned foil to duel Hamlet. The king will prepare a poisoned chalice (“That’s a big metal goblet for wine”) to give to Hamlet, just in case. But it doesn’t work out: the two duelists wound each other in an exchange, the queen drinks the poisoned chalice, and Hamlet, realizing, shoves the rest of the wine down the king’s throat and then stabs him with the poisoned sword for good measure.

Hamlet thought too much. Hamlet cared too much. Hamlet suffered too much. Or, the part I liked best: Hamlet loved his mother too much. (As a mother, I didn’t see the harm in that.) But he didn’t stand a chance in that place so contaminated with greed and selfishness, so corrupt with decay, like Yorick’s skull, which he handles thoughtfully.

Poison is Hamlet.

I know, I know. It’s also Snow White, or the Sleeping Beauty. It’s in lots of things: Browning’s poetry, Madame Bovary, Arsenic and Old Lace, Hitchcock mysteries.

Taking poison must be harder than stories make it seem.

But people use it metaphorically, as did Shakespeare. “He was poison.” “What a toxic thing to say!”

But let’s end this: my kids grew up, I moved away and began again, one of the steadying influences in my life the fact that Hamlet stayed. He settled into new classrooms. We all grew old, one of us died. There was no poison in my life: none. I mean, real poison.

Poison - Kate Bueler

2011-04-19T17:10:00.000-07:00

Poison. It was hard to know what was the man's poison as he entered the cafe door first opening the hard wooden framed glass and then the thin screen to step into the room. It was hard to know what the man's poison had been or would be. There he stood as my eyes shoot him a look up and down the look of junior high in adulthood moves across my face. I am judging him. I am laughing at him. In my head. There stands a man in a full black trench coat that reaches to the end of his calfs and sunglasses that never moved from the position on his face on his nose resting there. In one hand he has an oversized blue bucket and in the other a pint glass. What was this man's poison? What had willed him to dress in all black and bring in his accessories of a bucket and a pint glass? Was he coming in from a long night gone terribly wrong or right? Was he mourning the loss of something? Was he there to fix something? Was he on his way to fight crime welding a bucket and a pint glass?

This man is why I love this city. You never know what you will see. Weird here is just plan normal and weird anywhere else would never turn a head here. I stare at this man and watch him interact with the barista as if he is wearing the uniform of his sunday best or workout clothes. He acts normal. For this is normal for him.

I can't help but wonder about him so much that when he leaves my inquisitive mind that can't be held still goes to the barista, a man with an unkept beginning of a beard, a v neck shirt with a small hole on the top, and a longish torso and wide shoulders of masculinity. Whats with the dude and the bucket and the pint glass? He smiles and his eyes lighten as he throat reverberates in laughter. Oh he comes in that outfit everyday- and he always has that pint glass. That pint glass he stole from us. I try to get it back every time. But even when I take it away from him. He leaves with it. Not sure how. When I'm not looking. It is weird I don't take a plate from a restaurant and bring it back when I return. And the bucket- I offer. He extends- he is always working on something and sometimes its a bucket or something else. He comes in everyday. Everyday in that trench coat and glasses caressing the pint glass.

And that is where asking makes sense. I have no idea what this guy is made of- I have no idea his poison. But what I do know is he brought me and barista and others the free entertainment of uniqueness. And that I like to drink. Daily. With or without a pint glass in hand.

Poison - Maria Robinson

2011-04-19T16:56:00.001-07:00

Instead of getting really really old, how about poison?
I'll dress up to the nines in a black cocktail dress, high heels and pearls and make my way to the swishy bar at the W Hotel. There, I'll camp out with tequila shots and flirt with all comers.

And when I reach the end of the night, I plop those strichnine capsules down into my last drink. The white billowy curtains in the front of the doors will flutter one last time as the revolving doors turn and then I'll be gone.

Saturday the Chron headline will tell it all.

What Happened Next - Bonnie Smetts

2011-04-19T16:55:00.000-07:00

Marjorie couldn’t help what happened next. Shivers ran down her back and propelled her away from the snake and out into the crowd. She couldn’t control her revulsion to the reptile or the terror at what might happen next. She pushed out of the knot of people and walked.

She didn’t know she had been walking until a rush of saris startled her. She stopped and let people stream around her. One direction all she could see was colors and people and more people. In the other direction the same. The group that hid the snake charmer had disappeared. She did not recognize the curled top of one pandal from the one further away. How long had she been wandering. Where was Renee.

She took two steps in one direction. She stopped. The sounds overcame her and the people passing on the street began to stare. Or were they simply staring at her staring desperately at them. She turned as if on a pedestal. Not one thing looked familiar. She stepped again, praying she’d see something ordinary and familiar. Renee or Ash or a miracle.

Panic, deep and hot rose from her feet. Not panic at seeing a snake, not at kind that could come and go in an instant, but searing and infinite. She was lost.

“Marjorie, Marjorie.” Renee’s cry broke through her fear. “Marjorie.” She moved toward the sound of her name. She pushed into a group of women who were laughing and carrying one. Right through the middle of them. “Marjorie.” Her name drew her along. “Marjorie.” But her name began drawing away, gaining an unbearable distance. “Marjorie.” She pushed her way through the crowd following the diminuendo of her name. She screamed. “Reneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.” She stopped where she was and screamed. Everyone around her backed away; they stopped and looked with embarrassment at the white woman screaming in their midst, in the midst of their celebration, in the midst of a happy time when people did not scream in fear.

What Happened Next - Vanessa Hsu

2011-04-19T16:54:00.000-07:00

What happened next took a few weeks of rehashing and piecing together by the five of us to finally nail down, a causal sequence of events and a somewhat orderly timeline of the events that happened. It was surprising to me how difficult it was. If I had to describe it in three sentences, like I did to the police, I would just say: “They came in and robbed our house in the middle of our BBQ. I guess we had left our door halfway shut to not bother going back downstairs.” There, I did it in two. If I had to add a third, I would say, “this kind of thing shouldn’t happen here, should it?”

In reality though, between my sister and her husband, myself and two of the earliest arriving friends, Mona and Jack, it took us several to remember all the details and resolve the conflicting ones of what happened after the four men, spastic, seemingly as or more nervous than we were, came in with guns pointed and ski masks on. We had the usual minutes, perhaps a few quarter hours, after the fact where everyone looks around, eyes shooting in a few different directions and the creeping sensation in our skin slowly subsided (at least that’s the way it was for me and how I thought everyone else felt). Then there was the obvious, “let’s call the police” and before we even did that, we looked at each other and had to slowly pull the information out of each other, were they three guys? Four? Did we think they had accents? What build were they? Guys, guys, really do we have to start racially profiling? No, that’s not what we’re doing, we’re being factual. Bickering – the leftover stress spilling over to our scared psyches into silly arguing. Then we had to try to remember what was taken, what was taken? Laptops, jewelry in a few boxes, stuff in wallets. That was difficult too, how is it so easy to become so hazy?

Then the cops came, and feeling like we were doing something about it felt better, and not having had our locks broken in helped the feeling of security sink back in a lot faster, and having others around, sirens, note-scribbling, people measuring distances on the floor and reciting our inventory back to them – it felt better because we had to pretend we weren’t shaken and shake off the confusion and fear.

And then followed a week of silence, everyone staying back in their own routines, getting back to them and not speaking much about it, until we had dinner again at a restaurant this time (public place, just in case it was our party of five which brought bad luck, I thought and then mocked my superstition). But we had to fill out a detailed police report, so what happened in the few minutes after the four (really, four? Not three?) walked in? We sat down at dinner and tried mapping it out. It was both amusing how hard it was to remember, and it was also strange how foreign and distant the events felt.

It started like this, they said, “everyone, freeze!” and came in pointing in different directions, standing in a semicircle with their backs protecting each other. I’m sure they saw that in a movie somewhere just like we had. And then, what happened?

What Was Behind the Door - Judy Albietz

2011-04-19T16:53:00.002-07:00

Since time had no meaning in the darkness, Josh couldn’t tell how much time had passed since the lights went out. He wasn’t even sure if he’d been conscious the whole time. He wasn’t receiving any of the normal signals from his body. No thirst or hunger pangs. He felt numb. Even though his brain rumbled with anxiety, he couldn’t feel his heart pounding with fear. All he sensed was that he was there—suspended in space, watching the nothingness around him. Over and over again, he reviewed the thought that he might be dead. Then he worried that he might still be alive. He dreaded whatever was going to happen next. He hoped something—anything—would happen to break the monotony.

He heard a snapping sound to his right and the outline of a closed door appeared. It was as if someone had drawn the door on a blackboard with white chalk. He would have gasped if he had a voice. He didn’t think it was possible to be even more possessed by fear. He didn’t want the door to open. At the same time, he was panicked it would remain closed, keeping him in the dark.

It was now or never. He had to make a decision. He had to somehow will that door to open. It was the only way he would ever hear her voice again—see her face again.

Even before he finished this thought process, Josh found himself on the other side of the door. At first the sunlight was blinding. After a few seconds he was able to look out on the scene around him. This was the world he had earlier seen on the panel. He sensed movement in his body. He was able to bend his head down. The nausea returned as he looked at his hands. legs and feet. They were not his.

What Was Behind the Door - Elizabeth Weld Nolan

2011-04-19T16:53:00.001-07:00

Each door keeps secrets.
I hold my breath the moment
before I reach, touch,
Turn the knob, push an inch,
Then wide open. I know,
For instance, the back hall
Will be dim, innocently furnished
With brooms, dust pan, wine rack,
The door to the little elevator
That comes from the garage.

But. There could be a body
Slumped against the wall,
An intruder waiting
To spring, enter and steal,
A flood leaping or fire raging.
Instead, so far, I find
Silence edged by the even hum
Of the refrigerator
On the other side of the wall,
Comforting tools of keeping house.
Until I come, next time.

What Was Behind the Door - Melody Cryns

2011-04-19T16:50:00.000-07:00

Everyone always knew me as the fun, happy-go-lucky kid without a care in the world, careening down the street on a skateboard and swerving away from anything or anyone that got in my way – Opening the door into my consciousness is another story altogether because it’s not easy.

What is my story? I mean, really? Just the other night, I sat at an Irish Pub in Belmont with Belo, my fellow student at NDNU – we had shared our stories and words in graduate creative writing classes – his story the most amazing of all – Belo was assaulted in San Francisco while working at a bar in the Castro in San Francisco and, as a result, he is now completely blind. His memoir and stories revolve around his journey and begins two weeks after he realizes he is now completely blind and his life has changed drastically.

Belo’s stories were always among my personal favorite – he’d have me or someone in the class read, and at the student readings when we all got to read for 20 minutes, his reader was right before me. I hadn’t actually seen Belo since we graduated last May – so reconnecting with him and my professors finally was truly inspiring.

So there we sat in the Irish pub, me, Belo and Kerry, one of our professors who really wants me to pursue my children’s fiction story, “The Fate of Stubs” about the young girl in San Francisco who can’t have a three-legged guinea pig. The story takes place in the 1960’s in San Francisco, of course. But in the end, I went for the creative nonfiction about the struggling single mom with four kids – there are so many stories and people say that sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.

Among my stories in my massive collection, 250 pages of which formed into my creative thesis for my master’s program, reside so many struggles, fun, music, love and adventure – and the door creeks open in certain areas, letting my consciousness in, allowing a bit of light and insight – yet the door hasn’t burst wide open yet. I’m opening it rather slowly – my mother always said I was stubborn and that I always did everything in my own time.

Well, c’mon. I’m going to be a Grandma and still I haven’t done anything with all the material I have. It’s time. I used to promise my kids when we struggled and sometimes barely had enough money for groceries or rent, “Some day, I’ll publish a book and we won’t struggle anymore, and we’ll be able to go on real vacations and have a lot more fun!”

My kids were so trusting, they believed me. They believed in my dream…but really it was a way to keep the hopes alive that we wouldn’t lose our place to live, and the dream always burned in my heart…yet I wasn’t able to quite get my hundreds of words out there, get them over the edge.

Last year when I read from my work, I looked out on to the people at the beautiful Ralston Hall Mansion at NDNU in Belmont – and I saw, mixed in with students, my son Jeremy and my daughter Megan, my friends, Phoenix and Debby – and my long-time friend of 30 years, Heidi, who had flown down from Washington to be there for my reading. “Do you want me there for the reading or the graduation?” Heidi had asked. Of course the readings…that’s what’s really important.

Two of my kids couldn’t make it – so when I read the first piece about leaving Germany with the kids to start a new life as a single mom when the kids were young, who did I look straight at? Jeremy. Then I read a piece about trying to get out of the house with three kids in grammar school and a full-time job ending with the “Bong Incident,” a very funny piece about finding a bong in my kids’ bedroom and throwing it out a second story window.

The stories are there, and the door has opened – but what is it about, really and truly?

Melody grew up in San Francisco in the 1960’s right near the Haight Ashbury – she and her friends and siblings played among the hippies and the sounds of conga drums beating and constant music playing, along with smells of patchouli and pot blended with the eucalyptus trees in Golden Gate Park. Melody always pictured herself being independent and living the Bohemian life – she told her mother she admired the people standing on street corners playing guitars because they were doing exactly what they wanted to be doing. Of course, Melody’s Mom, although she was cool and loved the Beatles and the Grateful Dead, freaked out.

But life didn’t work out the way she expected it to, as often is the case. Melody married a guy in the military she met on a BART train going from San Francisco to Hayward – and ended up living in Germany for several years.

Then a few years later, she left Germany with three kids, $200 and seven suitcases and ended up being a struggling single mom. Yet memories of her childhood never left her – both the good and the bad, nor did the music or her love for the Beatles…as she and her kids struggled to survive in a harsh world that wasn’t always kind to single moms, there was always music, fun and adventure. She has a fourth kid along the way and her mother passes away suddenly – and they make a big move from Oregon to California, close to San Francisco where Melody grew up.

The Memory I Wouldn't Let Go Of - Vanessa Hsu

2011-04-10T12:25:00.001-07:00

There was a particular taste to mangoes that summer. They would spew juice, the stringy fibers in the fruit barely holding up as soon as our teeth sank in, and our hands would end up enveloped in orange pulp without even pressing that hard. Sometimes they'd be much sweeter than others, bordering on overripe -- there were so many mangoes that we would pick them up from underneath the tree shades instead of beating them all down with a stick while still hanging.

