Orology

There's a growing disillusionment in the way she looks at him. At night when the TV's on, he stares wide-eyed and she wishes she were somewhere else. When she gets home in the morning, she asks herself what it's all for.

He says, "Let's go for a drive." She gets in the car and buckles her seatbelt. While he talks over one of her favorite songs on the radio, she stares out the window at the mountains in the distance. She wonders how long it would take her to climb to the peak. She wonders if she ever will.

Malleable

You get this little lump of reddish brown clay, and you take it and hold it in your hands. You push into it from one side, pinch it out on the other. Form two curves, make a point. Round it off. Smooth it out. Now you've got a heart, small and malleable but yours, all yours. What are you going to do with it? Who are you going to give it to? It won't do you any good sitting there safe in your palms. Yeah, it might get a little roughed up, might get a little bruised, but baby, it isn't real until it bleeds.

Haptic

In this haptic, hectic, hedonistic world, we hold on to each other and often fight to let go. There isn't a way to justify what I feel inside, so I push it down below the waterline. I drown myself in you. They idolize my icy lack of sexuality, and I do hide my heat on purpose. Sometimes I wonder -- no, wait, stop -- just take it one day at a time.

Stratocracy, degust, atoll, dystopia and larder

Rule with iron fist, but wear soft glove. Savor fleeting time together. Don't enclose heart, for no man is island. Remember real life is neither paradise nor hell -- always just somewhere between, always just little bit of both. Store but don't hoard what fuels fire; someday it will run out, and then more than memories will be needed to ignite spark.

Invisible

How can you see the invisble lines drawn between you and me? I try to cast my light on them, but words aren't moonbeams and we're still feeling our way through the dark. I don't mind so much, since in the silence I can hear you breathe. There's a comfort in touching skin, however briefly. There's a reason I keep on trying.

Rattle

If there's a reason, I don't know why. It's as if you're only trying to rattle my chain, to set me off, to take the fire out of my eyes. What a foolish endeavor, what a mean-spirited trick. You attempted this once before, and even then you were not the first. But what you all seem to forget is that I cannot be extinguished. I am indomitable. I will rise like a phoenix, and no man can stop me.

Veldt

A black stallion in the middle of a great African savannah. Out of place. Alert. The beautiful creature knows of the dangerous lions, hyenas, and other beasts that prowl this feverish region. The magnificent steed is well aware of the peril. This horse does not belong in such an exotic, ruthless locale. His simple, gentle nature offers no protection, no way to anticipate the strange things that may transpire. He is far from his home, having strayed across plains and oceans, through jungles and villages, in pursuit of a bigger dream. Now, though, he longs only to return to the familiar prairie of his youth. He stomps his hoof -- one, two, three times -- but it's no use. He's still here in this Oz. Perhaps there's no turning back.

Vein

If you don't believe me, then you never really knew, never saw the love that ran through my vein or the way I would have laid myself out for you. The truth was masked in barbed words and I regret that your sweet ears had to hear, but now the challenge is at your door, knocking, waiting to be let in and served. You ignore it, ignore me, and that's your choice, your mistake to make. Meanwhile, I'm walking onward. I cannot stand on the porch with it forever.

Fabulist

I am the author, you are the fabulist. I write fiction, you tell lies. I move characters, you manipulate people. I devise plots, you create drama.

We were the same, once, but now I see all the things I should never be. I'm glad that you, and she, and they, and I, have opened my eyes to see the me I really am, and the me I almost was. It's not about regret or missed opportunities, not anymore. It's just me, standing up straight, looking ahead, with my head held high.

Yoga

She breathes in deeply, holds the air in her lungs, then releases it slowly. Her body is a machine, regulating the speed and flow of what's inside. Air, water, blood. The rest. She controls it all, carefully. She hones herself like a blade.

With such emphasis on the physical, such intense, consuming focus on her body, she is able to drown out the thoughts in her head, and the pangs in her heart. They aren't real; she can't touch them. She won't.

