Tag: hope
-
Pillow Talk
You cannot escape truth when talking across a pillow. Delirious comfort leaves no space for fear. If there was a banking system for time, an exchange rate for moments, for getting back what we’ve lost, I would invest all these empty hours I bleed out introspectively on the page for one morning spent volleying whispered…
-
The Sieve Bored Holier
“I am the place in which something has occurred.” — Claude Lévi–Strauss What is here labelled as “something,” must be aggrandized. “Something” is too broad a descriptor. So, is it more direct to say I am the place in which many a thing has happened? Is this a better means of explaining in a single…
-
Temperance of Permanence
She met him when neither of them could stand to be alone. They remedied this by getting together. Now they’re face to face and he’s trying to tell her how now he can’t seem to be with anyone. The tightrope walk between being available and being alone is an act he’s made his own. Acrobats…
-
Middleton
Middle age endows its members with, amongst strands of grey, bushels of gifts. Most are neglected, others embraced, but none must go unnoticed. Years accumulate, begging the excavation of long-buried relics—memories tucked under blankets of time. Unlike meticulously dusted deposits of Jurassic carbon, the artifacts of days past have a tendency to uproot hurriedly from…
-
Purporting Romance Mythically
Romance is an exercise in myth building. When a new relationship is on the rise, budding rosebuds are gathered while the wilted are buried away. We pull together moments and save artifacts and write a history for our lives as newly paired duos. We destroy, to an extent, our former lives. We become revisionist historians,…
-
Washed Away with the Floodwater
The old man adopted Kiddo in April at the suggestion of his eldest granddaughter. She told him a puppy would be good for him, what with a year of living alone under his belt. When she first offered the idea, just a short time after Julia went to the Lord and the walls of the…
-
A Mass Engraving
Requests come in daily. They are from loved ones wanting a rubbing from the Wall. A rubbing of the engraving they have requested be mailed to them. Loved ones who are unable to make the trip to the capitol. Loved ones who will not see their own eyes staring back from the glassy black wall.…
-
Visiting Gram
“She’s doing much better today, dear,” the portly woman behind the desk tells me as I sign my name on the guest registry. This marks my eighth time here in four weeks. I have signed and dated this page eight times, each time wishing it would be the last. You might think I wouldn’t have…
-
Laughter Saves Lives
Where is the worth in waiting? I have been locked in stasis, hungry for change (as I’ve come to define waiting), but cannot find all that much to value there. Be present. Instead of expelling your desire waiting for summer, embrace winter. Summer will come regardless. Don’t just give up on what you can accomplish…
-
Invoking the Blank Page
I am looking to you, Blank Page, for help. I awoke today with Worry. While I was able to slough off the morning blanket, Worry persisted its shroud about me. An invisible source secures a tight hold around the top of my head. It clamps the innards of my chest. The cinches have been there…
-
Fodder for Retrospect
The limp expression on his face was nothing new, but it still tore gently into Monica’s chest each time she looked at her son. With each tear in the fabric of motherhood, she buried the urge to give up, to send him to another doctor, to admit to the nagging suspicion that she might be…
Sophisticating the Rudimentary 