Wanting in

Storm days

Constructive Criticism

He sat in her desk chair, his hands beneath his thighs to keep him from chewing his nails, as she read his thesis. His thesis that had taken him five years to write. His thesis whose completion had been marked by an insatiable hunger, so that he felt part of his body (probably a chunk of esophagus) was now inside it, unretrievable. As her eyes moved with steady swiftness across the lines, she crossed and recrossed her legs stretched out in front of her on the bed. Finally, she set the paper on her lap.

“So?” he asked in a tone something above a whisper.

“I like it,” she said, and less helpful words had never before been spoken.

“And,” he said, his arms making a circling motion in front of him.

“But,” she continued, and he held his breath, “Why, when you write he or she, does the he always come first?” Her wide eyes looked at him waiting for an answer, her hands folded teacher-like on her lap. Her countenance remained frozen as his mind fumbled, then jump started.

“Because it’s shorter,” he answered.

She stuck her chin a little in the air and nodded.

“I get that.”

A New England Fall

Burnham Library in Essex, MA

Which library photo do you like the best?

I Am Your Future

"First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me."

Martin Niemöller (1945)

Darkling Dorxy

Her name is Dorthy. Everyone calls her Dorx. At school she wears thick rimmed glasses weekly painted green with nail polish, and braces with light blue elastic bands. But on the far wall of her bedroom she has made a road with yellow construction paper, and on this magic path she travels to the place she actually sleeps.

In her bedroom in Kansas she has a pull-out sofa that, unbeknownst to her parents, she never pulls out. In her real room, in Ozzy, she has a oak bed, enclosed with rich green curtains, gilded with silver lace. The walls are of silver glass, the Emerald City laying out before them. There she sleeps in peace, the stars in different places, but shining just as bright.

Dorx, a renaming she wears with all the pride and dignity of Stonewall Jackson, used to be able to do more than sleeps in Ozzy. Once upon a time, she used to run through the streets with her red scarf, sparkling in the sunlight, flying out behind her. In those days when it was night in Kansas it was day in Ozzy. She spent her time there drinking sparkling white grape juice with her friends, and looking through thrift shop after thrift shop for antique broomsticks. The first friend she made in Ozzy was a tall, sprightly boy of sixteen with autism, but who could make more sense out of numbers than anyone she had ever heard of. Next, they met Jasper who though they loved him like a brother still had many dark secrets he kept inside his chest. Finally, Abel joined the group, at which point they had to stop their monthly marathons of 60's Japanese monster monster movies because he got freaked out.

With such adventures to be had with such good friends, one night Dorx decided not to go back to Kansas. She was sick and tired of having confusing, impossible school work, and friends who never picked her to be their partner in gym class. She ended up staying a week in Ozzy before she finally went back. She arrived in her bedroom to see her mother kneeling by the pull-out sofa weeping, her dad leaning on the door frame with bloodshot eyes. She vowed then and there to never again see the land of Ozzy in the daytime where the light might carry her away like a wonderful tornado. Now, when  it is night at home, it is night in Ozzy too.

A stranded library

heavenly

Does not have to be perfect in a glass

There was once a boy who was thin and a girl who was fat. She had rainbows in her hair and they both laughed at those who had stickers in their brains. "Their brains are full of cutesy stickers that grammies like to buy at fabric stores." (Normal people know them as those who are always sunny even when it's murder.) No one ever writes of gorgeous, thin guys falling in love with fat, ugly girls. Even if the story starts out that way, she is destined to have a transformation to eternal, external beauty. But then I have forgotten Shrek. Thank God for him.

There was once a boy who was thin and a girl who was fat. Neither expected the other to be perfect in a glass. She was loud and he was quiet. She was raucous and he was domineering. But she had rainbows in her hair and he had a tree growing sky-high in his chest. They loved each other. They almost got divorced.

A lovely quiet day

Good friends are those you can be loud and crazy with
and completely quiet

(Rockport, MA)

Mine

She sat on the edge of the sofa, gorging her eyes on a dark chocolate colored magazine. He came in the room with even lengthen steps, stopping perpendicular to her.


"Guess what?" he asked. She looked up, her eyelashes making a sweet sound against her glasses.


"What?" she replied.


"Exactly five minutes ago, when I was in the next room, I decided to become a marine biologist. I'm going to look up colleges tomorrow." He smiled, the points of his lips almost even with his nose.


"Her eyes widened, and the magazine dropped to her lap.


"No way," she said, her voice going unnervingly high, "Five minutes ago, I was reading an article about deep sea exploration, and decided to become a marine biologist." She stood up, and pointed with an extended arm back to room he had came from.


"Leave my soul, right now!" she said.


He left, dejected and confused. He loved her so.

Irony

The rainbow on the mirror is bleeding. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple veins dripping down the glass, leaving trails to the treasure beneath the sink. But I'm not sure anyone would want that treasure, covered in the crusty stains of the blood of the rainbow. It would be like buying diamonds hauled out of the darkness on the cut and splitting skin of children.

Sugar

“How was your physics and philosophy class?” he asked, his eyes seeming to peer just over the top of his laptop like his neck didn’t exist.

She stopped where she stood, her bag still on her shoulder, her hand on her hip.

And then, she said, “I look at all the pictures when I go to museums, but only at the interesting pictures do I read the plaques. That class made me want to go to a museum right then, before it was even over, and read all the plaques.”

“That’s very specific,” he said. They both could here the surreptitious taps of his fingers on the keys of his keyboard.

She remained standing over him.

“Generally, that class makes me want to learn, but to be even more specific it makes me want to read all the plaques in the one room museum of the Sugarlands visitor center in North Carolina,” she said.

And then, she curled up her thin figure on the bed, and his eyes disappeared behind the laptop screen.

Evil has a face

and it's adorable