There was a particular smell to the air before the rain too (but it was always right before raining) -- thick and muggy, stuck to our nostrils. We'd try to cut through the heat with ice cream overdose, but even the ice cream would have trouble dripping down the few feet to the ground. The melted layer around the still-iced ice cream, thick like the air around us, would sluggishly slide down its own surface, eventually release and suspend itself midair for a few seconds, and then finally, forming a multicolor drip painting on the concrete below our feet. It seemed that everyone was eating and painting and raining ice cream.

The taste of the rain was also different. It was tropical rain -- a mesh of humidity surrounded us at all times and when it decided to fall, it was a delirious release, curtains of water, layers upon layers of delicious heavy drops so big our ice cream paintings would vanish in a second and the mangoes still on the ground were beaten down to pulp, releasing their sweetness as the fragrance that would then envelop everything around us.

It was nature's assault to my senses that summer, and the smells and tastes are stuck on me.

The Memory I Wouldn't Let Go Of - Lisa Jacobs

2011-04-10T12:24:00.000-07:00

The first memory I have of my overwhelming insecurity was when I was 5 years old. 5 years old! Are children that young supposed to feel so insecure? My friend Sophia, who had to be my friend because we were born 8 days apart and our moms met at the playground and our older siblings were friends, was inviting me to her new friend Liane’s house. Sophia went to a different elementary school from me because we lived in different school districts, although only two blocks apart. And Liane apparently had a phenomenal collection of Barbie’s. I really wanted Liane to like me because I wanted to play with her Barbie’s. I only had one, and I didn’t have any cute outfits or dreamhouses or cars – my mom sewed the few outfits I could dress her in. So as I walked to Liane’s house, I looked down and saw the freckle I hated on my right wrist. I covered it, and decided I would keep it covered when I met Liane. It was ugly and I didn’t want her to decide she didn’t like me because of my ugly freckle. The freckle is barely noticeable now, surrounded as it is with all of the other freckles that have popped up over the years.

It wasn’t until I was 13 that all my fears about being a loser were confirmed. Really and truly confirmed. I was a freshman in high school (one year younger than my peers because I had skipped a grade in elementary school) and I had to ride a long bus ride from the Marina district to Lowell High in the Sunset. My sister was a senior that year, but we never sat together on the bus. We would always sit in the single seats, on the right side of the bus. My friend Sarah, who lived in the Richmond, would sometimes catch our bus, and sometimes not, later in its route. Sarah had gone to a different middle school than I had; we met in a summer program and I was excited to be her high school friend. She had a whole group of cool friends – some of the girls even had boyfriends. Sarah didn’t. She was a big girl, like me, but she was a jock, and I wasn’t.

So on this fateful day Sarah’s group got on at their stop and I left my single seat to hang out with them for the rest of the ride in the back of the bus. That night, my sister told me that as she was sitting at an open window, she overheard Sarah say, “Oh no, there’s Lisa” when Sarah spotted me on the bus. My sister thought I should know this important piece of information. I didn’t blame her; it was useful to know that I was not liked. I never hung out with Sarah and her friends again.

The Memory She Wouldn't Let Go Of - Elizabeth Weld Nolan

2011-04-10T12:22:00.000-07:00

The young woman stood on the flat deck of the catamaran in her bathing suit holding the boom as if it were a ballet barre. He held the tiller with a light hand and guided the little boat through the breezes of the Sound, watching her go through her routine.

Feet in first position, ankle to ankle, toes apart making a V. Slide out into a point, back, out. Demi plie at the end. His fond gaze warmed her. He had said he always wanted a dancer. She was an amateur, but their shared enthusiasm for her ambition bonded them, kept her going to classes and looking for a group to perform with.

They formed a complete two, complete in the summer air on the sparkle of waves, under afternoon clouds that swelled in the blue sky and climbed as the wind strengthened and the boat picked up speed. He moved the tiller deftly, at ease with the speed of the wind and capturing its energy with the sail. He sailed intuitively, his muscles moving easily under his skin, as if he never had to be taught. His brown skin gleamed in the sunlight and his thick brown hair fell over his eye.

Her movements and the sweat that trickled down between her breasts encased in the red bikini top promised them both the intimacy to come later in the day, another thread in the new secret bond that grows between newlyweds. She felt him watching her brown legs stretch and lift, her knees thrusting forward over her bent legs like his warm hands stroking her, his gaze, her receiving it, the promise of lovemaking to come.

He turned the boat to a deserted shore. No buildings in view, no people. She jumped onto the sand and hauled on the crosspiece of the bow. He joined it and they hauled together until it slid high up away from the little waves lapping on the sand. The tide was going out.

They worked together without speaking. He hauled the sail down and they rolled and tied them. She coiled lines and stowed them under the seat. She took the canvas bag with the food, sleeping bags, blankets and clothes to the beach. She spread it under a tree near a bush, arranged the goods and food around the edge of the blanket, a little home, a girl playing at keeping house.

He sat cross-legged on the blanket, watching her set out the food, watching her in her new role as caregiver, wife, no longer taking care of herself only. She knelt to her task feeling her role as pleasant, arousing, happy, never wondering why she relinquished her independence so easily, or when she would feel it again. For now, these bonds felt delicious, as did his hand stroking her spine and pulling her towards him. They embraced, tasting each others’ brown salty skin, and fell to the blanket, kissing. For now, this was enough.

Memory - E. D. James

2011-04-10T12:21:00.002-07:00

The crumpled skull contained in the camouflage cap stained Olivia’s memory. She knew she had been right, but wrong. She should have merely stood and shouted and scared the crane and diverted the shot. Then there would be no wrong . But some force had overtaken her. A lifetime of frustration at men who would destroy things that were so fragile with weapons that were such overkill. The worst thing about these men was their egos. Their bragging about being able to kill a defenseless creature in a completely unfair fight. She ran into these men in the bars and restaurants in the little towns that were her home when she was working in the field. Lately she’d begun to run into them at the fundraisers that SWF held. Their lust for killing had be slightly diverted into doing something good by preserving wetlands so there would be more birds for the hunt.

Seeing that man in the camouflage with his gun worth thousands of dollars with the calibrated sight and custom ammunition about to kill an endangered crane had just pushed her to a place that was elemental. She’d acted before she could think. Now she couldn’t get the picture out of her mind.

Giving Up - Bonnie Smetts

2011-04-10T12:21:00.001-07:00

A day, it took one day after the conversation with Charlotte. Her daughter had said what she said, the truth. It took a day, one day for the knowledge of what she’d done to seep in. How can you take a child and raise her in a strange place and not have ruined her life, set the course of her life so permanently wrong.

Marjorie was shocked she could now sit in the salon chair and have her hair cut. She starred at her hands and felt the truth of what she’d done. She’d done it. That was it. She’d done it.

“Mrs. Patton, can you look up in to the mirror? You’re squirming a bit today. I can’t make cut your hair evenly with your head sloping down.”

Marjorie laughed, a tiny expression of embarrassment. “I guess your gentle hands on my head were putting me to sleep.”

“That’s OK, ma’am. I’ve had ladies fall asleep on me before. I take it as a compliment. That is unless were talking.” Now the hairstylist laughed.

“How is your Lucy?” Marjorie watched herself walk into the oncoming saw blade.

“She’s such a doll, that girl. You know she’s turning 5 this weekend. She’s a big girl now. And she’ll tell you that.”

As in a nightmare when you scream but no sound comes out, but you know this time you’re going to scream loud enough for someone to hear you…Five years old. Charlotte’s age when they moved away. “And she’s in school near where you live?”

“Of course, and my mum watches her when I’m here.” The hairstylist continued to snip and gently raise and fluff Marjorie’s gray hair. “Have you thought of a rinse? We could make your hair a bit shinier, a bit brighter you know. Not a big change.”

Marjorie starred at herself. The person who set her child’s future without knowing it would be irreversible. “Yes, I’ll …no, I hadn’t thought about it. But why not today.” Marjorie was beyond thinking about making the best of herself, but why not the rinse.

Giving Up - Kate Bueler

2011-04-10T12:20:00.000-07:00

Giving up. Giving up to me has always been a foreign concept. Something I knew existed in some other realm but nothing I had a close relaitonship with. Nothing I had spent much time with. Nothing I had smelt under my beautiful imperfect slightly crooked nose. Nothing I had tasted before inside the fine lines of lips I have. It was what other people did. For I didn't take no for answer. That had its failure too, the not giving up.

Watching someone give up before your eyes happens regugularly for me. It happens mostly with the kids. I see her eyes frustration with her inability to get her multipication tables as I hold the card in front of her. I don't know it, she says with words and with her eyes and the crinkles around and growing on her face. See she is good at most things. Reading chapter books in the beginning of reading and the weekly pursue of the week. Lingutically she excels but this math thing-it takes work. And she gives up as you lay the cards out to play them. But you the caretaker won't let her give up. She can't. For these printed cards with numerals and lines and xs will not be her only challenge but for right now feels like the biggest she ever will have. We can't be good at everything- I know- but she is still learning. We have to practice. It takes time. And it so easy to give up upon that bump in that road making us have to twist and turn in ways we aren't comfortable.

With him math comes easier but many things do not and it is hard to feel accomplished in the glow of the older sister. He is the dectective of the house able to find anything lost. He will find it. He is brave in his choice to stand in front of his classmates and talk about being made fun of. And he dreams of playing on the giants. The major league team. He looks at me with all believing eyes and says, you know all the pros started in little league. And they did. He is right. But his only relationship with a ball, a baseball has been being scared of it. I don't want him to give up. So we practice. First with a tennis ball and without a glove, builiding his confidence until he has the hard ball descending towards him. The hard baseball comes and he winces, again. Let's try grounders, I say. He travels back and forth. His throw imporving and then he throws to an invisible person next to me. And then the hard ball with the catching and the misses, we are in the abyss of misses, until he catches and the excitement in a yelp from me and a glow from him. I don't want him to give up either. For it will be hard. But seeing his little success makes him less scared to go. Go on that field again.

Part of giving up, part of feeling like you should be giving up is something I didn't think I knew- I knew personally. Maybe it was the fear of asking for help. Maybe it was the fear of failure. But now I ask for help. And I do take no for an answer. Sometimes. As I help others not give up- I realize the gift of it- is believing in someone- that they can- even if you believe in ways outside yourself and outside of them. I dream bigger then I should and maybe I want them to too. Dream of flying and major leagues and having 4 professions and a day of just sugar. I guess the never giving up allows the dreaming to happen. And me not giving up has always meant a yes eventually will happen. I do give up now when I have to. When I know I can't be in two places at once or need to throw money at a problem. But the never giving up stays with me along my side and I use it when I need to. When I need to get somewhere far, where I see someone who needs someone to believe- they can get there too. I am not done dreaming and being inside someone else's dreams allows me to keep dreaming too.

Leaving it Behind - Jackie Davis Martin

2011-04-10T12:18:00.000-07:00

Roseann had left a number of things behind. She’d left her best earrings behind once, silver loops twisted with gold (neither real silver nor real gold, she suspected, but pretty all the same and matching everything, their being two metals), in a motel, forcing herself to drive up and down a highway the next morning before reporting to the high school where she taught, looking and looking for the motel that had that orientation of drive. She’d remembered pulling in sort of near an ice machine and walking three doors to the room assigned to her and the man, taking off the earrings and setting them down.

She kept her self-possession that morning as the tall guy with narrow eyes from the front office escorted her to the room she indicated—and there were her earrings, still on the side table. She thanked the man, shifted her shoulder bag and walked briskly in her heels, her skirt swaying, knowing he was watching and thinking any number of things, as she got in her car and drove to first period.

She’d also left behind a coffee maker, a real espresso machine, one of the first available, at Sam’s shore house. She guessed that it rightfully belonged to Sam, since he’d given the coffee machine to her, like an engagement ring, which he hadn’t. He’d given her lots of things, though, including—at least partially—a trip to Italy where they’d first had espresso, and the largesse of his vacation home at the shore, their relationship getting cozy to the point where she’d sewn checkered curtains for his windows and he’d purchased her a coffee machine that made foaming milk, if one could work the nozzle right, which she couldn’t seem to do. There turned out to be a number of things she couldn’t seem to do, like be a good mother and a good girlfriend at the same time, often leaving the kids behind to please Sam, and ultimately, not even being able to do that. So, after the last fiasco at the shore home, which left them both unsatisfied and a little angry and unhappy with each other, she hadn’t returned, hadn’t even bothered to reclaim the machine she’d dragged down there (he’d given it to her in her own house) so they could relive the old happiness, leaving it behind and feeling the loss of it, too, on top of the loss of Sam.

Then Roseann left her whole house behind. She took her car, with her new boyfriend, Bart, in it, and drove from New Jersey to California. There were evenings when they’d set up the tent in some National Park that she wondered what the hell she was doing, wondered about the house that she’d lived in for twenty-three years, the kids now gone from it anyway, but leaving no home to come home to. She’d snuggle next to Bart in a sleeping bag—or sometimes a motel room, when they’d spring for spending more cash—happy but unsettled, even in the San Francisco apartment which seemed temporary, like a motel, with its futon and cardboard tables, the kitchen set with three chairs they’d purchased at a garage sale. She felt as though she was involved in one of those scenes in front of the curtain while sets were being changed behind it to reveal ultimately the big story, the big picture, the real meaning of it all.

She did go back to collect the house. More or less. It was hers and when the renters left she considered moving back into it; instead, she sold it, leaving it behind for good.

Or so she thought. It wasn’t totally true. There was her daughter, who remained in the area, not very far from the house she’d grown up in, although in a different state, and Roseann visited every year, once at least, where they’d drive highways once familiar, once even past their old house, changed with new windows, new shrubs, down to a Jersey shore that had no associations, past motels of no particular orientation at all on their way to a museum or shopping center. When her daughter died, Roseann returned once more, packing up and giving away everything, carting back and sending what she wanted, knowing that no matter what she had in hand, this time she was truly leaving a way of life a life, behind.

