Using as inspiration the beautiful art of Carianne Mack Garside, a flash fiction or thought through the days of the year. Click on the images to get to the artist’s page, where you’ll find a bit more about the piece and the source of inspiration. Please note that each month’s work here has a separate page (links are in the right sidebar).
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120/365 DAYS BECOME DATES
Word Count: 220
It’s Willie Nelson’s birthday today. Seventy-eight years ago, he was born. It’s also my neighbor’s first granddaughter’s birthday; she’ll be fourteen. I have a picture of when she was just a year old, held high above her grandfather’s head, both laughing in delight. He died shortly thereafter. And today, April 30th, 2011, is the day nine years later, that my mother died too.
I remember getting the call from the nursing home. “You might want to come down,” the nurse said. I called my sister. We didn’t call my dad. We sat. We fixed her hair, touched her hand, talked to her. We walked around. We waited and ran out of things to say. My sister left and I was near ready to take off when an aide brought me some orange juice. My mother died two breaths after I finished.
I suppose if you live long enough events stack up on top of another. There are only 365 days in a year after all. They repeat in a cycle and after a number of years, some things are bound to happen on a day that’s already marked in your mind. Doesn’t seem fair in a way, a dramatic event should have it’s own special day.
Then again, it doesn’t take away from the joy or lessen the pain.
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119/365 ROYAL WEDDING DAY
Word Count: 304
She woke up that morning and realized that this was it, today was the day! Every girl dreams of her wedding day, and most think their husband-to-be is a prince, but today, in exactly two hours, she was going to marry a prince, a real prince, Prince William himself, who she’s adored since she was just a little girl. How lucky was that?
She showered before having her coffee and cereal because she didn’t want to be late. She towel-dried her hair, slathered cream all over her body, slowly working in the lovely scent of peaches before she put on her robe and sat down to wait and relax. She flicked on the T.V.
The news ran down the events of the day. In between the national reports and the weather she put on her makeup, drawing her eyes subtle yet sexy and bold. She blow-dried her hair, curled it into gentle waves during commercials. It looked like the rain would hold off but she sprayed her hair doubly well just in case. She put on her new white satin bra and silk panties and pulled on her pantyhose, finished the coffee and rinsed out the cup. All she had left to do was slip into her dress.
Trumpets blared from the living room and she hurried in and sat down on the couch. She folded and unfolded her hands, touched her hair, checked her earrings to make sure they were clasped. She knew it was supposedly bad luck, but she watched as Prince William and his brother, Prince Harry, made their way into the cathedral. William looked so handsome! It was hard to tear herself away from the T.V. but she went out and slipped into her dress as the limousine carrying Kate stopped in front of the church.
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118/365 EN MASSE
Word Count: 356
Do we need to die in groups in order for people to care?
How about the guy who died at his desk of a heart attack cross town the same time that the towers fell? Do his kids feel any better because he wasn’t there? Did his wife say, “Oh well, at least he wasn’t in the towers” and bless herself in grateful thanks?
My dog died and I don’t care that he was just a dog, or that he died of old age and in my arms rather than in a meteor strike along with a hundred other dogs. He was a good dog. I had him since I was seven and even though I don’t live home anymore and only saw him during semester breaks and summers, I still miss him more than anything.
Or maybe there’s a reason for it all. One person dies and a certain space is now available. A bunch of people die, all in relatively the same space, and there’s a huge amount of cubic footage left empty. Maybe it creates a vacuum. Maybe it sucks the grief from all of us right down to our toes.
I watched it on TV. It was a horrible thing to see and I’ll bet it was even worse in person, especially if you knew someone that was still inside. And the aftermath, like holy ground. But the car inside the fenced in area, all crumpled and if you look real close you’d see the brown spatters and splotches on the seats and rugs that are the last remnants of a life that left its allotted space on earth last night, doesn’t that mean just as much?
They’re showing the floods, the buildings gaping open-mouthed from earthquakes and tsunamis. I’m struck by the amount of devastation. I know somebody there but worry doesn’t interfere with the greatness, the total size of tortured ground. Until I hear the voiceover that pinpoints the arena. And focus on the single soul I know. It hits me like a giant wave of nausea and I’m sucked right into the hungry vortex of the empty space.
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117/365 ME AND JOHN THE BAPTIST
Word Count: 540
He says he’s John the Baptist and to be carefuI of his head. When I’m sure that he’s asleep I touch the long brown curly hair. In the dim light from the window I watch him sleep and study his long neck, his Adam’s apple prominent like Mt. Sinai against the dawn.
We met at a Chinese restaurant where he was deep in conversation with a girl whose hair was frizzed and orange-red. She was animated, in every inch of her body, her hands flailing with emphasis, her legs crossed, uncrossed, set their stance to pounce. Her face would change expression at the speed of old movie film, her eyebrows going up and down in curves, her nose scrunched up or elitely sniffed, her mouth moving in curls of lips that stretched and puckered, opened wide and lost themselves in a tight purse. Her eyes were focused on his face.
I too could not tear myself away from his face once I followed her direction. In contrast to his companion, nothing about him moved except his eyes, which caught a light and sparkled. His mouth, a thin smile. His body leant in like a hockey net to ensure no word of hers could fly past him and lose the meaning of her conversation. His hands both gripped his handleless cup of Chinese tea. His feet were planted flat and solid on the floor. He radiated goodness. Peace.
