Shorter Stories

It doesn’t happen all the time, he thought, but when it does it comes in waves.

The next morning, the paper was filled with scribbles, ink blots and letters.

J’ai conçu une vie qui n’est point celle-ci. Le monde verra renaître une nouvelle lumière. Silhouettes éparpillées dans le néant.

“It was me in that room. But you couldn’t see me.” and then, “And then flashlights and explosions.”

Origin:

1795-1805; Neo-Latin, Greek kátharsis a cleansing, equivalent to kathar- (variant stem of kathaírein to cleanse, derivative of katharós pure) + -sis

There are times when you hear news you would rather not know.

Her hair was longer than I remember it. Loose curls hanging around her face.

We had all, perhaps, know there was something wrong. But to the extent that it was, no one could have guessed. 

And a second time, one is confronted with the terror of the act.

Three feet of snow. I shoveled it myself. Then went inside for a hot cocoa.

Growing up I always called it hot chocolate, but I changed that habit when I became an adult. I was determined not to become my parents.

And, then there’s the questions of the rest of it all. The day to day and week to week and month to month. Well, that’s a bit more weighty of a subject. The reality is that I really don’t have it all figured out just yet. And I am fairly certain at this point no one ever does.

Once I read a book about embracing insecurity, and I have come to recognize insecurity as the human condition. We fill our days to not think about it all. To forget our own mortality. And there is always so little in the world that we can look to for guidance.

A good book prepares us to die.

Hands together. Legs crossed. The skinny Buddha with the tall hat of Thailand and Southeast Asia.

Was this because there was less food there? Or because body image in China meant corpulence indicated happiness?

He sits with eye almost closed, elsewhere in his mind, perhaps everywhere at the same time. A small smile forms on his lips in spite of himself. Thought is lost never to be found.

In the distance an orange sun begins to rise above the horizon. The passage of time goes unheeded.

A small bird begins to chirp in the distance.

The golden sunset came into the kitchen. And there was silence throughout the house. A glass of tea sat on the counter spitting long streams of hot steam into the air, perfuming the room. The room glistened in the sun, turning warm colors. Reds and yellows and oranges and browns. Chartreuse.

Then, there was your voice.

Some time in the early 20th century, members of the family left town. East of Warsaw. South of Bialystok. West of Brest(Brest-Litovsk; now in Belarus). They went to the United States. They went to Argentina. They went to Israel. Those who stayed were killed.

In Yiddish, the town is called Sokolov-Podliask.

Whatever it is that is said, or written, or spoken, or thought will never be that which is heard, or read, or listened to, or interpreted.

In the purple, indigo morning, he sat peering through the window. Waiting as if she were going to be on her way home.

The truth is that I’ve been hiding this whole time. Away.

Last night I dreamt that I was in Dubai. I watched from the window as the plane landed. In my dream, Dubai was made up of raised walkways, mammouth Middle Eastern architecture, nooks, with cafés and tea houses around every corner, azure pools, and exotic flora. It was a bustling pleasure garden.