Leaving it Behind - Melody Cryns

2011-04-10T12:16:00.000-07:00

It didn’t occur to me when I eloped with Stephen with a ph in Lake Tahoe that I’d have to leave everyone and everything behind.

“Can’t believe you’re going to leave,” my friend Victri said, the two of us sitting in my bright green Vega wagon that kept breaking down – looking out on to the ocean.

Maureen coughed and passed a joint to us – it was the beginning of 1980 when we watched the sun set into the ocean – this is what I’d miss the most, I thought.

But it’s what I wanted, I thought, as I took a small toke of the joint. I wasn’t much of a pot smoker, but every now and again it was good. This just seemed like the right moment.

“Can’t believe it either.” I don’t think it sunk in for any of us – I’d known Maureen and Victri practically my whole life. I grew up in San Francisco and hadn’t lived anywhere else since I was five years old when we moved to San Francisco from Chicago – oh yeah, I had that short stint in Hayward with that boyfriend and my sister and I rented an apartment in Redwood City for a little while – but I’d never moved far away.

Now here I was leaving on a plane – early tomorrow morning.

“Of course we’ll have a going away party for you tonight,” Maureen said. “Mom’s pulling something together.” Maureen’s mom was like my surrogate Mom – my mother lived all the way up in Oregon and I was staying with Mary Doherty and her kids in San Francisco for a little while waiting to head for Germany – I had tried staying with my new mother-in-law and all of Stephen’s brothers and sisters in Hayward, but that was a huge disaster.

That night I sat in Mary Doherty’s living room – my Dad and my sister Jennifer had showed up –what a surprise! And, all of my close friends were there, Paula who traveled all the way from Sacramento to say good-bye, and Cathy, and all the Meehan family whom I’d grown up with and known since I was five years old – Mary Doherty, of course and Eileen, Maureen and Kathleen, her kids – and Victri, the daughter of my mom’s best friend since I was five – everyone was there crammed into Mary Doherty’s living room.

I’ll never forget that night as long as I live…Michael Meehan had showed up with a brown paper bag on his head – and he set it on fire and acted like everything was just normal while I freaked out and everyone laughed. Mike Meehan, believe it or not, went on to become a successful comedian, appearing on Comedy Central TV quite a few times. That didn’t surprise me. I’d known Mike Meehan since we were little kids and he was always cracking jokes and pulling pranks with his brothers Howard and Johnny and Chris. Katie and Dolores Meehan, and Meg Meegan along with their mother were all there too.

“Play your guitar!” Kathleen had said – she was around 10 years old then. I remembered babysitting for her sisters Eileen and Maureen before Mary D. had Kathleen and how that summer we all thought she was going to be a little boy.

So I strummed the chords and played a few songs – some Eagles songs I used to play and sing with Eileen and Maureen when they were younger, and then Leavin’ on a Jet Plane, one of our favorites.

As I began to strum the chords and sang, it all hit me – I was leaving behind my life here in San Francisco and heading for Germany the next morning to be with a husband I didn’t know too well except through letters.

I started the words, “All my bags are packed I’m ready to go, I’m standing here outside your door..” and then I choked up and began to cry – it was so embarrassing because the room was crammed with all of my friends and the people who were family to me – everyone there in that one room at Mary Doherty’s flat in San Francisco on 15th Avenue. I kept playing the chords, but I choked on the words, feeling overwhelmed with emotion.

Then I heard the singing – it was my Dad filling in the words I couldn’t sing, his voice a mid-tenor range, slow and true…”I hate to wake you up to say good-bye!!!”

Then others joined in, and before I knew it, everyone in the room sang Leavin’ on the Jet Plane while I played the song on my guitar completely unable to sing – and in the song I could feel so much love…

And I knew as I played the end of Leavin’ on the Jet Plane that things would never be the same again after this night in San Francisco, that I’d come back again of course, but this moment in time with all these people I loved and cared about in one room, would never happen again.

Everyone clapped and cheered when the song was over, and then we were all quiet for a moment.

They knew too…

Frenzy - Christa Fairfield

2011-04-10T12:15:00.000-07:00

I watched my daughter dip and spin in the Pink tutu my mother sent as a late birthday gift.

“Watch this Daddy,” Veronica sang across the lawn.

“I’m watching, honey,” I said back.

Her bare feet were lost in the long blades. The twin braids she’d proudly wove the night before slapped her shoulders and checks.

“Can you see, El?” I asked of the pale blue sky. My palms stretched across my knees.

“Watch this Daddy,” Veronica called as she tipped onto her right toe, touched the ground with the tips of her right hand and attempted to turn. “I’m like a ballerina.” She sang out before falling over on her left knee.

“Try again.” I encouraged.

“El, can you help her?” I asked of the sky. “Can you extend yourself to us? Hold our daughter up so she doesn’t fall?” I wiped the emotion from my eyes and looked across the lawn. Veronica was singing I’m a little tea pot while she twisted, tipped and spun.

“I can’t keep her safe alone.” I said into the void.

Frenzy - Maria Robinson

2011-04-10T12:14:00.000-07:00

You turned sixty and had no one living to look up. Had you really scaled the mountain, reached the top of a male profession only to be told to retreat to quiet summers on your lake front porch in Michigan. During sleepless nights as you pulled at what little hair you had bleached Hollywood spun gold, you knew you had to maneuver into a way to get out. Out of the feckless days which left you breathless, out of the hours of waiting for the perfect life script to call you for casting, out of the tedium of people thinking you were still on the ladder up and in their way, while in reality, you were floating on air.

Stillness - Jennifer Baljko

2011-04-10T11:56:00.000-07:00

Oriol slammed the door behind him, trudged down the flight of stairs, and dragged his feet down the street. When he got to the train station, he sat on a bench and stared up at the board announcing arriving and departing trains. He lingered in absolute stillness, only his eyes darting about, catching glimpse of people walking by. He wondered where they were going. He wished them a safe trip, a safe return. Oriol couldn’t really ever make himself look at train tracks again, not after the accident. But, he could never, shake off the jolt he got from the bustle of train stations. It was a childhood wonder he carried with him, and didn’t want to fade away.

Birth - Camilla Basham

2011-03-31T15:49:00.001-07:00

Sometimes the very last row of pecan trees was a unbroken violet blue wall just a tad darker than the heavens but this afternoon it was almost indigo and behind that great never ending sky was a bruised dazzling white.

Peaches Delaney was leaning against the red of the house, her arms folded, resting on a cliff of belly, her legs crossed at the calf and her left toe spading the ground. She was a robust woman with a tiny barbed wire face and perpetual ferreting blue eyes.

Cherry was just the opposite. Small and slender body with a large round moon face and brown eyes that always seemed widened behind her coke bottle glasses as if in a state of constant shock. She was bent over pulling up weeds out of the bed of marigolds around the house. The two cousins wore large floppy sun hats that were once identical but Peaches’ had since turned a dull washed out shade of pale, bent and hanging low like the moss on an oak tree. Cherry’s hat was just as stiff as a good whiskey and vivid green.

“You hear about that young girl from Bogalusa that birthed that dead baby then up and died herself the very next minute?” Peaches asked.

“I read about her in the Herald.” Cherry answered looking up with a surprised expression, though not really surprised at all. “What of it?”

“She was a Roberts, married a Delaney, so she’s kin to us; something like a sixth or seventh cousin by marriage.”

“Is that so?” Cherry tossed a giant chunk of dandelion weeds and onion grass as if they were the devil itself come to wipe out the good earth and she the saint who would never allow such a fate.

“Seeing as how she was kin to us, we seen the body.” Peaches dug her toe deeper in the dirt, “We seen the sick baby, too. Tragic.”

Cherry remained quite, focusing now on exorcising the crabgrass. She was use to such catastrophic tales of tragedy from Peaches. They exhausted her. It was a well known fact in town that Peaches would don her best Sunday dress and drive a good forty miles for the sheer morbid gratification of seeing a body laid to rest.

Birth - Vanessa Hsu

2011-03-31T15:48:00.002-07:00

As he looked at the piercing jet lines across a deep blue up above, he thought it was fitting that the sky was cut in two, then three and finally four clean chunks, segments of blue clearness that all of a sudden were finite and compartmentalized. The beginning of things in his life, new fatherhood, moving to a new place, were starting only now to take shape, and although the same uncertainty ruled his life as it had thus far, now the new constraints broke it up in well-defined pieces of uncertainty.

He kept thinking, "roll with the punches, roll with the punches" and as much as figuring out what you were doing wasn't a possibility, pretending that you did was a necessity. His daughter had just been behind the doors at his back, and standing in the balcony of the hospital room, with Mary and his baby finally resting, he felt like having a cigarette. The moment reminded him of the first time he saw his parents as people, with their own fears, wishes and insecurities, and not just parents who knew it all. He wondered how long he could keep the facade on for his own daughter, it was his turn now to seem all-protecting and all-knowing, for as many years as possible.

Birth - Maria Robinson

2011-03-31T15:48:00.001-07:00

Your closets are full. You don't really know where to kind the clothes that you really enjoy. And your favorite books are buried under newspapers, pillows and shoes you were meaning to throw away. At fifty, It is hard to say goodbye to everything since you lost so much as a child.

The junk man came and you started filling boxes with your life story. You wondered what someone was going to think at the recyling center when they picked up an enveloped addressed to you from your ex-mother-in-law from 1983. Would they stop for a moment and create a story about who you might be?

Forty years ago, your mother slipped away in the night in intensive care. Your dog was put up adoption and your father moved the family away from your school. You had to start all over again with nothing except your favorite pair of blue jeans and a few beatles albums.

Now, time is sliding away from you again with all of its force.

Final Notice - E. D. James

2011-03-31T15:47:00.002-07:00

He’d picked the lot after years of research and felt confident it would be the perfect location to take advantage of the rising seas. The land had been incredibly cheap thirty years ago, which was good, because, as a twenty year old programmer he couldn’t afford much. A little knob of serpentine sticking up from the edge of the farmland that sloped up from the bay. Worthless as farmland and a poor site for a house back then. He’d stuck an old airstream trailer on it that he’d bought from an aging hippy in Petaluma and used the property as a sort of retreat from his life in the high tech world of San Francisco. Back then he was sure that for once he’d made an investment that would pay off. Not today, not even next year, but decades in the future. Right when he would need.

On his forty-fifth birthday he held a big party on the property. He’d felt like a king as he watched his friends enjoying the views of the bay, the dock he’d put in at the foot of the hill, and the speed boat tied to the dock that he’d bought with a home equity line that barely tapped the equity in the property. He was sure that he had made it. That life would be good from here on out. The struggles were over. A little voice whispered in his ear that day after the third shot of tequila. The little voice said, “sell it now, the water is still rising.” He was sure it was merely the fruit of the mescal talking. The predictions he believed in said another ten feet. That was it. The water would come no higher. It was only the wackos that were yelling that there was another fifty feet to go. Those doomsayers had always gotten it wrong.

Now he stood with the water lapping at the wheels of his trailer holding the final notice to vacate in his hand. Like the farmers down the hill, his property was now worthless and he was bankrupt. That credit line had run out.

Final Notice - Jennifer Baljko

2011-03-31T15:47:00.001-07:00

There it was. The blue inked stamp. Some official signature. An order to restore her name to the way it was before the joining and splitting of two people’s stuff, lives, and souls. Legally, it was the final notice, the last nail in the proverbially coffin, the fade-out of their short marriage. Emotionally, it was the beginning of entirely new phase of life. A life alone. A life free. A life left to cobble together however she choose. She didn’t know which one it would be. She tried not to fathom a guess.

All these years later, she’s glad to have that binding contract tucked away in a file, something to look at and even cherish. It reminds her of a carefree youth, hinged to a sharing she willingly gave away. It also evokes the mature independence she’s nurtured since then, fully in love, but without the fairytale promises. The journey from then to now leaves her standing in an observant awe of her own wonder.

Trying It On For Size - Lisa Jacobs

2011-03-31T15:46:00.002-07:00

I certainly didn’t see myself as Venus, goddess of love and beauty. But the director did. And when I put on the dress, I finally saw it, too.

I was not a fashionable girl. Most of us have fashion faux-pas’ but I think I was especially challenged in this department, on account of my extreme insecurity and early years as a tomboy. When I was young, I thought the best item of clothes ever invented were Toughskins. As in, the Sears brand jeans, for kids. I thought it was SO COOL that I could fall and fall again off my skateboard and those jeans didn’t rip or tear. My knees were perpetually bruised and battered, but those cords didn’t show a scuff! I especially liked the brown ones, because brown was one of my favorite colors. Seriously. Other girls liked pink, and some liked purple or red. I liked brown.

I remember one day in 4th grade wearing brown tights to school, under an atypical skirt. They were riding up my butt and on my walk down Avila street I looked around to see if anyone was around. Empty. I hiked up my skirt and rearranged my tights to untwist from my upper thighs. Immediately I heard a loud “hoooowah” and turned around to see Emily leaning out of her window up the block. Spotted. That whole day Emily teased me about wearing ‘pantyhose’. Look at Lisa all dressed up fancy in her pantyhose. They’re NOT pantyhose I tried to protest, they’re tights! But it was no use, everyone thought I was wearing pantyhose and I was mortified. I never wore those brown tights again. I bet Emily turned out to be a lesbian. I should look her up; I bet she is cool.

In fact one of my most memorable fashion disasters was school picture day in the fifth grade. I had forgotten it was picture day, and since I wasn’t too fond of having my hair washed, or cleaning in general, my hair was greasy. I wore a navy blue crew neck t-shirt (most likely a polyester blend) and my favorite brown cords. Was I still wearing Toughskins at age 9? Probably. You can’t see the brown cords in the picture, but you sure can see the grease in my hair.

One of my most favorite outfits in middle school was black and yellow. I got some black cords as a hand-me-down from our super fashionable upstairs neighbor Dee who dyed her hair. One time my sister and I went up to borrow some milk for my mom, and Dee had all this reddish brown gunk on her hair and the white towel around her neck. I didn’t know anyone who dyed their hair. I thought it was fabulous. My (older) sister thought it was stupid. She told my mom who thought it was stupid, too. I also got this sort of see-through yellow shirt from Dee and I wore it on top of a black turtle neck. My mom said I looked ‘cheap’. She didn’t approve of wearing black. Funny to think about that now. My ten years in New York, and I still think it is a bit risqué to wear black. All because of that hideous yellow and black outfit. I felt so cool every time I wore it.