They finished their meal and she pulled a credit card out of her handbag and paid their bill. As soon as she got the receipt she got up and flounced off, or so it seemed like a flounce though I hadn’t heard any sort of disagreement between them. Maybe it was just her body’s need to still be in some form of motion. I watched him watch her leave. Then he turned and looked directly at me.
There’s that moment when you know you’ve been caught but you look away anyway. Some of us think we’ve managed to handle it by simply averting our eyes and avoid other movement. I’m sure it doesn’t fool anyone. It didn’t fool him.
He got up and came right over to my table and sat down. I reset my gaze to meet his. I was, of course, already facing him. “Hello,” he said. I melted. I barely got out my name. “I’m John the Baptist,” he said. So okay, street names are cool. He did look clean and pleasant.
And so it came to pass, John B. moved in with me and has been here just over a month. We have a lot in common to talk about; we’re both history lovers and particularly fascinated by early civilization and migration patterns of the Mediterranean area. He goes off to the university every morning and teaches on Sundays. He likes my cooking and that’s a big plus. And okay, he’s a phenomenal and more than considerate lover.
But as he lies here, sweetly sleeping, I know something about this whole relationship is just too perfect, too not my usual luck. I touch the soft curls on the pillow, I gently trace the perfect curve of his jaw. I sneeze . . .
. . . and his head rolls clean off the bed.
~~~
116/365 THE MAGIC PASSWORD
Word Count: 184
“Abracadabra! Now you see it, now you don’t!” he said. She applauded in wonder. Clapped the loudest. Her playmate, her friend, who she secretly believed was her boyfriend, had performed magic and she was the first to encourage him. They were seven and eight and lived three doors down from each other. She already knew that she loved him, as girls usually do.
She cheerleadered his quarterbacking. It happened that they ended up going together to the Freshman Social. It was almost as if the play had been written, the characters chosen, the stage set. And so it went a couple years, then “Abracadabra!” and a new girlfriend appeared.
They went separate ways off to college but she got a phone call from him one day. They talked for hours and met halfway for a date. They were engaged by graduation and “Abracadabra! You’ve turned into a wife,” he whispered before they kissed at the altar.
Forty-three years and two magical children later, she walked in alone to the funeral home. She bent over him and whispered “Abracadabra!” but he wouldn’t wake up.
~~~
115/365 DELUSION
Word Count: 337
He fed her strawberries from an icy-cold spoon, dipping each first in a bowl of freshly whipped cream before teasing the tip of her tongue. She could catch the fresh green and red scent of the berry as it was raised to her lips and she opened her mouth in wet anticipation. She wished he would remove her blindfold.
She’d lost track of the days but each brought a new surprise, nothing she could come to depend upon but random new things to taste, touch, and hear, and that made the days pass more quickly. One time he gave her a bar of bittersweet chocolate that melted into velvet in her mouth. The bar lasted all day, the last broken square comforting her way into sleep and colorful dreams that moved slowly like lava to last through the night. She loved the strawberries the best, but once he had given her sips of a liquid that smelled pungently sweet. It was sticky on her lips, flowed like hot honey over her tongue. It made her sleep. She remembered his fingers following the curve of her cheek, down her throat, curling gently around her breast. She had reached for him during the night. She didn’t remember him leaving.
Last night, after the pain stopped he washed her body with a warm cloth that smelled like yellow roses in August. He dressed her in a Spring-scented cotton gown and she felt the crisp newness of the sheets on the bed. She slept for a long time until he wakened her and helped her sit up.
He placed the child in her arms and it felt softly warm just as he’d promised. She felt the thump of its heart, heard the whisper of breath that moved it in rhythm against her breast. She heard a whimper, a weak little sound that stirred something within her. She asked him to remove the blindfold. She heard him sigh deeply. He reminded her that he’d removed it a long time ago.
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114/365 EASTER EGGS
Word Count: 407
It was sitting there as if it’d just been laid by a chicken lacking in any degree of maternal instinct. A purple egg in the middle of the dog path that leads through the park. I’d almost twisted my ankle avoiding it during my regular early morning run. I use the dog path because it’s less crowded on weekends, and it’s easier to avoid dog turds than people pushing running strollers, with headphones clamped on, oblivious to the natural world around them.
I picked up the egg. It was the size of a chicken egg, though maybe more rounded and speckled with deeper purple freckles. It felt warm, alive. I stuck it in my pocket and finished my run.
I’d stuck it in the glass bowl by the entryway along with my keys and small change. It’s one of those catch-all bowls that my mother gave me from my Great Aunt Elbina’s estate. She thinks I don’t take proper care of it. I think it’s ugly but serviceable. It’s bright yellow with big white and red tulips painted in dripping-clock Dali style down from the edges. It’s shown up in several of my nightmares.
It’s not always easy living alone, with the lack of conversation and the bills, but it suits me. I turn on the television for noise and work overtime when I can and it all balances out. The good points are the elimination of any need to do the dishes immediately or make the bed every day, and getting away with dusting only once every month. And, I sleep better in a bed all by myself where I can stretch and kick and snore.
