After a record-breaking season of rain, the five-year mega drought in California was over. Atmospheric rivers and bomb cyclones rolled inland, brought steel gray skies, charcoal clouds, and torrents of water. Snow wrapped mountaintops, and for a brief moment, it seemed all would be well. But the relentless sun grew hotter than ever before. The snow melted and the streams, rivers, and waterfalls gushed to the valley below.
And there emerged a ghost lake, Tulare Lake, once the largest lake west of the Mississippi. Even as the rain poured and the snow melted and the valley filled with water, Chris’s dad’s memory receded, plunged beneath his own opaque waters, the twists and cascades of plaque crusted amyloids and neurofibrillary tangles. Each day, his personality dulled into a blurrier shadow of who he had been.…
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Some time ago, while walking up 8th Avenue in the black night hours, I nonchalantly crossed the empty road, heading for home. What seemed like out of nowhere, a car came barreling at me. I froze in the middle of the street. The driver passed so close, the door handle brushed against me. The rear tires locked, causing the car to skid and fan towards the far curb, scratching the paint of a parked Chrysler before careening back across the lanes, swiping another parked car and losing one of its hubcaps. Without stopping, the huge American-made sedan accelerated and sped out of sight.
At the time I thought to myself: had that car crashed into me, it would have been a hit and run, without witnesses. …
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Why bother bending utensils when you can bend minds, bend limbs, bend roads? We pulse from city to city, light streaks even a map can’t catch. Sammich sustenance absorbed in rest stops with carelessly locked bathrooms and landscaped-area flowers flaking color into the absence of light. At least the sprinkler timers are working.
The visitors from the Continent stitch the air in my car with vexation over how to locate themselves in/on Google while I creep streets striated in freezing precipitation in the hopes of a spot. Their kindly obliviousness and the night can’t be wrapped up and slammed into an umbrella stand soon enough. I am a chorus of rubberized responses desperate not to get sick, but the crud catches me three days after my friend hacks without mercy from the passenger’s seat. …
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A piercing morning sun promised no relief but only more heat as the carefully tanned woman stood waiting with the little girl in her overly heavy dress and orthopedic shoes. The woman was sporting faux haute couture in crisp white shorts and a mind-blowing bright blue halter, her blonde hair carefully arranged in a silky ponytail. Delicate leather sandals with a troublesome strap were a bit loose, but she loved the look.
Sunglasses, not Bentley Platinum but knockoffs, shielded her eyes from the sun’s glare. The little girl, refusing to hold the woman’s hand, squinted in the painful light and squirmed, scraping the bottom of her brace on the cement. No attention was paid to her discomfort.
The doorman’s heel crunched on tiny pebbles as he twisted to turn away, seeming not to notice the activity at the curb.…
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We cry, with the throb of deception,
Because we’ve seen the tongue of deceit, without exception.
We cry, and we feel guilt,
Because we’ve spat the words of trickery ourselves, knowing what it would wilt.
And so, we speak in feathers of white, to cover our scarring words,
Even when we know white lies can so easily be tainted by the song of black birds.
But why can’t we speak in different shades of light?
Periwinkle lies, so soft and pure it would chirp with joy even through the darkest of nights,
Or navy lies, that, with its deep hue, would calm our harrowing thoughts.
And why not lie in shapes and spots?
Diamond lies, with their captivating clarity and sharp precision,
Sphere lies, the ones that may seem shallow, but offer solace in their gentle vision.…
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It would be love after a few sights. Last Tuesday, she caught my eye again, and I caught hers back. I’ll probably ask her to prom – betraying the pact made with my two closest friends, to go together rather than with dates – but I need the confirmatory third or fourth sight of her. Then I’ll tell her that I fancy her.
With the frenzy of two months before prom dominating classroom and corridor conversation, our minds are occupied. We’re unusually busy. Much to our teachers’ dismay, we’re organising the detail of prom night – the before, the during, and the after; the whos and the wheres – rather than revising for our GCSE exams.
Most of us will be fine. The majority will pass or excel, then join chosen sixth form colleges, well on the way to university then career then retirement.…
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What shook them loose from those grim days, news from my mother’s uncle domiciled in Australia, a firelight dream, some cinematic malarkey, a maggot, or just bad memories? Emotionally ransacked in hospital waiting rooms and cemeteries, the economy’s renewal slower than my mother’s stoic sighs, she read my great-uncle’s blue aerogrammes, creative non-fiction right to the thin pages’ edges and along the sides like ant trails. An example of English parsimony, or adventure? Did my parents visualise the journey as a magic carpet ride to exotica, wonderful wide skies the optimistic colour of those encouraging letters as their limit?
The taxi’s extravagance exiting their fed-up pennypinching continued with Paddington station’s ornate Victorian architecture but long train trips can invite retrospection’s sad trap. By the time we reached Liverpool’s Lime Street my father’s cheer had veered into lecturing me again, my compulsive cheekiness always getting under his skin. …
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