Freshman year in high school I was the only girl who wore a jeans jacket. OK, they did come back but this was before they were in. Trouble was, I would wear the jeans jacket, which was a bit too tight, with my blue jeans, which were also a bit too tight. I was not a svelte pubescent and it was not a good look. I had no idea.

Trying It On For Size - Kate Bueler

2011-03-31T15:46:00.001-07:00

Trying it on for size. I decided to try it on for size. Not in the I want to buy it and wear it everyday kind of trying on. More like the tentative look at the item. This isn't really my style. I say inside my head. But it looks interesting. Maybe I should just try it on for size.

I decided to try it on for size. Online dating. It's been a week. It's not really my style. I am a more organic-not hippy variety-let things happen kind of lady. But after some deliberating and listening to others who have done it and the fact that the applicants I have seen too lately haven't been very promising. I decided to try it on for size. But before I stepped into the dressing room, before I got into the line to hand my clothes to the attendant, I decided it had to be for fun. It had to be for material. Writing. And if something came out of it great. And if nothing did. It had to be okay too. I am an anticipator kind of woman- I get expectations in my mind so before I tried on this new way of dating and interacting and the creating of the perception of what others would want to see of me. I paused. And when I walked inside the room to try it on. It was just me and the mirror.

I looked at the reflection as I wrote down words, not too many, some funny, others not, just enough not too many to go upon the screen of me. It is hard to know what to tell on this medium. It is so much easy to talk in person. And see another's face as you speak words. To know if they shake their head in unison with you or not. Then the pictures. Which pictures to choose? Fun ones of course. Unique. And of course I had to look good in them. Not the boring typical head shots. No cutting off a significant others arm. 3 I choose. One-when I am dancing and you can't see the details of my face (risky- maybe), one in a wonder woman outfit- top half only- in glasses and one in a tight dress that I found at forever 21 even though I am way past that.

And then the moment of truth when I stood in front of that mirror and pulled down the clothing past my head to see and send. And wait. Trying it on for size is letting me see what is next. And what will happen. Its putting something on that is new to take a risk and say what if I wore this. Out of this room. And surprisingly it was easy. There was attention, and ims, and ask out for dates and messages and it was fun on the rainy afternoon. I found myself laughing at comments or saying oh no out loud at looking at profiles. It was easier then I thought to stand in that mirror and try it on. But now what would be next. Next. For all that attention. I haven’t made the next step of finalizing anything. Of seeing anyone beyond this room. For after I signed up on that day, I haven't had time, I haven't made time. There might be something about walking out of this room inside to the outside world in this new look to see what happens next which really scares me. Scares me in a way that I keep just looking in the mirror, turning different directions to find the perfect view.

Trying It On For Size - Christa Fairfield

2011-03-31T15:45:00.002-07:00

She stretched her aching body across the bed. Her head ached as it did everyday. She squinted to read the digital alarm clock that rested on her husband’s bed table- 11:30. No wonder the rays that slide passed the edges of the pulled shade burned her eyes. She would not make it to San Leandro today. How was she going to keep this job?

She would clean the house. It needed it. She had expected the girls would help out more with the demands of the house when she got the job. They did a bit but it just was not at the level she put it into it. She would make a nice dinner something that could be served if Larry got home at six-thirty or eight. It was tough trying to prepare meals without a known serving time.

Her hand skimmed the sheets seeking her baby doll nighty that she had taken off sometime in the night as she regularly did. It made the girls crazy that she slept naked. She didn’t understand it. They all had the same parts. The skimp of cotton slipped over her head. Then her feet slipped to the floor. The elevation of her body shot a pulse of blood through her head that her brain barely registered. It did not register as an abnormal occurrence.

The Last Thing She Expected - Bonnie Smetts

2011-03-31T15:45:00.001-07:00

Marjorie stood still, stuck in one spot in the center of the living room. She would not take a step until the snake man had been to every room, she would not move.

Sasha came from the kitchen. “Ma’am, would like some tea while you wait?”

“No, no thank you. I’ll just stay out of his way, then.” Sash had to have known all along what was going on in the garden. After all the staff passed through the garden to get to their house. Marjorie felt betrayed. They knew she’d have nothing of the silly idea that cobras brings babies. She took a step and then stopped herself. She cringed at her mistake. One could be under the chair or behind the door or in the breakfast room. Or she could sneeze and be dead.

“OK, then ma’am. He should be done soon.” Marjorie heard banging of doors and cupboards upstairs. And murmuring. She wanted them to be done, to be gone. She hadn’t agreed to this. She’d agreed to a comfortable life, a bit unusual, a bit difficult at times. But only a little, Ash had promised. Not this. And he went to work. She wondered what they did about cobras at his office.

More banging, louder and quicker. A slammed door and then silence. Murmur. Silence. They had to have caught one—the quiet meant the snake man was moving like a mime, silently in slow motion with his stick to carefully get his loop around the snake’s neck and pick up its man-sized length and stow it in that box. That white box he carried, the box with small holes, as if they wanted to keep the disgusting creature alive.

“Sasha, Sasha.” She stood in her circle of fear, hoping Sasha could hear her in the kitchen.

“Yes, yes. What is it?”

“Did they? Can you ask if they did?”

The young woman’s long braid swayed back and forth as she climbed the stairs to the bedrooms. Marjorie strained to hear. She should be learning their language. She wanted to understand what they were saying. She waited in her prison in the center of the room. Not even the sun could find her there.

A door closed upstairs. Sasha’s whispering steps came back toward Marjorie.

The Last Thing She Expected - John Fetto

2011-03-31T15:44:00.000-07:00

The salmon was on top of the wine and the other groceries and as she walked the bag would slip so that she’d have to stop and shift it back up on her hip, and the very expensive bit of fish would wobble on top so that she had to be careful it didn’t flop onto the sidewalk. Home and Hawley were just a few blocks ahead.

She was going to cook a special dinner for Hawley because tonight was a special day, and there wasn’t going to be an argument about it. Hawley would be out in the driveway, fussing with his blue chevy pickup doing god knows what, but really sulking. He wanted her to let him take it back, the promise he’d made about what they’d get to make if he got a job. And he’d gotten a job, but since he started working as a night watchman he’d been even stranger, mumbling about what they were doing and how it wasn’t right. Now he’d be sulking underneath the blue Chevy, banging metal with his tools, wanting her to take it back, to say no they didn’t have to do it now, later would be good enough.

Each step she took closer to the house, her steps got stronger. She was going to hold her ground. Just as soon as he got a job, that was the deal. She wouldn’t get mad. She didn’t want to make a baby out of anger. She’d let him sulk be off in his garage doing god knows what while she cooked the fish and made the rice and potatoes. She’d leave the kitchen window open so he’d smell and after a half hour or so her not barging in and picking a fight, he’d smell the food and wander into the kitchen. It would give him something else to talk about and so he’d talk and then he’d sit and eat, and she’d poor the wine. She could see how it all would happen. She kept replaying it in her head all the way up to the house, then she looked at driveway and saw the last thing she expected. Nothing. Nothing but empty gravel with dirt pushing up along the ruts. Hawley’s truck was gone. So was Hawley.

Pleasure - Melody Cryns

2011-03-31T15:42:00.000-07:00

I got to hang with a whole new group of “bad boys” all weekend, until Tuesday. That’s what my friend Debby calls all of my guy friends, my “bad boys.” It’s kind of a running joke with us. A whole big group of us were stranded at Johnny Ascuaga’s Nugget in Sparks – a huge hotel with casinos and huge, vast conference rooms, a comfy Starbucks and stellar rooms in the “tower.”

Even the smell of cigarette smoke as we walked through casinos with our ukuleles to jam together as a group or eat at Rosie’s Restaurant, which was the only restaurant in the Nugget that was open 24 hours – an older lady who looked like she came right out of one of those movies from the 50s when people went out to restaurants with her old-school outfit and her spunky attitude always greeted us – as if she knew us intimately well, and my friends from the Santa Cruz ukulele club would smile when they’d see me with at least two of my “bad boys,” actually really nice guys who were just hanging with me and sort of looking out for me.

One of them, Steve, pretty much never left me the entire weekend – and he was one guy whom I probably wouldn’t have minded “taking advantage,” but of course it wasn’t to be –he was 12 years younger than me and apparently had a girlfriend in Idaho – ohhh but he played his six string ukulele so beautifully…and even took over on bass and guitar at our many ukulele jams we were to have over the weekend – with a whole group from Santa Cruz that I knew also stuck until at least Monday.

We jammed by the pool, we jammed in a big conference room next to the arcade on the second floor, we jammed in the open lobby when you walked into this massive hotel and casino, we jammed at the Starbucks – no one minded at all. In fact, those who were around us wanted us to jam some more even! I carried about my Santa Cruz songbooks…everyone assumed I came straight from Santa Cruz or maybe San Francisco, but not so…I proudly wore my Reno Tahoe 2011 Ukulele Festival t-shirt one day, then tie-dye the next – not really having enough clothing to last me through Tuesday since this was supposed to be just a weekend trip.

I never left Johnny Ascuaga’s Nugget until near the end of my stay there when I dropped my friend Steve off at the truck stop where it was waiting for him to continue his journey across country – he had taken several days off just to attend this amazing ukulele festival. He showed me pretty much everything he’d learned at the workshops and then some.

I got to jam with some awesome musicians – oldies but goodies, Hawaiian music, even some bosa nova stuff…just show me the chords and I’ll play ‘em and let the “big boys” jam…that’s how you do it. Or sing along with everyone, including a group of spunky older women from Modesto who actually did little dances while singing the songs – next thing you know, 40 or 50 of us are doing some swaying and dancing with our ukuleles and singing fun crazy songs such as “Motorcycle Mama” (my personal favorite) It was all so amazing and fun, and I couldn’t think of a better group of people to be stranded with in Sparks, Nevada…

On Sunday night I heard from my son Jeremy.

“Hi, Mom – we got a place in Sac’to! And we just moved in…in the rain!”

“Yaaayy!” I breathed a huge sigh of relief..he had talked about possibly moving to Tahoe or Reno and the thought of Jeremy stuck in the snow with all of his worldly belongings in a truck had really freaked me out, although I couldn’t tell him that…

And who knew I’d be the one stuck and stranded, and not Jeremy at all whose best friends live in Reno but were in Sacramento helping him move.

“Come by and see the new place!” Jeremy said, sounding weary from another huge move – he knew about moving.

“Sure, I will, you okay…”

There was a pause on the phone as I watched the lights start to flicker as night fell on Reno, Nevada, the shadows of the snowy mountains casting a beautiful glow.

“Well, yeah…I’m okay but Jen’s really stressed out and so am I…this is kinda scary Mom. I’m going to be a Dad and this move…and Jen, well…”

“It’s okay, Jeremy,” I said. Not having any idea that I’d have a conversation like this with the son I’m so close to – we are probably more alike than any of my four kids whom I love dearly. But Jeremy and I have always had this special bond…ever since he was my baby boy who always hung with me and stayed awake throughout our adventures to keep me company while the other kids fell asleep – Jeremy whom I could talk to for hours about music and life and he never got tired of hearing my stories about my past life as a kid growing up in San Francisco…with the wild hair and the tattoos and gauges in his ears…my wild young man was going to be a Dad.

“I know it’ll be, but man…I didn’t think it would be this hard.”

“Just think of all we’ve been through, Jeremy. Remember?” I reminded him of our crazy move from Oregon to California when the moving truck ran out of gas on I-680…of all the times we had to pack up and move in California because rent was too high for me, a single mom with four kids…how we struggled…and all the adventures, listening to music in the car and singing loudly because that’s all you can do when times are bad…

“You’re right, Mom…that’s what I’ve been trying to tell Jen, about all we went through…and how we got through it…”

“Yep! I’ll see you on the way back home. As of now, I have no idea when I’ll get there, but I will be there.”

I hung up the phone, grabbed my ukulele and headed out the door of my fabulous hotel room once again to meet the guys for yet another jam down at Starbucks this time…The elevator whisked me down 17 floors and I walked out into the lobby, suddenly remembering…

I was in this very same lobby the morning after Thanksgiving in 2004 – with my daughter Megan and a whole bunch of little cheerleader girls getting ready to compete in the Regional Pop Warner cheerleading competition. These girls, the Mountain View Marauders, dressed in orange and red, had blown away everyone including the judges at every single competition they’d participated in – winning first place every single time amid so many other great teams.

I was so proud of Megan and these girls because they worked together as a team, these eight to eleven year olds…from all walks of life, 19 beautiful young ladies who showed the world that working together as a team with no one being a “diva” or a “queen” could make it in tough competitions – who worked seamlessly as they did their dance numbers, their stunts and their cheers. Like the San Francisco Giants, I thought, tears suddenly filling my eyes as I looked at that lobby, closed my eyes and remembered those 19 girls, their coaches fixing their hair at 6am Friday morning…they were the first ones up to cheer against 50 other cheerleading squads, and only the top three would make it to the National Cheerleading competition in Orlando, Florida. One part of me wanted to win so badly, but the other part was worried about the finances…how to get Megan there…we’d traveled up to Sparks, Nevada from the bay area in my Toyota Corolla, me, Megan, big bro Stevie, my exboyfriend Mike and his daughter Bridgette…all crammed into he car.

Yes, we were here…and we took a bus over to the Livestock Pavilion where the competition took place…being the first ones up was tough, the sound system wasn’t quite together and one of the back spotter dudes got too close to the girls’ stunts causing one of the flyers to topple over – but watching the girls seamlessly lift Esparanza back up and continue the competition as if nothing had happened, their hearts broken because they assumed they wouldn’t win with a blunder like that, truly amazed me..if only the world could be run by girls such as these…it would be a much better place.