Sometime during the night I woke up to a crack of thunder–or so I’d imagined. There was no storm happening outside. I heard more odd sounds coming from outside my bedroom and quietly got up, grabbed my cellphone in one hand and a lead pipe (my brother provided and insists I keep by the bed) and tiptoed out.
The dim light from the plug-in nightlight in the bathroom pretty much lights up the whole small apartment and I could see nobody was there in a sweeping glance around corners and behind tables and the couch. Then I heard a peep! Yes, a definite, clear and sharp peep!
And that, as I later explained to my landlord, is how I came to have a chicken living here.
~~~
113/365 COUNTERWEIGHT
Word Count: 344
The phone call is from my “help-I’ve-fallen-and-I-can’t-get-up” neighbor again. I’m glad my husband is home because together we just might make up a counterweight against the neighbor’s close to 350-lb. body.
She’s sitting on the bedroom floor, barefoot, nightgowned, cellphone in hand. The story’s in her grim expression. A lifetime of conflict of loving food and dieting.
“I was just settling in with a cup of tea and television,” she says, “and turned around to sit and whoomph! went down.”
I look to the small table and see the mug of tea still steaming. Two brownie squares laid out beside it on a plate.
He pulls, I push, she warns, “watch out for my knees!” Her knees have been remodeled in plastic over the years. She’s smashed one to confetti and had it picked out and replaced just two summers ago.
We stop, rest. She’s half on, half off a chair, on her side, her head mashed into the back cushion. She slides back down before we can catch her.
Rinse, repeat.
Her plan’s not working, and we try other things. We look for things she can hold onto to pull herself up with our help. The bed’s not sturdy enough to hold the weight at one end, the dresser slithers away at her touch.
“We need leverage,” my engineering-brained husband suggests. “Last time when you fell outside, we got you sitting on the step and your feet were lower than your . . . butt.” But she’s inside, in her bedroom.
But an engineer excels at problem-solving mechanical things. He knows angles, and tolerances, and all that sort of stuff. We get her onto a quilt and pull her backwards through the house, sliding (fairly) easily on the hardwood floors. Open the front door, spin her around, put shoes on her feet and get her feet down on the slate of the porch.
He pulls, I push. She’s up. She sighs with embarrassed relief. He sighs with that particular pleasure of having successfully completed a project.
~~~
112/365 PINK
Word Count: 237
It seems that days pass like weeks, dragging their tails like snakes swiping the slates clean of all memory. Sometimes I have to think hard to remember that I haven’t eaten all day. And there are times when I forget that she’s gone.
She was a little pink cloud and I was a boy who liked dirt. She hung in the edges of my sight like an apparition just out of reach. There wasn’t a fleck of dust on her. She was clutching a small white pocketbook with a bunny on the flap. It was white like her shoes and socks. Her hat was a mass of pink blossoms that matched the cloud of her dress. She was staring at me, not moving, not smiling, just watching me wrinkle my Sunday pants and shirt, dip my tie in the mud.
She wore pink to the prom. She let me go “all the way.” The memory of pinkness we lay in on the back seat of my father’s car is still vivid and tingly.
Sometimes I wander up to the attic, tiptoeing as if she could hear me and discover what I’ve found in the garment bags where she had stored things too special too throw away over the years. Afraid that she might remember and come back and take what she seems to have forgotten. Bags hanging dusty and zippered against time. Bags filled with pink clouds.
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111/365 INFINITELY CHANGING
Word Count: 277
It may have been irrational or maybe just a blip in time, the moment between that movement of the second hand that pauses, ticks, pauses, ticks around the smiling circle of the library clock. At any rate, Christian understood that at some point in the day he’d become immortal.
He met Anne for lunch at the deli, as he said he would. Even though he didn’t rush–why would he anymore?–he got there just as she was going through the door. They hugged the quick hug of long-time friends and ordered and sat down at a small table right by the front window.
“Pastrami?” Anne said, “Christian, I thought you were a vegetarian.”
“I was,” he said. He didn’t feel he should start the conversation out with telling her it didn’t matter what he ate, he was going to live forever.
“You’ll never believe what I saw today,” she said. “They’re going to be taking down the old Warner Theatre and putting in an Apple store.”
“Hmm.”
“Christian, that’s sad, don’t you think? I mean the way that we’re losing bookstores, print of all kind, and now movie theaters?”
“It’s progress,” said Christian. “Things must change to keep up with tech.”
“But we’re losing everything we’ve grown up with,” she complained. “I feel like the horses must have felt when the first cars started rolling around.”
“I wonder what will replace the computer store some day,” said Christian.
“We’ll both be dead by then,” she said. She played with her salad, eyeing his sandwich, watching the melted swiss cheese ooze out as he bit into the bread.
And then it hit him; she would be.
~~~
110/365 ACCUMULATION
Word Count: 272
Her apartment is getting hard to walk through, troubles piled up like January snow. She wears kneesocks to bed so that when she gets up in the morning her legs won’t get cold. Her slippers are set at the foot of her bed on top of her bedspread.
