Chthonic

Young girl dreams of gods and goddesses with fickle hearts and awesome powers. Specialties. God of sea, god of sky, god of water. No one talks about god of hell. No one talks about hell at all, because they think, what could this young girl know?

For the same reason, she says nothing of the bruises, the closet, the stench, the cold.

She knows far more about hell than they ever will, but what she doesn't know is that this isn't how it's supposed to be. Hell is for the dead, not the living. Not her life.

Naif

He asked her to stand in the window so he could take a picture. She was naked, but on the sixteenth story of a building on the edge of downtown, she didn't think anyone would know. She took a seat on the bay window and looked out over the city. For a moment, she forgot she was posing.

Later that afternoon, she wondered what he would do with the picture. She wasn't worried about it, but she realized she didn't know his intentions. Would he keep it hidden between the pages of a book, or stick it in the frame of his bathroom mirror so he'd see it every day? Would he throw it on the table in his front hallway and forget about it, or would he sleep with it under his pillow, taking it out sometimes to look at while he stroked himself?

It was only a silhouette, but she knew that for both of them, the image itself wasn't what mattered. They would remember that morning, that surprise meeting on the street, and that feeling of finding each other's bodies once again. One last time.

Peregrination

Sometimes the mind wanders and the letters with it, traveling across the page in a slow, almost melodic way. You can hear their footprints as they sound out words and phrases. Rarely if ever do they know where they are going. But it is a pilgrimmage, not religious but most certainly spiritual. To what higher powers will they place their faith and trust in? I cannot believe that it would be me, and so I create other names, other people to stand in my place. They are the ones, I say, telling the story. I am merely a hand, a keyboard, a pen, the paper.

Berate

Karen bought a timer and thought this might solve her problems. Keep track, tally the minutes, quantify the progress. But the ticking distracted her, like the ringing of the bell when time was up jarred her out of any rhythm. She wanted a sort of mini-coach encouraging her to keep on going, not a drill sergeant yelling when she ran over her allotted hour. So she fished the package out of the trash and put the timer back in. She would return it next chance she got. In the meantime, she'd do her best to keep track of her own time, and spend the afternoon basking in the silence.

Foment and comity

There is an undeniable beauty in being one of many, of helping to form a greater shape, of being a dot connected to make an image. Those who cannot understand or do not wish to admit this aesthetic are the disbelievers, the stubborn individualists, the foolish and the forgetful. Most of our lives we wish nothing more than to stand out, but even that that means to be part of an elite group. For there is no one being greater than all the rest; there are only a few who embody the values of all.


Why lament being one of the few, or one of the all? Just be. Grateful, happy, proud, strong, ready. Alive.

Juju and Hobson's choice

Each of the six men glanced at the little statue on their coach's desk. It was a silly toy, a bubble-headed child's trinket from a country they didn't know and in a language they didn't speak. But from the first time Leftwich had touched it, they'd been unstoppable. The opposing teams had all been crushed, emotionally and physically, by this group's surprise force. The men were all in their 20s and 30s, and they did not want to believe in luck, superstition, juju. But could they deny the fact that they had been losers -- literally, they had never won a single game -- until Leftwich rubbed the toy's bulbous head in desperation?

They could not.

On their way to the court they all walked past the statue and gently passed a finger or two across the plastic surface.

Bruit

You broadcast your good deeds from across the globe, and I am left with your self of today and your self of yesteryears to reconcile. So proud, so angry, so done, so wanting to restore the relationship we once had. Is this a pattern? Two, or too many? I don't think of him much, but you are still here sometimes, and we flirt with intimacy like fireflies in the night. I can forgive but not forget, and it seems like you will settle for nothing less than both.

Aestival

Hot sticky summers cling to me like wet jeans, and you tug on them because you want what's underneath. We used to be this way, so free and full of laughter, like children with smaller hearts and bigger brains. Do you remember when it changed, when the world infected us with its disease? I think I must have caught it first, and you kissed me, and that was the end for you. Now we stand small and far apart, cold and rigid, just like everyone else. Pillars in this world, but supporting what roof?

Philter and knell

One death in this world, one death in another. But can they both live on? There was no striking bell, just the whispers of friends who wanted to keep the circle closed, keep the circle close. Love is not a potion, but a bond, a bridge between two souls. Have you walked across to my side lately? Have I been to yours?

There should be no blame. Only an agreement to meet in the middle, for the rest of our days.

Blackguard and supernumerary

Wish I could tell you how much I loathe you, but love you at the same time. Wish I could tell you how much you hurt me, but heal me at the same time. Wish I could tell you I didn't need you, but can't live without you at the same time. Wish I could curse your name, but call for you at the same time.
Wish all these conflicts didn't live inside me, battling heart against head, stealing time and breath and energy, wasting my emotion on you.

Lackadaisical

Stephanie was listless in the afternoon heat. Her head lolled on her shoulders, and sweat adhered thick locks of hair to her forehead and neck, but no one noticed since she was in the back of the bus. Everyone thought she was just resting, but once or twice she was pretty sure she had actually passed out from heat exhaustion. She wondered if you could die from that. Could she die right there on the bus, with her fifteen classmates, en route to Exhilarama? What would they do? Would they abandon their afternoon at the coasters and rush her to the hospital? Or would they leave her "napping" in the van and just crack a window to give her some air?

