It is a bleak February day, gray and damp with a mist that sits heavy around the world, when we make the long drive to his childhood home, where the old Chevy sits under a grave blanket of snow, left to him by a man who has been gone for a long, hard decade already. With a tender touch and skilled hands, he works under the hood; then in the bed, removing last fall's leaves, which have kept her warm under all the ice and snow.
One mighty shake and rumble later, the engine jumps to life. The frame creaks and groans, like some beast awakening from a deep slumber.
With a combination of strength and gentleness that is so uniquely his, he pats th
I kissed a boy with a tongue ring once. I was sober, but he was stoned. I'd watched them inhale lovely toxic fumes in a room upstairs that made my belt glow in the black light. He had his fingers through my jeans, and that's how I knew I'd never see him again.
It's like watching carnivorous meals. The ones caught by surprise and immediate surrender go down smoothly. Painlessly. Still wiggling a little as their tails disappear into vast and powerful jaws.
It's the ones that wanted to live that get it the worst. There isn't much you can do once they have you pinned to the sides of their plastic tank. But you fight it anyway, you poor bastards
As that little silver car careens in front of us, I find myself drawing a sharp breath and bracing my eyes open. I know that this time we may not make it, and in that moment of ultimate mortality, I am faced with everything that it is to be alive. The fury, the passion of it all, overtakes me and despite the fact that every nerve ending in my body is screaming at me to blink, I find myself focusing my energy instead on placing my hand calmly over yours, eyes still focused on the still and lethal road ahead.
You downshift so sharply that the car screams in protest, her engines jolted roughly out of their usual quiet purr, but not a muscle in
"Here's to hell," you whisper, and raise your glass to the heavens, its cellophane rim glinting ever so softly against the clouds.
"To hell," she returns the toast, boldly and with such emphasis that it takes a while for whatever little breath you had left to return to you, and then she settles back to watch the world cascade around her. By now she has nothing left.
There is a quiet confidence in her eyes that you no longer espy, and there is but rare chance that you perceive your own, hand-written notes pressed close to her pounding heart. Letters she found, read, re-read. Folded, re-folded, and put in her pockets to keep her sane. Letters
December Thunderstorm by Goodbye-kitty975, literature
Literature
December Thunderstorm
It was in the midst of a December thunderstorm that she realized what the passion in her life really meant. It hadn't rained like this in years, and this was the first time it had ever stopped her from doing anything. Never again would that free feeling of summer mean the same thing. Those memories were fleeting, incomplete.
Every one of his reasons was honest. Some of them even bordered on complete, pure truth. Still, not one of them justified his bursting into her room on those fantastic, spontaneous nights and grabbing her hand, sweeping her (physically) off her feet, inviting her to go gallivanting into the darkness.
There were whisperi
He's a little more neurotic every time he comes in. He's looking for a cigarette and his eyes are so piercing I find myself looking down and away. His girlfriend would be ashamed.
He knows damn well I don't smoke, but he's hoping maybe I know where our friend is, or better yet, where she hides her cigarettes this week. He's quit six times today. Already.
Later in the night, when we sit talking on the bench outside, he's careful not to blow the smoke in my face. I watch in fascination as he inhales, finishes his thought out loud, and then exhales a second later. I wonder where the smoke goes between his scattered ideas.
He catches me watchi
Five O'Clock Coffee by Goodbye-kitty975, literature
Literature
Five O'Clock Coffee
5:30am on a Wednesday. Im having my third cup of coffee and wondering when the heat will finally break. Across the street, in the immaculate looking business complex, a water fountain spits regurgitated water at the soon-to-be hazy sky.
Wonder what architects brilliant idea that was, I think to myself as I split open another creamer. The plastic wrapper crinkles, almost inaudibly as I toss it aside, adding to the heap of twelve that came before. The white is lost in the depths of my mug as I reach for the sugar.
These days coffee is a lonely ritual and I find myself feeling almost as bitter as the chocolate-colored espresso bean
I found myself walking across the flatlands late one night, and the sky was the most spectacular shade of purple. It was lighter at the edges and deeper near the top, but it was purple from start to finish. The ground was covered in a glittering blanket of snow. Clean and unmarred, it was the first of the season. Finally, it was beginning to feel like winter. The loosely packed flakes caught every detail and magnified it. Sounds that would otherwise remain unheard echoed softly around me. I could hear animals deep inside the trunks of trees shifting in their winter sleep. The color of the sky was reflected in those endless sheets of white. Va
It was an ashtray of a fall day, and the brooding air made pirouettes of the lovely dancer's silent stare. I filed my nails while sitting on the cold mahogany bench with all the rest of them. My camera lay unconcerned on the pavement behind my crossed ankles. These people didn't even have the decency to leave us some grass to stare at through the windows of this prison and the pale tendrils of the smoke around my hair were more an inspiration for poetry than photography. I wouldn't give a damn thing to be one of them. They could take their money and their politics and write me a letter from the top. I'd be sitting at home with the rhythmic cl