And we sat for hours watching team after team, the girls holding hands and crying..especially at the end when they didn’t make 3rd or 2nd place, which was all they could hope for…when the announcement came over the loudspeaker, “And in first place, the Mountain View Marauders!” we all jumped up and down and screamed for what seemed like hours – like it was American Idol or something, and the girls laughed and cried…Megan rushing over to almost knock me over and cry…chaching, Orlando, Florida here we come…I had thought

That’s what I thought of while standing in that lobby, spending the entire weekend with Megan and part of my family, celebrating after that competition with a trip to Circus Circus in downtown Reno…Megan strutting her stuff so proudly…she and her team truly winners and well deserved.

What happened to those times? Where had they gone? That seemed like a lifetime ago and now here I was with a bunch of crazy ukulele strummers…

The journey home on Tuesday was free sailing, even through the snow…and I did stop at Jeremy’s house, a huge four-bedroom house with three bathrooms and a huge yard for his dogs…plenty of room for a family and for people to visit…I loved it.

And I loved Jeremy too…and reminded him that this was only the beginning of a new life, sure stressful at times, but wonderful nonetheless…

Denial - Maria Robinson

2011-03-29T16:17:00.000-07:00

You want to be able to say no but it keeps backing you into the corner of your room.

You try to talk your way out, hoping that the inertia will burn away like fog on a morning in May.

But it's hanging over you, it's taped your mouth shut. You can't hear your own thoughts.

You keep making things up and talking to yourself. You keep papering over your own heart.

Denial - Vanessa Hsu

2011-03-29T16:16:00.000-07:00

The kid, as I called him, always had a smile when we met, he would be affectionate to me and kind to the rest around us. He would make sure his text messages were full of smiley faces and always offered to do what I wanted. It was a sweet disposition, and yet, there were always pauses when we spent time together, lapses of quiet. His long lashes would point down as his eyes half-closed. He would turn quiet, turn inward. And I always wondered what happened inside.

If I asked, he would quickly brush it off, say it was nothing or that he didn’t want to share problems and go back to the general air. But he would also drop hints, about a stepfather’s wedding he wanted to attend abroad, about not wanting to live with his mother and half-brother, about his mother being beautiful and having had a hard life, about being twenty-two but feeling thirty-two. These came accidentally over the course of six months, but they also seemed to be invitations, to be asked. Although each time I took it, it seemed I was wrong. He’d smile and change the topic.

The first thing I knew of him was that he was a boxer as a child. A child boxer, isn’t that something –to a much smaller degree—like being a child soldier? Or at least a child worker? That he stopped boxing because “that stuff messes with your head, it permeates the rest of what you do, it’s not good”. Eventually I learned his stepfather had been his trainer. And then, that his stepfather and mother had gotten a divorce, a messy one, where he testified at age eleven and that he had to lie about his mother, he said.

Denial - Christa Fairfield

2011-03-29T16:14:00.002-07:00

Ellen watched him from across the room. His eyes blank and focused on the screen centered on the wall between their chairs. She had dangled her legs over the stuffed chair’s arm so she could watch him. She’d perched a book on her legs but hadn’t read a single word. His breath was even.

“When do you leave for your trip?” she asked leaning the book down to have a full view of his response.

His focus didn’t move from the screen full of ice and fisherman. “What?” he asked back.

“When do you leave for your trip, I said.” She closed the book with an intentional force hoping it would gain his attention.

“Six,” he said.

“Great,” she responded. She twisted herself off the chair. Picked up her phone from the kitchen counter behind them.

I’m done here, she thought. “I can’t deny my feelings. I won’t.” She texted. “Come by at 7am. He will be gone.”

Denial - John Fetto

2011-03-29T16:14:00.001-07:00

Hawley screamed for them to wait but even the door gunner couldn’t hear him. The sound of the chopper was too loud. They yanked him on board, holding his arms and legs. The cabin shuddered and wobbled as hopper lifted up out of the grass. Hawley legs dangled outside the bay, and bits of metal flew from bullets smacking the door. Still Hawley screamed for the chopper to wait, that they were just behind him, three men, all friends who had walked out of the Cambodia. The door gun got hold of the back of his pack stood up and began pulling him in. When his ankles cleared the edge of the cabin, the man holding him sudden let go and slumped the corner. Hawley fell on hard metal, and lay there clutching as the chopper wobbled back and forth, fighting for air and avoiding bullets. Above the tree line it leveled out, and Hawley pushed himself up, starting to crawl to the pilot to tell him to turn around. That’s when he got a good look at the door gunner slumped in the corner, blood faced and still.

They wouldn’t tell him anything about his team when he arrived at the base camp. They hustled him into the aid station, and started to pump fluids into him, dehydration they said, but then the doctor stuck a syringe into the fluids and when Hawley asked what it was, he said, “vitamins,” and winked. The world suddenly got dreamy. All the voices were liquid, pouring like syrup from their mouths, and he could swear he could hear Jaybird laughing in the other room. Somehow without anyone telling him, he knew they’d made it back and were all doped up like he was, feeling no pain. His feet didn’t hurt like they’d been running for three days. His swollen ankle he twisted on tree root was still swollen and ugly from where the tendons tore, but it felt fine. Even the cuts on his hands and knees crawling along the riverbed, weren’t aching like someone had rolled a granite boulder over on them back and forth. It was all good, and he wasn’t even pissed they dropped him in the wrong part of Cambodia, he’d gotten out alive. When he woke up the next day he was still feeling no pain, but it was beginning to wear off. Before it did, he wanted to get out with his team and self-medicate at the bars that had strung up outside the camp. But whenever he asked to see Willie, Jaybird or Sandman, the nurse or orderly, had to tell him he had to talk to the talk, like it was a very big deal just to tell him which of beds set up the rows of tents, housed his buddies. They were close by; Hawley could hear them laughing, so as impatient as he was he, just let it go. They hadn’t him a morning supply of medication and slipped back into a stupor that half wide awake dreaming, and half sleep. The third day there were less pills, and his mind was coming into more focus. They led him in to talk to an intelligence officer, a Captain Quinn, who asked what happened, and Hawley told him the same story he’d hear from everyone else, but he knew they did that, interviewed team members separately to compare their stories. When the pick-up went right they’d go over the story on the ride back on the chopper, but this time they’d been separated. So Hawley was deliberately vague on time and area, just sticking to the main truth, that they’d been dropped in the wrong area. Quinn wrote all this down with great interest. Even had the decency to shake his head like he knew they fucked up. Instead of it being unoccupied valley next to another valley where the Vietcong were camped they either dropped them into the wrong valley or the Vietcong had moved. Soon as they began to descend they’d taken fire. The chopper pilot tried to pull up but the chopper went down, and they jumped out of the burning machine. Quinn wrote this down too on his pad. He showed Hawley reconnaissance photos of the burned chopper. The photos were so detailed you could see the depressions in the grass from the dead bodies before the vc pulled them away. Hawley pointed at the photos, explaining how his team slipped past the perimeter that that had encircled them then it was one long foot race back to the Vietnam part of the border and extraction. At this point Quinn looked surprised, asking again if everyone made it out. All three other men, and he read their real names. Hawley told him nick names, Jaybird, Willie and Sandman. He still thought the intelligence officer believe him, so he explained that it had been along run, and they’d been spread out. Hawley up out front on point, but he could hear the brush breaking from the men on his team following him, how Hawley hear them talking, telling him how they were just behind him, how for days they camp and slept and worked they way back from Cambodia to the Central Highlands where they finally made radio contact, the Army made there last and worst fuck up saying there had only been one man to pick up. Hawley expected Quinn to get made about this too, but Quinn wasn’t taking any of it down. All his papers were folded up and sitting on his lap and he was just staring at Hawley.

That was the last time Hawley saw Quinn. The next captain was a doctor. A psychiatrist. He had a little folder too in which he made notes, and first thing he did was ask Hawley to tell the whole story over. Hawley wasn’t stupid. He knew they were going to deny the whole thing. After a few moments of not talking, the shrink nodded, folded up his notebook and said he’s be back tomorrow.

Denial - Anna Teeples

2011-03-29T16:13:00.000-07:00

As night started to finally fall, my mother, father and I started to walk towards the apartment. We had found Ristoranti Osteria Zio Gigi merely by desperate convenience. Arriving earlier that day, my parents were a swilled mix of hunger, tired and jet-lagged. It was the closest restaurant to my flat and only four doors away. Gigi, the owner, was tended to the shorter side yet stout with a full dark bread and round white eyes and a head of wavy brown hair. He sang. He sang to me in Italian, he sang to my father. They did not share a common language but my father and Gigi talked all night, somehow. Dad would end up being a 'regular' there for the duration of their three week trip to see me in Florence, Italy.

As we walked towards the apartment, the food pusher came alive.

“Let's go find a gelato. I have to try this stuff that I read about,” Dad said.

“Dad, I can not possibly stuff another morsel into me. We had three courses and already shared a dessert. I can't,” I said.

“Judy, what about you? We came all this way and we have to find the best gelato shop in town. Which way do you think we should go?” he said turning to my mother.

Typical Italy with a gelato shop in almost every block, he stared down at the mounds of the soft semi-frozen cream. Mom had already researched so many things about the trip and informed us that “Gelato typically has less than half the fat of ice cream and usually less sugar too.” They taste tested small spoonfuls of Nutella, fruit and coffee flavored gelato before deciding on a cup to share.

“Are you sure you don't want to have a mini size gelato, come on Anna?” he pleaded. I was not sure why my father needed to feed us to show his love but this was his way with all his children. We were subjected to the end-of-dinner food-pushing love.

“Have another drum leg, there's plenty left. Can I get you some more green beans. There's one more slice of bread left, have it.” It never stopped.

Some days he was unrelenting and I would have to bark at him to back off in fear that I would just eat myself to the size of a Pillsbury dough girl. Was he afraid that the older he got, he might not be able to see me? Or I would just shrivel up from the lack of nourishment to the body as well as my soul.

Today was different, we were exploring new worlds together. How could I deny our “first gelato” together. My request was the “mini” and I received the equivalent of a quart of ice cream overflowing on top of the mini cup. How the world was I going to finish this? He stared at me with utter delight of a young child awaiting presents under the Christmas tree to be open.

“So, how do you like yours?”

“Dad, it's really good. Thanks for suggesting we get one.” I could see his weird happiness.

“Anna, we have to start early tomorrow. I think after lunch and dinner we should try two new places. We have to find the very best gelato in town before I leave.” He was on a roll. “Maybe we should have one in the morning too.”

I wondered how I would balance the love and attention disguised in massive caloric intake over the next three weeks.

Denial - Melody Cryns

2011-03-29T16:12:00.000-07:00

No, it just can’t be that way – I wish it wasn’t. If I could go into a time machine, I’d jump back to 1967 and be that 10-year old girl again before my innocence was so cruelly taken away from me…I’d fight back before the battle even began instead of enduring the pain and struggle, the denial, the guilt, fear…

One part of me remains stuck in that time period – sometimes I still am that precocious little girl running around the streets of San Francisco in that neighborhood in the inner Sunset District…I still careen down hills on my skateboard without a care in the world…and life is good….it’s what I imagined it would be before he walked into our lives…he’d been hovering about for years – even them. Hanging out at my mom’s best friend’s house…

I know it never would have happened if Mom hadn’t broken up with my dad. He didn’t want to leave…he wanted to stay but Mom said it wasn’t working out I guess…all we kids knew was that Mom and Dad fought quite a bit…Mom wanted someone more “intellectual” than my Dad I guess..

So it was the summer of love when they told us the news – that Dad would be moving out. I still remember how sad and defeated Dad looked…and how sad I was too…when they sat us all in the living room…Dad sitting in the big, blue stuffed chair and Mom sitting in the French chair..me sitting on the piano chair and Michael and Jennifer on the couch.

Nothing felt quite the same after those moments…Mom said it as better this way. I could tell Dad didn’t agree…Ooooohhh, why do things have to change?

“Where will you go, what will we do?” I blurted out…feeling betrayed somehow, wondering if Dad would even be around…this was unheard of…a family broken .. yet things had already begun to change with the summer of love and all…but still!

“Don’t worry. Your father will still be around, and he’ll come see you,” mom assured me.

Whatever…

After they sat us down, Dad sat in the blue stuffed chair looking as if he could burst into tears at any moment…I’d never seen him look like that before…he was listening to the big band music he loved so much…

I remember running up to him and giving him a hug…as I hugged him Dad said, “You know, I really don’t want to leave…your Mom…”

“I know.” I comforted my Dad even though I was only ten…

I knew that life wouldn’t be the same again…

But what I didn’t know was that our lives would also roar downhill into a turmoil and strife that was as dark and terrible as the tsunamis and quake…our own personal disaster from hell…

Setting It Free - Bonnie Smetts

2011-03-29T16:11:00.002-07:00

Through the open window in his room, Dr. Sarin heard his nephew call him. He rose from his desk and peered down to the garden. Raghev was huddled over something. “Uncle, uncle, come save the bird.”

Dr. Sarin wondered why Raghev’s tutor wasn’t with the child. He moved to go downstairs hating the heaviness he’d been feeling in his legs lately. Each step was a labor and he wished for the lightness of his youth. “Come, come.” Raghev whispered and waved.

A kingfisher stood near the base of a tree, wild-eyed, glassy-eyed and terrified. Its wings didn’t move. “Oh, dear. Raghev, stay away from the bird. He’s hurt.’

“But can we fix him, Uncle? Can we make him fly again?”

Dr. Sarin bent down. He hoped the bird was simply stunned, shocked. “Come, move away. Let’s go inside and let it be. Just let it be for awhile.”

“Can’t you fix it? Maybe its wings are broken.”

“Where did he come from? Did you see it hit the window?”

“It was just here, I saw it from inside.”

“Just let it be and see what comes of it.” Dr. Sarin stood up. He hated how his legs ached when he bent for too long. He reached for Raghev’s hand and relished the warmth of the boy’s flesh. “Let’s go in and find Rama. Where is Rama?

“She went to get a box. I told her we should put it in a box.”

Dr. Sarin knew Rama wouldn’t get a box. Surely a tutor knew something of birds. Raghev broke lose from Dr. Sarin’s gentle grasp. He ran up the stairs to the house. Running, always running. The child has forgotten the bird already, Dr. Sarin thought. Now I am left to worry about the bird. He loved the blue of the kingfishers and waited each year for their arrival. Only time would tell if the bird could set itself free from the garden.