Stephanie thought it was an interesting question, but they'd be more interesting if they weren't about her.

Chichi

In college, Sandra drifted from me. She saw which girls got the guys (not us) and which stayed at home on Friday nights working out the hardest problems from calculus class (us). I can't say I necessarily blame her; certainly I'd thought about taking that same path. But I tried to remember that this was short-lived, and that we had the rest of our lives to think about. While she painted her nails and maxed out her credit cards on shopping sprees with the girls down the hall, I worked at the library and put whatever I didn't need for food and books into a high-interest savings account. Maybe she had more fun, and maybe I was boring, but looking back, I don't regret my choices. I stayed true to who I was. She lost herself, and I don't think even these past ten years has helped her find herself again.

Enervate

Enervated by day, energized at night. I am no bat, no monster, no owl, no creature of the darkness. I am simply turned around. Not human, but namuh, a backwards woman, unable to live in the ways that the billions before me have done. Someday I will grow young, but for now, my feeble bones ache with the pains of the elderly. I cannot wait to remember the things that will happen to me. Until then, I will lie here and wait for the night, for my time to roam.

Exalt and provenance

According to legend, she says, we all come from dust. At first there was nothing: no universe, no planets, no life. Then one day, the nothingness got bored, and it exploded, and there was dust. The bits of dust got lonely, so they clumped together, and they served as the foundation of all of us. They became moons and asteroids, and they began to fly around the nothingness, which with dust in it became space. Occasionally these groups of dust would collide, crashing into each other and bursting into flames. That is how you and I came to be. We are stars. We burn brightly because of the dust we once were. We may be revered by others, but we ourselves are humble. We know our origins, and we praise them. To dust and nothingness, from whence we all came.

Vexillology and tittle-tattle

Marcus was not a subtle man. He liked what he liked, and he had no interest in anything else. At parties he prattled on endlessly about flags, their histories, their nuances, their relatives, their design and construction. Carolyn thought his vast knowledge and ability to articulate it might not have been so dull had he only been an enthusiast of something other than flags.

Spoony and asperity

You think that what you feel is good, great, real. You think that you have it under control. You think you can feel almost uncontrollably in love and yet still keep your wits about you. You think so much you almost believe you think more than you feel.

Then something like this wakes you up. Something like this happens, and in fact it keeps you up at night. You toss and turn and you fret and you wonder what you did to deserve something like this. Something like this changes everything, even while your feelings stay the same.

It's cruel reality. Because sometimes love can't overcome something like this.

You're going to have to see what happens. You're going to have to trust. And you're going to wish you didn't have to.

Obeisance and vituperate

She always found fault with me. Probably since birth. My eyes were too small, hair too course and wavy, voice too loud. Though I tried for years only to please her, I feel that I never quite succeeded. Sure, we had our moments, times when people would look at our mother-daughter duo and say they wished they had the same. But those were few and far between, and sometimes fake. After that party or picnic, we might argue in the car about the television shows I watched or the way I read late into the night. Bad for your eyes, she said. Bad for your attitude.
I realized I could never win, so eventually I stopped trying.

That's when I started being happy.

Sapient and brummagem

What Elliot taught me is that my games were foolish. He was wiser than I knew, and much, much wiser than he knew. I thought he was too young to understand the way I was stringing him along, but I guess he had to have some smarts to accumulate that much money. All my flashy clothes, my sexy moves, my high-minded discourse -- he was immune. And not because he wanted to be, but because he couldn't keep up. Ironically, that's how he taught me.

I loved him. I didn't think I did, but of course that's the kind of thing I would realize too late. I ran circles around him, the most wonderful man I had ever met, and so he walked away.

I think it's too late to change my tune. I don't much feel like singing anyway.

Pusillanimous, sesquipedalian, and egress

"I had every right and reason to leave," Tina insisted.

"Of course you did," Adam agreed. "But slinking away without telling anyone was pretty damn cowardly. And stupid. And thoughtless! How were we supposed to know what had happened, if you were okay, if--"

"I told Emily," Tina protested.

Adam stopped.

That was the problem, wasn't it? It wasn't that she'd left, though obviously he wished she hadn't. It was that she'd chosen Emily over him. In the end, she hadn't loved, or trusted, him enough. That was what had hurt more than anything else.

Adam took a deep breath, and then started walking away.

"Where are you going?"

He didn't answer. He just kept walking. And Tina realized that his silence spoke louder than his shouting had just a few seconds ago.

Extol and quondam

"You used to worship me," she said softly.

"Yeah, well, you used to be worth worshiping," he said.

Diadem and panoply

Sometimes he dreamed of her. She was a vision in white, satin and lace, a wreath of gardenias crowning her hair.

Sometimes she dreamed of him. He stood tall and strong against a backdrop of brilliant sunlight. He wore a suit of armor. But he was not her shining knight. He was protecting himself. From her.