Sometimes she thinks that if Jacob hadn’t left when he did she would have. It was the fear of being alone, of doing it all, the checkbook, the banking, the shopping, the meals, the cleaning, keeping gas and oil in the car and feeding the cat that had kept her from leaving. She’s ended up there anyway, she sees that now, and realizes she should have made a move years ago.
He doesn’t call anymore, looking for things that he forgot or purposely left behind. Like the watch she bought him for their wedding that he’s left in the drawer with his ring. And the sport jacket she just gave him last Christmas when he really didn’t deserve cashmere.
She told him she’d get rid of everything if he didn’t come pick it up. She mentioned the watch and the jacket but he never came back or called.
It’s way past the deadlines she’s given, way past a reasonable grace period of time. She starts in his closet and works her way through the house. It takes her a whole weekend and laying in bed Monday morning, hearing the trash truck come by, she holds her breath, listening to the rattles and clinks and thumps of him leaving, exhales as the truck pulls away, and gets up, putting her bare feet on the floor.
~~~
109/365 ONTO THE NEXT
Word Count: 475
“Oh, I know something that’s new,” she said, and went on to tell me she’s back to parting her hair in the middle.
I couldn’t believe it. Nancy just did what I’d thought of doing last week but she actually did it.
We’ve been friends so long I can’t remember a time when we weren’t. We had worked at a small education aid company in the advertising department, she as a migrant worker, which was our definition of a temp. She was nineteen and newly engaged. I was twenty-three and ready to move out on my own. She wore lots of navy blue clothes and penny loafer shoes and parted her hair in the middle.
Over the years, she married and had children. I sat with them playing Pinochle while we counted the minutes between labor pains. It took a long time. While her husband was in the bathroom we messed with the cards, gave him all the nines, tens and Jacks while we held the face cards and aces. We played the whole hand that way as he grumbled and we giggled. Eventually he learned to be wary when we got together.
I house-sat with their dog and cat while they went to Florida to visit his father. I took the call from the State Lottery when they won the car. My boss, the Vice President of Sales and the Sales Manager lifted me up to get through a window when I locked myself out of their house.
Years went by. She listened to all my relationship stories. Knew every man and his quirks. Kept quiet when she met the man I finally married. We’ve gone on silly teenage girl adventures thirty years beyond our teens. We still giggle and whisper and look for things to excite us the way things more easily did way back when. To compensate for the illness and funerals that come along with life’s cycle, we find the humor in each. I tell her about my father-in-law’s hearing aid going off as he lay in the coffin. She tells me about her dead sister’s makeup and wig. We’re both laughing so hard, enjoying it more because no one else would understand that it’s funny.
And now, she’s parted her hair in the middle after decades of parting it on the side. I watch in the mirror as I carefully pull the teeth of the comb in a straight line down towards my nose. It looks all right but feels uncomfortable, like wind blowing into your face.
Next time we talk and after we’ve gone over the basics and come to that almost-ready-to-hang-up pause, I tell her my news. “I’m cutting my nails straight across, you know, flat tips like they’re showing now.”
“Wow,” she says, and I know she understands why.
~~~
108/365 THE TWO
Word Count: 231
The city, she said, is unkind to a country girl. He told her she was made of much stronger stuff and knew she would do well. It’d only been a few months . . .
Five, she said. That’s a long time. And it costs too much to live here.
It’s all relative, he told her. They pay more there.
If you have a good job, she said. She hated to whine. It was so hard, just so hard.
You’re making enough as a waitress, aren’t you? he asked. Concerned, but keeping discouragement out of the question as best as he could.
But I’m an artist! she tried not to cry.
Give it more time, he said. You’ll make it big. I’m sure of it.
She sighed. Tried to smile through the phone. Tried to pull his confidence, his whole self through the phone.
I love you, he said.
She smelled the new pine needles down by the lake. She heard her daddy’s guitar, saw her mother clean freshly caught catfish her little brother brought home. She thought of the two of them the night before she left; how the curtains danced softly like ghosts around the moonlight that spread over his bedroom floor like a beacon. He had called it a sign, her personal spotlight.
I love you too, she said and hung up. I wish you had told me to come home.
~~~
107/365 NEW GREEN
Word Count: 388
The Sunday circuit drive changes only by time of day, season, weather. There are the faithful crossing the street to rush into Mass held at the big stone church by the river. Children are dragged back from the road if they race ahead, dragged from behind if they’re laggers. I’ve already slowed since I know there’s a policeman who sits in his car during the service, praying to catch a few sinners.
The intersection just past that makes me laugh. Four roads. Two lay there nearly inactive, rarely pushing a car out or welcoming one in. All of us go and come here and there only.
The bridge over the river is the gateway to the small rural town. It’s fishing season. This, after the church worshippers, is the next round of wanderers I need to watch. But fisherman are a patient lot, they’ll stand on the bridge with their lines hanging into the river below for hours. Still, I watch both sides for a flash of movement, of the joy of success that may muddy even a fisherman’s focus to bring him dancing deliriously out into the road.
But the town–oh the town! This is a small, crazy quilt town made up of odd angles and crosswalks and an entire population of walkers and bikers all confident that they can stop tanks in their track. People loiter at crosswalks not comprehending that I’ve stopped for them according to law. I beep. They look over, annoyed at the interruption, then go back to their conversations, daydreaming, spiteful mood. I gave them their chance and warning, I figure, and go on like a bowling ball down an alley.