Faith - Camilla Basham

2011-03-29T16:11:00.001-07:00

Milo had faith that there, on that very night, in Molly’s sacred room amongst her innocent memorabilia – the one eyed stuffed bear, the pink ceramic piggy bank, the cheerleader’s pom poms - of her babyhood and puberty, that in that divine place something beautiful might happen. She sat on her brass bed cross-legged wearing a short white nightie and looking more spectacularly embraceable than he had ever remembered. Without a sound, Milo turned out the lights and lay down beside her, motioning blindly for her to unfurl her body beside him.

Nothing whatsoever happened.

He lay there for about two hours, mindful of her apprehensive body beside him in the darkness, thinking how implausibly ingenious life was, how petrifying, really, in that it occasionally does give essence to one’s lighthearted dreams.

After a long time, when Milo sensed that Molly’s breathing beside him was laborious in sleep, he rose, bowed down, kissed her invisible face, and staggered out. Because, really, what good is a dream once it comes true?

Faith - Kate Bueler

2011-03-29T16:10:00.002-07:00

Faith. As the cross between rain and mist saturate my skin with a spa touch I know I have to have faith. Faith in my work. Faith in my students. Faith in redemption and the possiblity of it. As I open those doors from my public to private life to walk home-the drizzle brings a great relief that I don't find myself covering up or protecting myself from it. The dampness of the spray brings a relief from a hard day. Relief from what just happened and relief in the possiblity of my faith as I step one foot in front of another. The wet sprays my face relieving and allowing for my own wettness to fall. I move slowly as I walk home. With sadness in my eyes, with contemplation across my lips, with disppointemnt living on my nose, faith finds a place in the lines between my eyes and loosens my face. It is starnge when you have this look how many people mostly men will look at you. And try to speak to you. As if your sadness might be a sign of weakness a biological need to be saved. No one to save me. But this water washing over me to begin again. But this put the foot in front of the other. But the faith I found in believing. In believing in the possiblity of change.

Yesterday at school my student got caught for a serious offense. An offense that included the dean and the authorities and his family members. A kind of offense that gets you kicked out of school. A kind of offense that gets you a record. At first as I heard the news, I sat down and it slipped off me. There was a pause and disappointment. But it wasn't until I saw his face. His face before he made the walk down the hall and the stairs to a future he was uncertain of. A conversation I knew was about to happen. He walked not knowing what was to come. I stood in that hallway watching him walk away and I froze. Do I go after him to say anything? Do I let him walk along side this secrutiy guard to his destiny? I let him face it alone. Part of this job is letting go. Letting them fly alone. But knew and hoped that I might be able to talk to him. For this moment. But to let him know we were still here. Here for him. For I might not see him again. And a relationship built in writing during a volunteer project became me giving him cliff bars and taking walks and discussions about life and future and choices. There was a gift in that.

As I walked in to the room. I didn't know what I was to say. He looked up into my face. And the first thing he did was cry. Wetness fell down his face. He had held it together until he saw me. Someone who believed in him, someone who he had disappointed. Someone who he trusted and shared more than with many. And in that moment. I know the only thing I can do is sit there. Be there. Help him get through this moment. And let him know. He is more than this. More than a dealer. For he is. As he wipes away the tears, we all are heavy in the sorrow of mistakes made and what would happen next. Consquences are important to make us stop. Stop in our tracks. And the chose we have to decide whats next. Choose right or left. I didn't leave his side until I had to. I knew that being there and caring was more imortant than the yelling and lecturing and legal troubles that would come.

Faith in myself to do the right thing or what I think is. Faith in this student to be who he dreams. Faith that as I walk, walk home that we all get chances again. I have to believe in redepetion. I have to. But now it is something he must face alone. Not with me by his side. But I have faith. That I still might sit there. For him. And as I become more wet from the sky doncation above, it washes over me. As I start again too.

Faith - Judy Albietz

2011-03-29T16:10:00.001-07:00

So now, Lily punched back down the fear rising in her gut. There was no guarantee for humans traveling through the Time Portal. Not only was she scared of dying but she also was scared of the process—of what the process of time traveling would do to her. Will my body’s molecules be taken apart and not be able to get back together again? I have no choice. She thought back to Sam’s statement of how this was totally unfamiliar territory. For Lily, the first—and only—time she had time-traveled, she had been unconscious and Sam had been with her. Sam had tried his best to describe it for her, but he cautioned that his experience was that of a time-traveling dog and not a human.

Before it’s too late, I have to tell him. Lily thought. She and Sam were standing side by side as she started to step into the Time Portal.

“Sam, I want you to know—“Lily started to say, but stopped. She couldn’t see him as her body was propelled forward. Then misty strands of pink, green and purple clouds were coming at her from all sides, weaving her into a cocoon. “Sam!” she called. No answer. She tried to look back but couldn’t even move her head. Her body was frozen. She closed her eyes.

That morning Sam had explained the Time Portal. “We are not sure how your body will react when the Time Portal takes you in. You will be absorbed. You might feel trapped. Take that as a good sign. I wish I could go with you … to protect you.” A soft whine had come from Sam’s throat as he squeezed his eyes shut. Lily had reached over to hold his big head in her arms.

The risk. This was something they didn’t talk about. The rule. The rule that humans couldn’t travel through the Time Portal. She’d survived the first time, but Sam had been with her. And he couldn’t go with her this time. And this was the only way to stop the infection that was killing the Time Portal. She and she alone had to take the anti-virus back to her time, back to the nano-second before the virus invaded in the first place, back to before Sam ever entered her life.

Now that it was too late, she regretted most of all how she’d held back in the first place. Never told him just how much he meant to her. Now she’d really lost her chance forever. She asked herself what’d stopped her. Yeah, she thought. If I die he’ll never know. If I live, I’ll have no memories of who Sam is or how much I love him.

Luck - Lisa Jacobs

2011-03-29T16:09:00.001-07:00

I hadn’t expected the bamboo forest to be so green. I had pictured the light brown/tan stalks that I had always seen in bamboo thickets, and of course the green leaves. But the stalks here in the forest were green, and huge. Some were too large to fit two hands around. And the gorillas, especially the silverback, were able to just reach over and pluck a stalk for munching.

We had been walking for more than an hour and I was elated. The first group I had been assigned to was selected for me because of my age, I am sure – they were a wimpy man and a group of not so adventurous looking ladies. I didn’t want to be with them; I wanted to be with the young folks and I was lucky enough to have met one of the staff workers the night before at dinner. So I asked him to switch me and he came back a few minutes later directing me to a group of mostly people around my age, or at least the age I feel. I am lucky to be much stronger and fitter and youthful than my chronological age would indicate.

So we set off at 7am. The trackers were already out in the jungle, having risen at dawn to find the last place the gorilla families had been the day before. All the groups set off in different directions, each toward the likely environ of their particular gorilla family. Once the trackers found the gorillas, they would radio our leaders so we could go meet them. The group leaders were lovely – one was older and he had been one of the people to actually habituate the gorilla family that we would meet that day. The other was a young guy, full of beans, as I told him. Always with a joke. You are full of beans, I said.

We also had a couple of trackers with us, who used machetes to break through the tougher underbrush. But mostly we just walked. The rolling hills, nothing too steep, the verdant vegetation. It didn’t quite look like the African jungle I had imagined. It was not foreign.

Then we got the radio. They had found the gorillas, who were hanging out in a bamboo forest. It was the bamboo forest that made me realize I was far from home.

When He Just Stopped - Jennifer Baljko

2011-03-29T16:08:00.000-07:00

Oriol sat down at the table. Picking up his pa amb tomaquet, he flipped to the story about the Barça soccer team winning the European League championship. He made a mental note to clip the story and send it to Cesc. Maybe that would make things better between them. Oriol skimmed the other headlines. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of a picture of a funeral scene, and that’s when he just stopped, his hand holding tomato-slathered toast suspended in mid-air. His eyes may have been staring at photo, but everything in him raced back 20 years to that scene.

He saw the face of Juan’s mother getting out of the black sedan, draped in black, elegant and put together, but her face did little to cover her heartbreak. Oriol had gone to each of the memorial services. He wasn’t wanted there, and he knew he couldn’t face the families, not yet at least. He hid himself best he could from their gatherings, and lingered in the faraway corners hoping none of them would recognize him as the man who killed their loved one.

“Oriol? Are you still in the kitchen?” Rosa called from her sewing room. “Could you bring me the scissors? I left them on the counter.”

Oriol put down his bread, folded the paper, stood up, and headed for the door.

“I’m going out,” Oriol said.

“Could you bring me the scissors first? I’m in the middle of a hem,” Rosa asked.

“No.” Oriol slammed the door behind him.

Snakes - E. D. James

2011-03-29T16:07:00.000-07:00

Olivia went through her checklist one more time before she snapped the aluminum cases closed. There were only a few more chores to get done and she would be out the door and headed to Siberia. She could still barely believe the chain of events would take her from trapping Sandhill Cranes in backyards in Homer, Alaska to trying to figure out what was killing Red Crowned Cranes in Siberia in less than seventy two hours. The photographs of Audrey’s bullet riddled body in the front seat of her car flashed through Olivia’s mind and triggered a thought for one last item to pack.

She went over to her desk and pulled open the bottom left drawer. In among miscellaneous rulers and boxes of paperclips and memorabilia sat an eight inch long silver handle. Olivia picked it up, held it out away from her body and pressed the button on the side. The blade whipped out and settled into place with a satisfying clunk. She ran her thumb along the edge and felt the sharpened steel slide across the ridges of her fingertip. Her dad had given her this blade when she’d headed off to Berkeley to get her PhD in Ornithology. He’d said she’d need something to protect herself from snakes when she was out in the field. She thought maybe he gave it to her to protect herself in Berkeley, a town he considered too loose and liberal to be safe.

She held the knife in her hand and imagined herself straddling the man who had sprayed Audrey’s car with bullets. She wanted to hold the blade to his neck and spit in his face and feel him quiver in fear. She would start slowly letting the blade cut into his neck so that she could watch the pain and disbelief at his fate set in before she laid open his jugular vein and let his blood run out onto floor beneath them. She imagined getting the man to tell her who had sent him to kill Audrey. She wondered if his answer would be the name of someone she would meet in Siberia. She decided to pack the knife. From what she knew of Russians it was just possible that she would get a chance to bring her fantasies to life.

State of Grace - E. D. James

2011-03-19T14:56:00.001-07:00

Olivia pushed through the doors of the conference room and headed back to her office. She felt as if she were moving through are river of jello or cotton. The office had none of it’s normal buzz of activity. The florescent lights in the hallways seemed to be transmitting a yellow light that was depressing and sucked the energy out of her limbs. Once she was standing over her desk she forced herself to try and concentrate on what she needed to accomplish to be able to leave for Siberia in two days. She started thinking about the gear she had left in Homer and her mind wandered back to where she had been day before yesterday. Then her problem had been that she was two days behind schedule on the Sandhill Crane satellite tracking project. That problem seemed like a state of grace today. Audrey had been alive. Olivia was doing what she loved, tracking animals and trying to figure out what could be done to better protect them from the threats that came from human development. Now Audrey was gone and Olivia was about to dive into a cesspool of politics.

She pulled the top report off the stack that John had given her and flipped open the clear plastic cover. The executive summary gave a dry recitation of numbers that made Olivia feel confused. There was no question that there had been excessive numbers of deaths of the Red Crowned Cranes in the vicinity of the Arkhara oil development. The start of the excess deaths coincided with the beginning of work on the oilfield. It seemed pretty straight forward. She wondered what Audrey had seen that made her willing to work for the oil companies. There must have been something that Audrey had seen that Olivia was missing. She spread out the rest of the reports and began to dig into the information.

The First Time I Saw It That Way - Anna Teeples

2011-03-19T14:55:00.000-07:00

I met Gary four years ago when he was in his first remission. Gary is a young sixty-something year old whose spry build gently glides through the streets when he runs. He fashions stylish European glasses and loves his vintage t-shirts that he pairs with canvas low top Chuck Taylor All-stars.

Ironically, Gary met his soon to be future wife when he was far away from a hospital. She is a doctor. They had both given up on love later in life. A chance meeting and some two years later, I was drafting up a ‘Save the Date’ for their small nuptial gathering.

Gary picked a quote from a poem to highlight a vignette from a painting for the card front. “We discover our true selves in love.” I liked the line. I liked the card. I cried at the wedding. They were a couple who touched my soul.

Gary’s cancer spread all over within four months of their wedding. There was nothing left for the local team to do. He had been down the road before and he was exhausted, doubt was festering.

And then I saw for the first time what love could do. His doctor wife surrounded him with vigor and energy to believe in health and healing. She found a drug trial in the upper Northeast corner of the States. She traveled with him once a week in a middle seat to walk into the hospital for one ten-minute shot and re-board a plane to the West Coast. They made this trip every week for six weeks and she looked into him with fight and determination. Cancer be gone. And so it was. Their new life could start.

The First Time He Saw It This Way - Judy Albeitz

2011-03-19T14:54:00.000-07:00

“This doesn’t make sense,” Josh said to his cell phone. A text had just come in from Lily.

Whr R U?

Why was she asking this? The message didn’t look like the others he’d been getting from Lily ever since yesterday afternoon. That was when she’d figured out how to send text messages from two thousand years in the future—through the ailing time machine.

“What!” Josh shouted as he examined the timestamp on the text. It was yesterday, September 7, 10:35 am. That wasn’t possible. That was before Lily had disappeared. Wasn’t it? This must be a mistake, he thought. But something about the text really bothered him.

What if this text from Lily had been delayed for some reason? For two days now he’d been working on how to get the time machine fixed. “What am I missing?” Josh shouted now at his laptop. Josh paused and shook his head as he noted his increasing use of one-way conversations with inanimate objects.

He looked at the text again. The message itself was odd. Lily obviously knew where he was. He was in the present—frantically trying to get Lily back home from two thousand years in the future—where she was sent by a broken time machine. Why was she sending this text now? He asked his laptop, “Am I supposed to look at this in a different way?”

