Falters 100 Words

She remembers a time when the sun was too hot and time passed too slowly. Her bones shatter easy now, but the mind behind the wrinkles remembers when movies were meant to be watched and books read and pictures painted. Her fingers still move like a conductor’s when Beethoven plays, tracing the notes like the words she’ll never write again. She remembers a time when there was time, no inevitable clock at her bedside, no chemical stench or decrepit frame or fragile hands to will her down. She remembers the feeling of youthful weightlessness, until her heart falters its last.

Situation 100 Words

I had a hard time with this for some reason. Soo I kind of cheated.

~

June isn’t supposed to be this cold. I’m swaddled in layers of thick feather coat with blankets over my lap. Goosebumps run up and down my arms like little useless soldiers fighting a war that can’t be won because it doesn’t exist.

I hear the remnants of our life like background noise. The song “Perfect Situation” on the radio. A worn crumpled picture stuffed behind glass. The taste of orange and peppermint. That last time, when you said no mother forgets her daughter. And then the sickness made you forget.

Three years later, your eyes clouded.

I can’t get warm.

100 Words On Love

“Love”. Out of all the words in the English dictionary, this is what you give me?? No, I don’t object. I love love. If that makes sense. What’s funny is, the first thing I thought of was a quote I read from Lori Handeland (yeah, I know, who quotes her?? Right.):
“Love is irrelevant.”
“Love is everything.”
And I think if that doesn’t sum it up…

~

I can hear him breathe and the sound is like the ocean to me; as close as my own heartbeat. I wonder if he’ll hate me when I’m gone, or if he’ll love me more when so much time has passed that all he can remember are the perfect moments. He won’t remember in twenty years that I left him. Only that I was there.

It’s not easy. Matters of the soul never are, but this time the pain leaves me frozen inside. That last moment burns in my memory.

I brush my fingertips across his forehead and slip away.

Myself 100 Words

The spun glass swirls like fire in the window and she wonders if she’ll ever make anything so eternal. She knows the glass may break and the shards be swept away, but there is always that memory.

She’s not an artist. She cannot make music and her talent with words is mediocre at best. Creativity? An alien. Her heart beats solely for the sake of beating.

Be yourself, they tell her. All will be made clear in time. Like the prophets of old, when people still believed in things like prophecy.

The problem being, she doesn’t know who she is.

Snapped 100 Words

The cops pulled her over for a broken taillight, but I guess they thought she looked suspicious because they ran her through the system. Turns out she was wanted in three states. Wyoming and New York wanted her for assault with a deadly weapon and armed robbery.

She broke some sort of record robbing four banks with nothing but a nail file and plastic squirt gun from the local Dollar Tree.

Cali wanted her for murdering my father. I can’t say I blame her. If I found another woman’s bra in my washer, I’d want to kill my husband too.

Tragic 100 Words

Remember when we ate Popsicles until the juice stained our faces and our legs swung to the beat of the music? We didn’t know it back then, but our hearts beat in unison. They always have.

Your face feels like cowhide strung out in the sun to dry. I can still trace my hands over the scars and tell you what we did to earn each one of them.

You don’t breathe anymore, but I remember you used to love mints because they tasted like winter and freedom. I never told you, but you’re the reason I tasted freedom too.

100 Words on “Pleased”

I return!

~

Her golden hands cradled the continents, turning with the movement of the garish life-giving Sun. At night, the moon was Her watcher, the stars each guardians of a world unwitting.

She saw everything. She saw the black clouds of smoke rise from cold factory chutes; the thick sludge of oil pulled from Her chest. And perhaps none of this would have mattered to Her if She had not seen the bent spines of the workers. The ripping violent hunger of Her children, their skin black and white and something in between, but all people.

Her eternal heart ached with displeasure.

100 words on March

I imagined an army of housewives and parents whose kids died in wars. Possibly just another of my somewhat messed up ideas.

~

They marched like soldiers, like heroes, like villains. Their eyes all gleaming and shining with right.
To reclaim, to mark, to save the day, in ranks and rows of a hundred and two, pounding, pounding, shaking loose the foundation; a hundredfold steps.
One, two, the rhythm of warfare. Simple but always, returning, reviving, creeping up in the night to scratch at the door, a mangy stray cat with one eye and fever.
No more. They march, one step, two step, eyes like oceans that carry the soul. One, two, may the enemy cower when peace comes a’ knocking.
One, two.

Doorway (!OO VV0RD5)

La di da 100 words come and go, but imagination never ceases to take control.

~

(Touch it. I dare you.)
Glimmering, shifting, beckoning, a brilliant golden membrane. A riot of colors and light, shadows and glimpses of the past and future as if looking through a doorway into a dreamscape. That’s what it was. A doorway.
Stretching, reaching out, the very tips of her fingers exited the water, into weightlessness. She jerked them back, the passing of her touch like a kiss swept away in an instant.
Scaled fins shimmered, waved, retreated.
The water cuddled her close, kept her safe from the wonder beyond. She shut her eyes, architect of a world, nonexistent.
(Maybe someday.)

Merry (100 Word)

Merry? Who’s merry?
Children in Haiti take joy in the Sun, bask in the smallest of loves. Palestine and Israel watch out windows, vacant hope, but hope reigns supreme. Zimbabwe: water is forever, but a brief gift, is a smile, being able to walk the streets, unafraid. It burns, it burns, to die in vain, but peace, cold and hard and ever after, lies below. Rest, Korea. Peace, citizens, patience is gold no greasy fingers can steal; slip away, hands, from the dignity, the soul, of these people. It is immovable.
Freedom is having the choice to be merry, despite.