Runners, joggers, ponytails swinging, carriages with scared babies rolling along as fast as their mothers can wheel them. This on the river’s edge walk. There is movement everywhere, sticking in the corners of my eyes. I drive slowly, one foot poised on the gas pedal, ready to brake.
Good thing, too. As two geese decide to cross in the middle of traffic, unbound by man’s rules and the white lines of crosswalks. They don’t even look both ways.
Once beyond the traffic lights, pedestrians both human and goose, I can relax. Choose a steady pace, look around at my own choosing to watch the leaves and the skunk cabbage grow.
~~~
106/365 POURING
Word Count: 188
I like the rain because it lets me cry unnoticed. The gray sheets of the day are written with the ink of tears, invisible like lemon juice until the sun shines and the words turn brown with brave reality.
There is a heaviness to rain that draws the soul into the ground. That melts us into blending with the earth. It is practice, perhaps, for the bed we make up for ourselves so thoughtfully that it must last forever. Dirt becomes a musky-scented soil. Pollen doesn’t ride the breeze but rather drips in yellow waterfalls from lily throats.
I crave the promise made by rain, that things once thought dry and broken can turn tender green. I look out past the yards that yesterday were itchy gold and brown and now are soft green blankets. The fingertips of trees with broken nails scratching at the sky have been painted with the harlot red of flower seeds. Shaggy timeworn maple bark, creased by living, cries sweet sap tears.
I like the rain because it lets me cry unnoticed. I like that when it stops the sun comes out.
~~~
105/365 IN THE AIR
Word Count: 326
Spring brings rain and flowers and pollen that makes some people red-eyed and runny-nosed. Even the air smells like a sneeze.
Not me, though. Spring brings me stories. The breeze brings me words.
This morning I walked out into the sunshine and “yellow” hit the side of my head. I turned and saw more yellow coming out of the row of forsythias that line the eastern edge of the yard. I opened my eyes wide and they slipped through and sat themselves politely in the outermost corner of my mind.
I got into my car, nearly slamming the door on a slender green tulip that wriggled itself in with its long leaves. It lay on the mat, catching its breath, its big head an undecided-yet color, lay under my foot on the gas pedal. “Shoo!” I said, “Move!” not wanting to scrunch its valiant efforts with the heel of my shoe accidentally. It pulled itself slowly over the hump and hopped up into the passenger seat. “Buckle up, please,” I said and it did.
The tulip filled the car with its presence; tender, new, pink-tipped, Easter, bouquet. I opened my window and let some of the words blow out. In the city, sounds assailed me with horn bleeps and engine idles and radio songs that trailed out behind hot looking cars like Cameros and such. I pressed the button to slide the window back up but the words just came softer, like bleeps, idles, love.
I pulled into the parking lot and wondered what I should have for breakfast. Bacon, eggs, maple syrup all battered the windshield but I got out and looked around for bagels and cream cheese instead. I spotted some bagels hanging out under the awning at the the entrance and figured I’d get cream cheese inside.
I started to close the door, then remembered. “You want a coffee or something?” I asked and the tulip nodded its head.
~~~
104/365 A SENSE OF IT
Word Count: 256
I stand barefoot on the lawn and feel the grass grow through my feet. Sharp as needles drawing through the flesh and muscle, twisting between the bone to sprout like hair on my skin. The sky talks to the earth in rain-song, notes spattered everywhere until the noise has deafened me to lesser drops of sound. It is a symphony of strings alone, where the rain reaches down to the green growth which reaches up. They clasp hands, form threads, absorbing each other. Strummed by the wind, they twang their joy.
Fascinated, I watch yellow and pink and white buds plump at the branch tips of bushes and trees, pop like flashbulbs and unfurl petaled skirts. Seeds split and sprout in the wet soil of cracked sidewalks as easily as those bedded in carefully fed gardens. Roots race underground to match the flurry of foliage.
I am held fast to the earth by the grass blades which have impaled me. Vines have slyly spiraled my thighs, woven a lace dress of tendrils, tender and strong. The sun shakes the clouds from its face, like cigarette smoke caught in the haze of a late night whisky-soaked room. It hardens raindrops into diamonds that hang heavy and bright on my neck.
All this, this luxury of growth, every Spring morning is happening here if I open my ears, my eyes, my mind to the day. Then I feel you stir next to me, and the rain becomes the grey drizzle of a cold morning in March.
~~~
103/365 FOCUSING ON THE POSITIVE
Word Count: 374
I can stand here and tell myself that I’m beautiful. That I’m a good person, think of others, work hard, am honest and smart but above all, I am beautiful.
That don’t make it so.
I’m five foot four and weight three hundred sixty-seven pounds. I have great eyes, pouty full lips, creamy smooth skin, and shiny thick auburn hair. But the eyes, lips and hair would look much better on a helluva lot less creamy smooth skin.
Why do they do this? They don’t settle for accepting our inner beauty, but insist that we have to accept our ugly outer selves as beautiful too. That’s about as big a lie as the kids they call “special.” I think it’s cruel.