The First Time She Saw It That Way - Kate Bueler

2011-03-19T14:53:00.002-07:00

The first time she saw it this way was after a lifetime of conversations and pondering and wondering and putting herself under the microscope of why do I do the things I do. Some people never do that. Reach your hands and arms and other limbs under the glass to be held there and reviewed and examined. Oh I see here what we have. It was when she sat there wondering. After a conversation, a conversation she has had many times. Almost always the same. The undertone of it. Facing a different face. Similar words. And other than the task of being present. She couldn't help but wonder. What was her drug? Drug of choice. What was her way to escape?

And as she sat there in the others culmination of running away and being sent away and experimentation at a youngish age. It was the first time she actually understood as she examined the cells and movement of herself as the scientist and the sociologist and psychologists. Her own personal. Research. It is somehow easier to understand others than ourselves. So as the light shone down on her own white irish skin of “winter” of san francisco. It was there- success was her drug.

Success was her drug. Not in a way that she pushed small children and dogs to get on the top. But the addiction to success being successful and smart and capable were her escape were her drug. Her own success was so paramount she would give up sleep and drink buckets of coffee and run hard and fast from jobs to school to research projects maybe grabbing a drink of relaxation on the way. See as she, as I stood on the path on that crossroads of life in a childhood that made a lot more nonsense than sense, her body, my body moved to the side of running hard and fast towards success in school. In life. In jobs. No one could tell me no.

I didn't frolic with the drugs or the sex or the not going to school. The typical rebellion of teenagers multiplied by responsiblities and missing parents and new step parent which complicated it all. It is hard to find yourself amongst others for everyone. I don't know know when I sat at the crossroads or how I made my decision. But praise was mine breakfast, lunch, and dinner in assignments with student body this with captain that with church youth group leader on top of the heap of successes. Then college acceptances and scholarships rolled down the belt. I stopped looking at them and soaking them in and just discarded them in the pile next to me. Look at me. Look at all my success. How important I must be.

The drug of success inspired me to do much and to do it well. But without my own protection of anxiety and empathy and finding the new gift of failure I don't know who I might have become. Today. Although grateful for not having to release in the typical escapades. I did escape in a way. A way that did make me successful. But also made me move too fast and too hard and make being the best a price too high. My drug and my desire for it is still with me as I breathe in and out and walk around this street, in this city, in my school, in my grad school in this coffee shop. My need for it exists. Another hit of it would satisfy that little girl at the crossroads of life. It would make her happy. I still look for it. But in finding failure, I found what real success could be and it isn't the cookie cutter life I thought I had wanted all along.

The First Time She Saw It That Way - Carol Arnold

2011-03-19T14:53:00.001-07:00

She hadn’t looked at it that way, that the jungle was a malevolent place where creatures shrieked in horror and vines strangled everything in its path. Before she came there, before she traveled four thousand miles to the Amazon rain forest to escape her dreary life, she had looked at the jungle as a place of abundance and growth. She had read an article in National Geographic about it once, how cleared plants will re-sprout in a matter of days, and in a few weeks or months you wouldn’t even know they had been missing. That’s how she remembered it anyway, that the jungle represented hope, and more than anything, that’s what she needed for herself.

But the first day out on her jungle trek, her thinking shifted. She was last in line as they struggled through the forest, an Indian wielding a machete first, the Shaman second, Hennessy third, the two Danish rastafarians just ahead. The air closed in around them, so hot and humid she could hardly breath. It was like a great wet blanket had been laid down on top of them, riotously green and smelling of rot. She couldn’t see more than a foot or two on either side, nor above. The further they went, the more she felt like she was disappearing down a long rabbit hole, and that when she emerged on the other side, if there was one, she would come face to face with a great grinning jaguar. It would flash its canines at her, and she would have no doubt as to its intentions.

Choking down her fear, Lynne kept her eyes on the sweaty backs of the two boys ahead of her, thinking at least their long rasta coils were now familiar after two days together at the lodge. But could she trust the boys, or anyone else in the line for that matter? She didn’t know.

The First Time He Saw It Their Way - John Fetto

2011-03-19T14:52:00.000-07:00

The first time he saw it their way, he felt sick. It was as if the top of his head were sliced open and his brains bubbled over. His eyes blinked wildly, but the scene didn’t change. He was in a hospital. The walls were green and the floor, white linoleum. He wasn’t alone. In the room were a doctor and a nurse. The look on their faces didn’t change. They were concerned. They were sympathetic. And they hadn’t believed a word he had said.

“How often did you say?” The doctor’s eyes were watery grey, like fog hanging above a rice paddy, hiding god knew what so that each step forward was like a step along a tightrope stretched across bottomless abyss.

“Not often. Once. Just once.” He was trying to retreat, to climb back on solid ground. But the eyes on their faces prodded him forward out onto the wire, into the cold midst.

“You already told us of three occasions.”

The nurse nodded. She checked her clipboard and her lips moved as she counted one, two, three… The doctor had his witness. Outside was a thick orderly with biceps the size of his calves. He could bolt to the door but the orderly would stop him.

“So what?” he said and as soon as he said it he knew it was the wrong thing to say. He didn’t want to walk out on the wire and it pissed him off that they wouldn’t let him back in on the solid ground of the world of the sane. “What the fuck difference does it make how many times?”

The doctor frowned. He looked at the nurse and they shared a moment of understanding between them, two sane people in the presence of an insane, deluged, deranged vet who heard people talking to him who weren’t alive anymore. In that moment, his fate was sealed. The way they saw it, he was nuts.

Amazement - Jennifer Baljko

2011-03-19T14:51:00.002-07:00

She sat on the edge of the terrace, perfectly balanced on the bar dividing her new hangout from the street far below. Lately, she comes almost every morning, around sunrise. She stays for a long while, tweeting. A real tweet. A real song. She hops her little body down to the flower pots on the ground. She jumps to the chair, and then back to the bar. She flits away, returns, calls to a friend somewhere down the block, leaves again and returns. I stand at the doorway, careful not to move too quickly or to make any noise. I stare in amazement, awed by nature’s simple perfection here in the middle of complex city far from perfect.

Amazement - Bonnie Smetts

2011-03-19T14:51:00.001-07:00

Marjorie eyes lazily scanned the horizon to the south of where they were all sitting. She let her gaze follow curve of the cove, taking in the turquoise water and the palms fringing the sand. She stopped. The black shape moving along the water’s edge must be a bird, it must be a bird, she thought. But the bird didn’t moving like a bird. Maybe it was a dog, there were so many strays everywhere. It must be a black dog running, chasing a bird. No it’s a child. It must be a child. It’s a child. It is a child.

“What are you starring at?” She jumped at Renee’s voice.

“That child. Do you see that…it must be a child. At first I thought it was a bird.” Renee turned to look. They both starred and they must have realized at the same moment that it wasn’t just any child. It was the new boy Randall, the boy who Nico and Charlotte had been playing with. Renee put her hand on Marjorie’s arm.

“It’s Randal. Where are the children?” Renee sprung to standing. Marjorie kneeled to see the other children playing in the sand next the water’s edge with their buckets and shovels and nannies.

She was up next to Renee. Randall was running hard right toward them, right toward the adults. Marjorie moved in slow motion toward his parents. “Where is Charlotte, where is Nico.” The change grew in intensity, echoing between Renee and Marjorie. “Where are the children, where are Charlotte and Nico.”

The breathless boy clung to his parents. Marjorie and Renee were in a fury of fear. “Charlotte and Nico were with Randall. Honey, do you know where they are?” Randall, frightened by the two women clung harder to her his mother. She knelt down to explain, to calm him, to get him to speak.

“They are, we went. I didn’t want to go.” He gasped out his words.

“Where? Where were you, where are they?” Marjorie’s voice stung the air. “Where are they? Where are they?’

The boy, hiding behind his mother, putting her between him and Marjorie, pointed and gasped. “The place down there. Way down there and there was a wall and I couldn’t climb it but they wanted to climb it and it looked scary and I didn’t want to go.”

Marjorie started to run. Renee screamed to her husband, to the others. “Come, Nico and Charlotte are missing.”

Dreaming it Up - Camilla Basham

2011-03-19T14:50:00.000-07:00

When I was six she gave me a blue velvet covered journal for my birthday. I sat in my pink polka dot nightgown turning the blank pages, one after another, in puzzlement.

“What’s it for?” I was curious

“You write down interesting things that happened during the day.”

“Why?”

“Well, something interesting might happen and you may want to remember it.”

“I wouldn’t know what to write.”

“You could write anything, for instance: This morning I saw a man with a clown nose crossing Arthur Avenue.”

I’ll never forget the way she said it: This morning I saw a man with a clown nose crossing Arthur Avenue. I carry that memory of her mouth arching around each word. Carry it around like the splinter of conch shell that you find in the pocket of an old windbreaker that you wore to the beach one long summer.

The fact is I hadn’t seen a man with a clown nose crossing Arthur Avenue. But, with her words my mother showed me that she was aware that children, with their love of all that is incongruous, might want to seize the unexpected and store it away like so many memories.

What He Saw When He Closed His Eyes - Maria Robinson

2011-03-19T14:48:00.000-07:00

Stan had stopped listening to Mimi about three months before she left for Tel Aviv. He got up everything morning with a mute button on.
He acknowledged his wife, prepared his own breakfast and left for his lab had he had done every morning at 8: 24 am for the last thirty years he'd had his lab at Columbia. Stepping out onto 106th Street, the sounds of New York burst forth like a symphony.

When he closed his eyes, he could hear his mother's voice singing to him as a child in German, hear the rattle of the traffic on Broadway, and after the short five minute walk, the sound of elevator bing, as it stopped on his floor.

After washing down and donning his lab clothes he swushed through the sterile door chute and entered into one of the most famous biochemistry labs in the City. Maybe he loved the lab more than his family

What I Saw With My Eyes Closed - Melody Cryns

2011-03-19T14:46:00.000-07:00

I was just a young girl, not even six yet, when I first saw the gigantic round slide – the one with the ladder that went up and up forever. The slide towered over Children’s Playground in Golden Gate Park – it was so tall. It was the second thing I noticed when my Mom and her friends Ben and Joyce who knew San Francisco took me and my little brother and sister to the playground – we walked from the strange, flat with the long, dark hallway we’d moved into – after a harrowing plane trip from Chicago. I for real sick and my little brother Michael and sister Jennifer acted up the whole time. Poor Mom. We took a big plane to meet my Dad who was already in San Francisco.

When we got off the plane, my little brother yelled, “Look! Hills!” Brown billowy mountains surrounded us, and we’d never seen that before.

So now we were walking around – we’d already walked through the park past trees, lots of trees and flowers – before we walked down a hill and saw the most beautiful merry-go-round ever. I wanted to ride it right away. My little sister Jennifer was in a stroller, and Michael and I ran as fast as we could down the hill to look at the merry-go-round – with all the different animals, not just horses – but giraffes, zebras, even an ostrich! Michael and I watched the animals go ‘round and ‘round, and then we ran over towards the swing.

That’s when I stopped to look at the giant round slide. It took my breath away.

“Look at that!” I shouted.

“Yeah!” Michael yelled. “Looks scary!”

I saw that round slide every time we went to Children’s Playground, but I never tried to go down it. NO way.

Until the day David Hirrell from around the corner dared me.

Lots of kids lined up to slide down the giant round slide, climbing the ladder that went up and up to forever, waiting on a metal rung until the line moved. It moved pretty fast.

I shouldn’t be scared, I thought. I swing really high – almost higher than anyone. Why would the big round slide scare me?

“I dare you!” David Hirrell said.

“Okay! I’m gonna do it!” I stood in line, trying not to look up. When we reached the ladder, I approached it slowly, feeling the ice cold rail on my hands as I hung on and made my way up the ladder, the scared feeling in my stomach getting stronger and stronger. I felt sick, that’s how scared I was.

I looked up at the boy who was in front of me.

“I dare you!” I heard David Hirrell shout from waayyy below.

I kept hearing it, over and over, in my head. “I dare you, I dare you.”

Finally, I reached the top. Oh no.

There I was at the top of the giant round slide, hanging on to the rail on the side, standing on the metal platform, frozen in place. I simply could not move. My body wouldn’t let me.

“Hey, go down!” the kid behind me shouted, and then other kids on the ladder started in.

“Just go already!” someone yelled.

I simply couldn’t do it. I made the mistake of looking down and everything was spinning. I could see the top of the merry-go-round, the trees and the swings and everyone far below looked tiny. I felt like I was going to be sick.

“I can’t do it. I wanna go back down,” I said. Only a couple of people heard me.

“It’s too late! Just go!” the young boy with the freckles behind me said.

It was all David Hirrell’s fault. He knew I’d be scared.

“I can’t – I just can’t…”

“Awww, c’mon…just close your eyes and go!” the freckle-faced kid said. “C’mon!”

I shook and took a deep breath. That’s it. Close my eyes. I thought of the Beatles song, “Close your eyes, and I’ll kiss you…”

Close your eyes, yes. I closed my eyes and slowly sat down, amid yells of “Hurry up!” and “What’s happening?” and “Go down already!”

I could feel the cool wind blowing and hear the voices, but with my eyes closed, I was in a different place – and as the boy behind me gave me a small shove, I had no choice but to go down and round and round, sliding through a time tunnel into the abyss…sliding and sliding and then poof! There I was in the sand, and when I opened my eyes, everything was so bright again.

It took me a moment and the kid behind me almost bashing into me to figure out where I was.

“It’s about time!” the kid shouted.

I saw Michael and David Hirrell who just laughed when I shouted, “I did it!”

The Unexpected - Maria Robinson

2011-03-10T16:43:00.000-08:00

In the midst of the continual, the habitual. You trudge to Work, grind at your French, struggle to stay up with your writing, and dream of traveling far away. but it happened. Just like a curtain opening before a cliff. Just like a plate of your favorite food that suddenly you don't recognize. . Just like a navy black night that never wakes up and screeching white day that never ends.

Finding myself standing in a hallway, walking down a street with no where really to be. Despite the triumphant efforts that have sustained you for decades, you've lost the meaning of your life. An old hand at change, you figure that you'll wait it out, like pain, like lost love. But it's eating you alive.

You've thrown away everything, torn up your apartment and renewed your vows to a husband who is a dear dear friend. But it just won't let you go. It want you to kneel down, it wants to enslave you. You have more than enough to pay as ransom, but it only wants your whole life.