Xebec, zafirlukast, cant hook and holm

He dreams of an island. It sits in the middle of a fast and steady river. It faces north, so that it never really sees the sun rise or set; it is always bathed in, but never embraces, the light. The man dreams of this place, night after night, but he doesn't know why. Usually he is standing on the riverbank, tending to a smoldering fire, trying to stay warm. As he rubs his hands above the flames, he turns to contemplate the solitary body, silhouetted by the dusk. He wonders if he could reach it. By boat? For a moment he has a vision of a small Mediterranean ship, sails full with wind. He glances up and down the shoreline: nothing but sand. His only tool, then, his only vessel, is himself. Should he attempt the swim? He fears his lungs would not hold. They have always been weak and often failed him in the past. But he wants to get to that island. He holds his breath, counts. He wakes up suffocating. As he massages his throat with his hands, coughing back to life, he questions whether the island, or any dream, is worth this risk. He tells himself it isn't. But later that night, when he's back on the riverbank, huddled over the fire and contemplating the island at dusk, he has a hard time conjuring up conviction.

You don't pander to anyone, not even Justice or Common Sense. You are strong, headstrong, and I am shivering in the shadow of your ego. The bell tolls once, twice, three times, we're sold, to the lowest bidder, who goes by Bitterness.

Fiacre

She stood in the doorway of the old country home, the dilapidated collection of wood and bricks in which she had been raised. Her black hair curled around her neck, the ends whipping to and fro in the wind. Her startling blue eyes lingered on this place she was loving and leaving. Then she took a deep breath, sighed, and turned away. She figured she would be back someday, welcome or not, but that did not ease her pain.

She stepped up into the fiacre and let the door close behind her. As the carriage pulled away and rolled down the dusty dirt road, she caught sight of the driver's hands. Through the window, she could not see his body or his face, only those long slim fingers that held and guided the reigns so firmly. They were large and yet elegant, and the skin was smooth and golden.

They were taking her away from herself. They were leading her someplace new, and once they did, they would leave her. So she memorized those hands in her head and in her heart.

Years later she would dream of those hands. Guiding her once more. She would dream of the man they belonged to, though she had never known him. She would wait for the day that he would return to take her home again.

Buccal

It's almost too easy to pick me apart. Big cheeks, small eyes, gullible mind and gullible heart. And your hands still turn me on, even though they're no longer mine. So when your strong slender fingers are pulling at loose threads, remember that I'm watching as you unravel me.

Geanticline, prerogative, Sri Lanka and pachinko

Last night you asked me how my day was, but you didn't listen through to the end. Your eyes lit up as you jumped around your own issues, and you led me by the hand toward everything we know. Across to the ends of the earth I follow, because it is my prerogative to be a fool. To be the flooded island that waits just off your cost. To gamble on the game I don't understand and never win. But when will these fruitless dreams cease? How can I free myself of your quasi-love's ghost? Like people of faith, I believe in things that I can never see. I believe that you still care about me.

Gratuitous

You treat me as if I've failed you, but people aren't like condoms. It doesn't "just take once" to cause an irreparable mistake, and you can't just abort the consequences. Relationships, of any kinds and all degrees, take work -- that's the reality. "Get messy. Make mistakes!" Well, here I am, covered in mud, spattered with wrongdoing, and there you go, walking away. Leaving behind late night talks and gratuitous kisses and all the physical, mental, and emotional exploration we used to enjoy. I try to put myself in your shoes, I try to understand. Every day I try, because I feel like I owe that much, like it's the right thing to do. I wonder if you give me that much consideration in return, and sometimes I think you do, and sometimes I think you don't. But always, though it takes so much out of me, I try.

Pangaea, arriviste and phraseology

The myths build up in my head, then break up and float away. Certain things bear the burden of truth, though, like the way you made me smile. Like the fact that the words they speak never applied to us, that their vulgar jokes and sarcastic barbs bounced right off our invisible bonds. I was proud of that. Sometimes I worry I'll never find someone as good as you again. You called me a goddess, and I thought of you as my Wonderful. How did we fall into this hole? How did we sink so low?

Gregarious

"One moment I'm sitting at my desk working, and the next we're lying naked on my bed. That's the way the mind works. Mine, anyway. That's the direction my heart leads my thoughts, y'know?

"So his arm is draped across my chest, my body angled under his. His breath is warm on my pillow and on my neck. I'm talking, and he's listening, and we have no idea what's going on in the world outside my room, and we don't care. It's just us. Just being there together.

"That's the kind of thing I miss. That's what I think about when I wake up in the morning, and what I think about when I go to bed at night. And I don't know how to stop. I don't even really want to. I just want it to be real again."

She sighed. There was no one there to hear her.