The do-gooders seem to think it’ll make people feel better about themselves by believing they’re no different than anyone else. I think it just makes them feel better about dealing with people who are different. You can’t change a physical appearance by changing the words that describe it. A smile won’t bring sunshine in the middle of a rain. And men don’t call me for a date.
People don’t talk to each other honestly anymore. I’d rather people said, yeah, you’re overweight and should try to lose because it’s unhealthy, and unattractive.
My mother was new school, believed that she shouldn’t say to me stuff like “you have such a pretty face, if only you could lose some weight.” Since she didn’t, I didn’t know that I should. I never knew about the friends in high school who were my friends because I made them look hot by comparison. We believe what we want to believe; I wanted to believe they liked me.
Well I finally went to a doctor who told me the truth. “Have you ever heard the term ‘morbidly obese’?” he said. “Yes, you’re fat. You’re too young, smart, and pretty to be so much overweight.”
“You’re fat,” I say to myself in the mirror. That keeps me on salads and on a healthy, fat-free diet. I’ve lost seventy-four pounds and I’m losing slowly and steadily and I know I’ll be within a normal weight range someday. That’s the positive I’m focusing on. That’s the truth.
~~~
102/365 FINALLY
Word Count: 195
Finally, the world has simmered down to a quiet hum that I can listen to when I want and close my ears and mind when there is nothing I can do about it. There is much less noise from children playing games outside my yard.
Finally, people are accepting of each other, polite to one another, helpful. A man held the door open behind him for me at the bank. A young boy raced ahead of me so as not to make me anxious that I held him up.
At last, there are options to the pain and suffering of a lengthy illness. Insurance companies tell me this is so.
It took some time, but there really is a wider variety of political opinion, not just left and right, but they have names for those like me who’ve found themselves standing on the brink, or as I like to call it, higher ground.
Finally, the good foods, like milk and chocolate ice cream, eggs and tenderloin of beef, cost equal to their pleasures to the tongue.
Finally, I see it all more clearly now, especially when I close my eyes and think of something else.
~~~
101/365 BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER
Word Count: 250
From Sister Cyrene in first grade, I learned rejection. She gave me a D in Art because I colored in little circles, something my grandmother had taught me. I stayed inside all the lines. My mother said I was heartbroken and cried.
At the eighth grade class picnic at a resort where they had rides and a swimming pool, I learned not to say you can do something you can’t if it’s dangerous and there’s no reason to lie. I couldn’t swim.
Jimmy taught me not to flirt if I didn’t mean it. I had no idea what I was doing back then. I’d apologize to him if I knew where he was today.
Jobs taught me patience and dedication to doing a good job. Even if my boss got the credit for it. Secretaries, I learned, are valued for their expertise at making coffee and buying roses for the wife and the girlfriend for Valentine’s Day.
I’m happy I didn’t marry Dick, or Dwight, or Danny, or the other Danny, or Walter, or Wayne. There was a reason I was meant to be single until the right man came around. And besides, they’re all dead now and would’ve left me a widow. Instead, they left me with moments that still make me smile.
People are living lessons and swirl together to blend through time. There are hundreds of people who’ve left their thumbprint somewhere on my psyche. And a few who have left a huge mark on my heart.
~~~
100/365 NEWNESS
Word Count: 299
The obvious place to start was by dyeing my hair, which I did, discovering that brown over bleached blonde came out spruce. That’s fine. I’d already cut it so short it looked like a bush.
Then I had to change body shape, stuffing my curves with chocolate truffles and cheese-doodles between pasta for breakfast and lunch. I had a seven-course meal for dinner and fell asleep every night cuddling macadamia nut shortbread cookies in bed. With a large glass of milk which I used to hate as a kid but for which I have since acquired a taste. Okay, so sometimes I add chocolate syrup. Or ice cream if the syrup runs out.
I switched to burnt orange lipstick which went well with my hair and eyes, since I chose blue-green contacts to wear. I also loaded on shadow and liner which I’d never found time for before.
I was still too tall. That was the biggest problem. All the rest was easily handled with camouflage stripes and diet and smoke and mirrors. But height is only maneuverable upwards maybe six inches at best. I needed to be shorter.
I knew what I had to do, and I wish I’d have thought of it before I put on all the weight. It would have been easier. I wondered if the small radial saw would work. I didn’t like the thought of sawing away endlessly with the handsaw but sharpened it anyway.
Relationships take time to get over, I know that. But it had been six months and I still got a case of the ants every time we ran into each other. You know how it is, when you spot someone first and you don’t know if they’ve seen you yet. It’s awkward.
Well, I fixed that.
~~~
99/365 RHYTHM AND SPACE
Word Count: 180
She was a dancer. She waltzed down aisles at the supermarket, not caring if anyone stared. She pirouetted out doors, often surprising a shopper on his way in. You should see the way she hopped up and down stairs, and the fancy maneuvers she twirled on the escalators at the mall. She was a dancer.
But not really. Just in her mind where the music played. Where the sweet drawn out strings of the violin minced, and the African drums guided her feet to a rhythm not quite in tune with the day.
And she sang. Not songs, but words, conversations. You could ask her a question, something simple, like, “where’s the Marsden file?” and she’d trill out her response. If you weren’t sure where she meant, she would two-step you through the office and bow and dip to open the drawer to pull it out, swaying it back and forth gracefully before you managed a grip.