What She Finally Decided to Say - Carol Arnold

2011-03-10T16:42:00.002-08:00

Lynne tried to forget the phone call from Harold, but the “he needs to talk to you badly,” part weighed on her, almost as much as the idea of camping in the jungle did. Maybe she had made a mistake, she thought, coming here to this hot and steamy place to find a new life. But what was waiting for her at home? An alcoholic boyfriend, an adult daughter who hated her, and no long-term way to pay her bills now that she had quit her job. Here, at least, she could forget all that for a few pre-paid weeks, and who knows what might turn up after that?

She rehearsed a conversation with Harold, using jungle camping as a reason he should not call her again.

“I won’t be reachable,” she would say. “I’ll be amongst the un-contacted tribes.” She knew that was a lie, that any un-contacted tribes were far from where she was, but it felt good just to say that.

Or perhaps she would use the Panama hat guy as a ruse. “We’ll be deep in the jungle doing research on medicinal plants,” she would say. That part was partly true. The plan was, she had found out from the Danish Rastafarians who seemed to be in the know about everything, as if they had some special channel into the silent Shaman’s mind, that they would camp on a platform in the tree canopy, and take the drug up there.

“It’ll blow your mind,” the shorter one said. His pale blue eyes looked out of place in this hot clime, like ice in a cup of cocoa.

“How do you know?” she had asked, but received only a smirk in reply.

* * *

The phone line crackled, then went silent. Lynne sighed, pleased at the thought that she might not be able to get through after all. But just as she was about to hang up, a male voice broke the hush on the other end. It sounded like it was speaking from the moon.

“Hello. Hello. Who is this?”

Lynne held the phone close to her mouth, still undecided about what she would say. “Harold? Is that you?” she finally muttered. Thunder cracked overhead as the gathering afternoon storm rolled across the forest. Lynne shuddered, then looked up at the clerk who grinned blankly back, the sparkle of her front teeth almost too much to bear in the dim light.

“Hello…ah, Harold Bullock speaking.”

“Harold. It’s Lynne.”

“Who?”

“Lynne. I’m calling you back,” she said matter of factly, adding “from the Amazon,” as if that would make it clear how futile it was for him to try to get her.

“Lynne! Yes, yes, I called you. Melanie gave me the name of the lodge, and I tracked down the number.” A bitter taste rose in her mouth, like sour apples.

“What did you want, Harold?”

“Want? Nothing. Just to tell you how much we love you. Beth and me. We miss you terribly.”

Lynne remembered the look on their faces at the airport, Beth’s like the whole scene was the most disgusting the world had ever seen, Harold, his eyes like half-moons, hung-over and smelling of cheap whiskey.

Silence. Then finally, “Harold. I have to tell you. I’m going into the jungle and will not be able to talk to you again. Do you hear me? I’ll be in the jungle. We’re doing research on endangered plants, the kinds used for medicine.”

“Danger? What danger. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine Harold. I’ve got to go though. This is costing me an arm and leg.”

“You hurt your leg?”

“No, Harold. My leg is fine. Goodbye.”

What I Finally Decided to Say - Kate Bueler

2011-03-10T16:42:00.001-08:00

What I finally decided to say was ask if he still wanted the dream we had all been working towards. I finally decided to ask him what he wanted. Right now. You see this happens sometimes. We get excited over a student who is dreaming big especially one who had not had the opportunity before who dreams had not been allowed for him in this way. Not by choice. By the accident of being born in a neighborhood with different pressures. No he could dream. But only so big. His dreams could not expand into others or be bigger than himself. And there he went along in life. Making choices. And when he finally got to me. It turned out this student who never thought the words college would cross across his lips, a student who never thought he could say it without someone laughing. He after multiple high schools and a path I allowed to stay in the past. He could still go to college.

So once we found out and he said the words. We jumped in the boat and all started paddling fiercely. For we could not let this new dream die. The death of it. Would kill us too. The obstacles so great, so big, that he needed the extra assistance through the rough waters around this school, around this home. The waves kept on trying to capsize us. But every time we braved it. And peaceful waters would return. His father would drive over the bridge just to bring some money for his college application. He would decide to go to a safer location for the SAT-these are realities you might understand, I might not understand.

But you see somewhere along the line I realized I was in the front of the boat with a colleague and I wasn't sure where the student was. If he was on board at all. Had we lost him on the this last ride against the current? I looked back and saw his face. His eyes distant. His face solemn. The excitement of the dream was dwindling. I realized I had to ask him what he wanted. I realized I had to tell him we wouldn't be disappointed. I realized we could support him in his next step and that didn't have to be a four year college. And once I realized-I had to tell him. The dream didn't die it just changed. And his face relieved in thank you and I didn't want to disappoint you.

We are still on that ship. We just needed to change our positions of the rowing. We still have to go against the current for the temptations are great. The greatest gift of all was the dream. That he could dream and we could believe in him. But in not asking him. We forgot him. But once we remembered it wasn't our dream and our life but his. We did what we could to keep that ship destination bound. Knowing it can stay afloat with our help but he needed to be manning the ship. The dream didn't die. It just changed. For a dream outside of the street quickness is the dream of most of my students- it looks different and feels different and it is hard work for them and for us. But really what I had to say was I made a mistake when I decided to get in the front of that boat and not move. That is what I said. That is what he heard. And together we still paddle. In unison.

What I Finally Decided to Say - Meg Newman

2011-03-10T16:40:00.000-08:00

The cab arrived on time which stood out immediately as a minor miracle. Past experience contradicted the likelihood of this event. I found the correct entrance and began my ascent to the 4th floor. The security officer had soft eyes, looked at my gait and my crutches and said, "Don't bother with your ID, I can see you are fine. Besides we have cameras."

Okay I thought, and plowed my way to the elevator. After a short stay in the ambulatory surgery waiting room, I was led into the well-lit recovery room. Sherry's chest moved up and down rhythmically and slowly. She didn't budge when the nurse first introduced herself and began to situate me.

Sherry looked small and tender all swathed in her white covering – it was too thin to be called a blanket. I made my way to her left side and inspected her beautiful face and salt-and-pepper hair . In that moment, I felt unattached to the test results. We had waited so long to know what she was facing.

Awakening to her face and support after 4 spinal surgeries was sacred to me and I wanted Sherry to have similar experience. I wasn't leaving her side. The nurse reappeared, smiling and gave me the test results.

Sherry awoke and I said, "It was normal. All normal, no Crohn's disease" thinking to myself unlike her mother. I continued in an bold voice, "No colon cancer," and thought of the suffering of Sherry's two brothers. "Not even a polyp." This is what I finally said to Sherry.

The Winds of Change - Bonnie Smetts

2011-03-10T16:39:00.002-08:00

Dr. Sarin bent forward as he reached for his teacup. He watched the morning sun fill the cup and glide a cross the surface of his tea. He took a sip and spoke. “Have you heard them talking?”

“What, what can you be talking about?” He’d interrupted his sister’s morning gazing out the window to their garden.

“I believe a few of them are being sent home,” he said.

“But some of them come and go, although...” Although they both knew that most of the English in the colony had been on Third Street, on Wallaby street, most of their lives. The children were growing up in Kharagpur.

“Perhaps it’s just a change of personnel. Perhaps.” Dr. Sarin’s cup clinked loudly as he put it down. He and his sister drank the black tea of their English, not the spicy tea of their childhood. “But fewer are planning to go to the ocean this year. Mrs. Parker told me that. she of course gave a precise number.”

His sister laughed.

He knew she held the same images of Mrs. Parker that he did. Mrs. Parker was like a stick of butter before it melted, solid and square. He shuttered at the idea of her melting.

“Well, if Mrs. Parker says a number, she’s sure to be right.” They laughed with resignation. Mrs. Parker tried to get them to join in on certain parties, certain ones. Dr. Sarin was aware that they were part of the “certain ones” list.

But the idea of anything changing with the English disturbed Dr. Sarin. Life changes, he thought, everything passes, everything comes around again. So why did he feel so unsettled. Nothing but a few numbers spoken by the solid English woman sent him off-kilter. And he didn’t like that. And he didn’t like seeing his equilibrium disturbed.

“When shall we discuss the school?” They were supposed to decide about which school his nephew would attend at the start of the next year. Dr. Sarin was honored that his sister’s husband would allow him to speak his mind on this. Dr. Sarin loved the child as if he were his own, maybe more than if he were his own.

“Yes, when I return from the clinic. I promise to be home in the afternoon.”

The Winds of Change - Jennifer Baljko

2011-03-10T16:39:00.001-08:00

My unexpected life. It’s been on my mind lately, even before I saw the prompt. Most things – most good things – have to come to be from unexpected circumstances, never anticipated, always welcomed, but hard to imagine as real. The stone’s throw turning into an avalanche I can’t outrun. That I don’t want to outrun. The leap faith, a trusted colleague, the willingness to risk almost nothing and nearly everything. All at once, that’s the way it tends to go more often than not. A month ago, a small idea took root. It grew from several other ideas that could never have held their own ground. Now we’re entrepreneurs, maybe we will create something novel in the 21st century, but borrowed from generations that came before us. Perhaps, this unexpected idea, which is rapidly shaping the next chapter of my unexpected life, will come to expect great things from me.

The Winds of Change - Melody Cryns

2011-03-10T16:38:00.000-08:00

When I was a little girl I believed in magic. I believed Peter Pan really could fly, and so could Mary Poppins. I believed my mother was magical and knew everything and that she would never die…

Nana passed away late Sunday night, within hours after we left her side. It was as if she was waiting for everyone to say good-bye and then she slipped away…such an incredible life. When I awoke this morning, I pulled on my sweats and dashed outside into the cold early morning air towards Curves. I could feel a cool wind whip through me and I shivered, pulled my jacket hood over my head. I wondered for just a moment if the wind was coming from the east or west. Mary Poppins said she’d leave when the wind changes – how does one really know when the wind changes, I thought, as I continued onward, so many memories swirling around me on a chilly Tuesday morning. The Ides of March…

It was chilly and cold like this in January 1997 right after my mother died – icy winds blowing as we stood on Nye Beach in a circle with the metal box that contained my mother’s remnants…my brother and I had both seen Mom’s body before she was cremated. She looked like she was sleeping – but something was missing. She was like a china doll, not really there. Her magic had disappeared and gone elsewhere – my brother and I both noticed it when we looked at Mom stretched out on that cold metal gurney.

The icy cold wind blew and whipped against our faces, salty and damp. This all happened just the way Mom wanted it – not the way anyone else did. The ceremony on the beach where everyone said something about Mom. Of course I was late, but my brother said Mom had planned for that too. She orchestrated her own passing, it seemed, including telling my brother to give me an earlier time for the funeral so that I wouldn’t be too late. Only this wasn’t really a formal funeral – but what is?

What will they do for Nana, I thought as I continued walking down the street. Did she want anything in particular done? What will happen to her beautiful paintings that hung in her apartment and I’d seen them at her house before as well? I wondered.

The only thing I could do when they got to me was sing a song – I thought it would be a Beatles song for sure. But no, it was an old drinking song that I learned at school in second or third grade – probably Miss Evans, the music teacher who was my idol all through elementary school, taught it to us. “I’ve been to Harlem, I’ve been to Dover, I’ve traveled this world all wide over, over, over!” I started singing it slow and soft, standing there at that beach, the icy wind practically blowing through us, holding on to Megan’s hand – she was only four years old then – my older kids on the other side of me, my brother and sister across from me and all of my mother’s closest friends who were like family to her.

I just couldn’t think of anything to say, so I sang – and my brother who had been so stoic and strong and who led the ceremony, smiled and started to sing along. My brother NEVER sang along. Melissa sobbed uncontrollably for the Grandma she was so close to – they had shared more than just the same color eyes – Melissa was my mother reincarnated – even at the age of 14. “Listen to your daughter sometimes,” my mom used to say. “Sometimes I think she’s the only one in your family who makes sense…”

The words all floated through the wind, the song that I sang –one of the many songs Mom and I would sing while walking down the street, embarrassing my brother and sister who didn’t want to be seen with us. We’d shout at the “over, over, over!” part.

Will they sing any songs for Nana, I thought? Will anyone take her remains out on a fishing boat and fight seasicknesses and waves higher than the boat to scatter her ashes into the ocean like we did for Mom?

I didn’t know, but I knew one thing for sure. Nana was loved…like my Mom was…and my Grandma who lived a couple of years longer than Mom.

Where do they really go when they die, or when the wind changes and they fly away – like Mary Poppins? But Mary Poppins did come back.

Calling From Somewhere Else - Judy Albietz

2011-03-10T16:37:00.000-08:00

Bakari had a perfect flash memory of the scene stored on a special shelf in his brain. Those were the last moments he’d had with his mother. Whenever he was lonely, he re-played that scene. It always felt like it was happening all over again.

He’d found her in a deep crevasse that had opened up in the ground. She was pinned under a landslide of rocks. The volcano was shaking the very core of the island. The boiling river of lava poured down from the cone, separating her from everyone else. There was no hope of rescue.

“Mother!” he called. He could see her two-dimensional version as she looked up to him.

“Bakari, oh Bakari, my sweet boy! I can see you … your image. How is this happening?” Tears glistened in her eyes. She reached out to try to hold his face in her hands.

“They let me use the Time Portal to project my mind-voice and image to you. They … they gave me this time to say … goodbye,” he sobbed. “We have only a minute.”

“Bakari, quick … tell me … did your father and your brothers all make it through the Time Portal?” She winked one eye and cocked her head to the side, like she always did when she was checking if everyone had done their chores.

“Yes, mother … they are all safe … are you in much pain?” Bakari asked. He tried to keep his mind-voice steady. He didn’t want to totally fall apart. He only had these few precious moments.

“Tell me about your training. Are you paying attention? Are you working hard?” she asked. Bakari knew she wanted to have a normal conversation, as if she had all the time in the world.

“Yes, I work really hard, but it is fun too. I am learning how to control my visions of the future. And I have work assignments. I am on the team that will control and maintain the Time Portal. “

“Bakari, I love you.”

“I love you too,” he croaked just as the connection switched off. He had one last glimpse at the warm beaming smile that lit up her beautiful face.