We missed her when they let her go in the last office layoffs. The space where she was, was quiet and still.
~~~
98/365 RENEWED
Word Count: 226
This morning I woke up in a peony, which is strange because I know I fell asleep in the bowled jaws of a purple tulip. Have I slept through from spring to summer? How can that be?
The air smelled sweet and warm. I stretched and came out face to face with the hot yellow ball of sun. Ants tickled over my toes. I waded through the fluff of shaggy petals until I reached the smooth cups of the outer row and then I slid down the long sturdy stem and landed in the still moist black mulch they laid thick on the flower beds. I stepped carefully between the perennials, pulling at one stubborn sprout of crabgrass that had stepped into this lovely world, as out of place as a beggar might be at a ball.
I skipped across the lawn, softened by the early morning dew and not yet dried out by the breeze and the brazen smile of the rising sun. It was going to be a glorious day.
Up the back porch steps and through the kitchen, up the stairs I happily bounced and stopped just in the doorway to our room. You were snoring softly still and never woke as I slipped into bed and snuggled up against your back, content to wait a little longer for the day to start.
~~~
97/365 FASCINATED AT THE SURFACE
Word Count: 359
Yes, I think I remember him, the boy from three doors down the street. Skinny kid, small, quiet, usually by himself, though I wouldn’t say there were lots of kids around here.
When the police came knocking door to door I tried to place the face in the picture they held out. It took a while. I told them I don’t watch the neighbor’s goings-on like some old lady left with nothing but dead memories and stealing peeks from other people’s lives to zip it up. But yes, I did recall him playing in his yard sometimes.
Well, not playing really. Just sitting on the front step like a put-out cat. Or a glass bottle of milk left on the step before the sun came up, delivered by a milk truck the way they used to do. He’d just sit there, looking out at the street. Nothing really to look at except a car driving by now and then. A bird flying by. I used to walk down to the corner to Abe’s house sometimes and that’s when I’d see the kid sitting there. I didn’t wave or nothing.
So someone kidnapped him they said. Or not kidnapped, because no one called to ask for money, they just found him dead in the woody area of the park, floating in the small pond where we used to ice skate as kids. About a week later, after he went missing.
They found the guy that did it, though not right away. We were all shocked to find out who it was. The butcher in the meat department at A&P. He always seemed so friendly, always joking. If you made a remark about the meat being tough, he’d always say, “Tougher where there’s none!” and he’d laugh real hard, as if he’d just made that up. So they found out he was bothering some of the other boys in the area. They brought him in and he ended up confessing to killing the kid, my neighbor’s kid. We were all so surprised to find out it was him, such a nice guy, a regular guy.
Yeah, I remember.
~~~
96/365 FILLING UP
Word Count: 187
The forsythia branches are dipped in bold yellow ready to splash open. Every day the walk becomes longer, the time shorter, the people stranger. It wasn’t like this before, or maybe the change was so gradual that it went by unnoticed. We adjust sometimes before we realize that we have.
Like my eyesight. It’s been changing over years before I knew that I needed new glasses. And I don’t sleep through the night anymore. At first I thought it was the new tiny print on the bottles and in how-to manuals that are squished to accommodate warnings for idiots and languages off the Dead Sea Scrolls. My doctor laughed, said my arms were shorter with age. I kneed him in the groin. I don’t like stupid humor.
Which is another thing; I think I’m being short-tempered with people and less tolerant of the gum-chewing clerk at the register talking to the clerk in the next aisle, the guy who rides my tail when I’m doing 45 in a 35 mph zone, the priest, teacher, cop who molests a child.
People get stranger, you know?
~~~
95/365 FITTING EVERYTHING IN
Word Count: 288
There it was, at eye level, clinging for life to a swamp birch that leaned into the woods as if it were an old man waiting in line. Spotted plaque of fungus in a bright yellow patch, its feet dug in beyond the depth of papery bark.
I looked up the length of the tree, a long single stalk with a hint of new buds at its tips. I wondered if it knew it were dying. If it could feel the bite of the fungus gnawing at its skin. Surely, even a swamp birch has a right to its dignity at the end of its days.
Birches grow quickly but here I could see the effects of several hard winters, ice storms most likely, that clustered in its far-reaching branches, forcing the tall tree to bend, bow its head under the weight. Most times it had overcome and recovered, slowly straightening its back to stand gently curved but still reaching its fingers into the sky. Sometimes, a branch would break off, leaving these wounds that I saw along its trunk.
There was nothing I could do to help it. The fungus was embedded too deep to flick it off with a knife. I turned and started walking back home, just barely avoiding stepping on a small twig of life. I bent down and recognized the small buds as that of a birch.
I went home feeling much better. There is a natural cycle, and the living things in the world must adjust so that each has its chance at some glory days, each has the right to live life and then it must give back its life to make room so that nature can fit everything in.
~~~
94/365 SO GRATEFUL TO HAVE SEEN THIS
Word Count: 252
The sunset brushed the golden grasses with blood-red streaks. The small pond glittered like blue topaz cut and polished to its crystal finest. Waterbugs ticked the surface, their footprints left in concentric circles growing out from each step. It was the first warm spring evening and some ice still clung to edges of the banks like a piecrust around the pond.
This is where I come to think, to calm the waves that crash inside my mind when too much hits, like a tsunami, threatening all I’ve held as normal. That day it was the upset of bad news about a friend. A phone call, a hesitant voice that’s missing laughter in its smile. Finally stuttered out, the word “cancer,” the way we used to practice dirty words.
I wondered if there was a heaven or a hell, a place for us to congregate and snigger over wrinkles and fingers that stiffen up just signing our name. I wondered if we’d meet or how we’d even find each other with years and millions of dead souls wandering through.
I remember thinking that I should have brought a camera. That I should have captured this one instant to make it last as long as possible. Longer than natural time. Longer than our lives.
Then something occurred to me and made me realize why we can’t go on forever, why this instant can’t repeat itself in exactly the same way. That if it did, there would be no place for tomorrow’s magic moment.
~~~
93/365 NEW WATER
Word Count: 529
Okay, so I’m not really proud of this but it happened and I can’t change it now. I wished my son was a turtle and he turned into a turtle right in front of my eyes.
I don’t know why I even thought of it, why I’d ever say such a thing to a beautiful little boy we’d wanted so badly and waited so long to have. I’d just given him a bath, changed him into clean jammies, and set him down while I emptied the basin into the sink. One minute he was crawling around the kitchen floor, and I laughed and said he looked like a turtle because of the slow way he moved, and the next, well, he was a turtle. Or maybe a tortoise–he was pretty big–but I don’t really know the difference. He was gray and slow and nearly hidden by a big heavy shell.
It took a moment for the sight to sink in, to connect my words with what I saw on the floor. Guilt, worry, fear, all the motherly instincts were right there at the forefront; I’d done a terrible thing to my child. I was a bad, bad mother.
I was shaking, but I went over and picked him up, looked him in the eye, and said I was terribly sorry, that I didn’t mean what I’d said. He blinked and pulled his head into his shell. His little legs were sucked in too, like an airplane retracting its landing gear. I shook the shell, poked my finger inside. He bit me. I’d forgotten he was teething.
What could I do? I carried him around, I sang to him, I rubbed his hard little belly. I gave him his mid-afternoon feeding as best as I could figure out how, and hoped that I wasn’t drowning him in formula inside his shell. I sat on the rocker and cradled him against my shoulder and was really happy when I heard a loud rumbling burp resonate out.
I brought him upstairs and put him down in his crib, unsure about putting him on his back like I always had. But he seemed all right once he stopped rocking so I covered him lightly and pulled down the shades and hoped he would take a nap. I left the door ajar so I would hear him if he woke and started to cry. Or whatever noise a turtle might make when he’s hungry or wet.
All through making a meatloaf and scrubbing potatoes and waiting for my husband to come home I mixed prayers in between my planned speech to explain what had happened. I hoped he would understand. I didn’t even know if he liked turtles. Dinner was almost ready, the table all set, not a peep from upstairs when I heard the car pull into the garage.
I took a deep breath, ran up the stairs and listened at the door before I went into our baby’s room. It was so quiet. I tiptoed up to the crib and God help me, I saw with a huge sigh of relief that he’d turned back into our little boy.
~~~
92/365 SHIFTING
Word Count: 85
She tells time by the shift
of the sun on her bed,
walls soften to sponge,
her bath drawn
of cool melting snow, and
she wiggles her toes
in the earth.
This day has been planned
for a year, the winter spent
in China, fingering silks
of lavendar, purple, yellow
for the bridesmaids,
petal soft white
for the bride
At sunrise she stands
with her sisters
a swirl of colorful skirts
a wedding of
seasons, the crocus
dance on the lawns
in celebration of spring.
~~~
91/365 LISTENING
Word Count: 330
I pulled off the highway into the weeds, shut off the engine, took several deep breaths. I listened to the sound of the cars zipping by, imagining how dramatic and fierce the close call of shifting lanes and cutting off could have been just by the whoosh of the cars, the physical rocking when a semi zoomed by. Imagined myself flying out of the car through the windshield, sharp jaggers of glass studding my face. Then I realized that there was one thread of sound that was steady, consistent and I discovered that I had been whispering prayers.
It’s like a safety switch, a backup system embedded in my brain from being raised Catholic. It’s an embarrassment. That is, if there indeed is a God Who knows all (see that, I just had to capitalize “who” here). It’s that race back into the womb with the first roll of thunder, the first flash of lightning; that fear that brings out belief. Just in case.
Just in case. All our self confidence and our proclaimed cool intellectualism departs when “just in case” is called into play. Like ants we leave no footprints at all in the earth yet our fear of leaving is so strong that we resort to whatever we pull from our bag of knowledge, our own bag of tricks to survive.
So God is the ace up our sleeve, the rainy-day saviour, the ju-ju doll blessed with the power to make time stop, spin around, like changing the callout at a square dance just to confuse all the dancers.
My breath returned to a normal in-out, in-out pattern. My heart stopped its calypso beating on my ear drums. I took a sip of bottled water to bring my dry throat back to life and readjusted my seatbelt and hair. I turned the key in the ignition. And I remembered to leave off on good terms; I blessed myself just in case Someone was listening.
~~~
