writing

#SoCS – Together

I think the wind blew us together, one stormy night. How else would you explain the randomness of our meeting? I, alone at the bus stop and you, pulling up in your car to give me a ride. You told me I’d missed the last bus. And it was raining so hard. When we got to my house you offered me your umbrella. You came back to get it the next day. And then, we kissed. It was the best kiss I’d ever had.

We were meant to be together, you and I. But for a fair night, it would never have been.

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This post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. You can find the prompt here. Check it out and join in the fun!

Fragile, Haiku

Fragile as I seem
Only one thing can break me
It is your leaving

Slog – a Poem

To usher the day in,
a coffee, made with love,
a kiss goodbye,
and I’m off.

Though my hours are long
and my patience sometimes short,

I come home each evening,
a dinner, made with love,
a kiss goodnight,
and that’s us, day out.

***
Slog is the word of the day at The Daily Post.

Pler-plerpex … perpul…

“So, I gotta… I gotta say. I’m juss not happy.”

“Want another beer?”

“Ssurrre. Thanks, Buddy.”

“No prob.”

“Hic!”

“So you’re sayin’ you’re not happy. I can understann.”

“You can? ‘Coz I can’t. I don’ know how she coulda done it. How could she mess ’round on me?”

“I dunno, Bud. I mean look at ya. You’re a good-lookin’ guy.”

“I know, righ’? I’m juss plerpex… plerplex… plerplexed.”

“I think you mean perpulx…pexed. Perpexed.”

“Perpexed? Nah, it’s plerplexed.”

“Whatever.”

“Yeah, I’m convused.”

***

The word of the day at The Daily Post is pler… plerpex… perplexed.

Radical Thinking

What if gravity pulled us to the poles and the equator. The cold people and the hot people, throwing harpoons to pull ourselves to warmer climates, building ladders to hoist ourselves over the planet, where we could meet others unlike us. The tanned and the pale. Would we exchange harpoon designs and ladder architecture, or hold our secrets close to our hearts.

There where the weather is temperate, maybe we could be too.

***
Radical is the word of the day on The Daily Post.

The Chronicles of Mary, Part 9

Mary was good at her new job in the kitchen of her former accounting firm boss’s country club. Not only that, she enjoyed going to work every day for the first time in her life. At least up until the incident.

Right from the time she learned how to use a knife as a little girl, Mary’s enthusiasm sometimes got the better of her. She perfected chopping at a very early age, much to the terror of her mother, who couldn’t keep her away from the cutlery. And so it was that Mary believed she was genuinely helping when she decided to teach the teen volunteer how to slice a carrot in under fifteen seconds.

After that, Mary was reassigned to washing dishes.

***

At A Story A Day today, we were to write our protagonist’s flaw.

Stump

“Honey, we’ve been walking for sooo long! I feel like we’re just going around in circles!”

Ralph raised the binoculars to his eyes and peered through them for the umpteenth time. The woods in the distance were dense. They were made up mostly of dark, shadowy pines, but the occasional maple dotted the way. The birds were both abundant and weird. Rather than chirp, they buzzed. One of them had picked up Spot, their old springer spaniel, three days ago, and flown away with him.

“You can see for yourself, we’re following the road, Martha.” He didn’t want to scare her, but he thought a couple of times that he’d seen the same tree twice.

“I think we should set up camp soon,” Martha said, tiredly.

“Sure, okay.”

“Do you think we could build a campfire tonight?”

Ralph sighed. “And where, exactly, are we going to get wood from?”

“We could just chop up a bit of the road,” she suggested with a shrug.

Great, thought Ralph. Then if we are walking around in circles, we’ll come across the hole in the road and Martha’ll go crazy.

“Please?” Martha begged. “It’s been weeks since we had a hot meal.”

“Yeah, okay.” Come morning, while we’re walking I’ll give her the binoculars and just change lanes when she’s not paying attention, he decided. The lanes both to the left and the right seemed endless.

***
Stump is the word of the day on the Daily Post, and our assignment for today on A Story A Day was to paint a vivid setting. How long did it take you to figure out where they are?

The Chronicles of Mary, Part 8

Mary was on her third job in as many months, at yet another accounting firm. Unhappy, she would sit at her desk day in and day out, wondering if she’d one day expire doing this very job. Sometimes, she looked out her fifth-storey window and wondered how long it would take to hit the pavement if she jumped.

On one particular Wednesday afternoon, her boss called her into his office. She trudged in and leaned against the door frame, long past attempting to make a good impression.

“Mary,” her boss said, “I’m hungry. Would you mind going into the cafeteria and getting me a sandwich?”

“It’s two o’clock. The cafeteria’s closed,” Mary replied.

“That’s okay. Just go in and make one, then.”

Mary sighed and wandered down to the cafeteria on the first floor. The door was open, so she went into the deserted kitchen and made her boss a sandwich. She trudged back upstairs, dropped it on his desk, and returned to her own.

Five minutes later, her boss came out and stood before her, smiling. “Would you like a job at my country club, making sandwiches?” he offered.

“Yes,” replied Mary.

And so the next day, Mary started her fourth job in three months.

***
I totally missed yesterday’s prompt for A Story A Day. The reason: things are getting more complicated over there. Funny enough, the second-week post mentioned that by now we should know what the best time of day to write is for us – mine happens to be after 11pm. Given that I try to post a new story every day, and wish to be in bed by midnight, it’s a stretch for me to write more than 300 words.
The above is my pathetic attempt at an Ugly Duckling story. It kind of fits the formula… Kind of.

Endless Summer

The palm trees sway elegantly in the ocean breeze
as she lounges at twilight upon the beach
and ponders, a cheap paperback
tented, forgotten, on her thigh,
that perhaps she could have won,
striven harder
toiled longer
to achieve her dream
of skiing down a mountain slope
snow dancing beneath her feet,
chilled wind whistling past her ears…
But all she has is here,
is now,
the palm trees swaying,
the sun-warmed sand beneath her chair.

The ocean sings a song of endless summer
as she breathes in the salty sea
and picks up her book
to escape her broken wish.

With Kids in the Middle

“Billy! Welcome home! How did you enjoy your birthday weekend with your dad?”

“Hi Mom. It sucked.”

“Hey. Billy just ran upstairs saying your weekend sucked. Did the two of you get into it?”

“You know how it is. He wanted to go fishing, and then he didn’t. Kid can’t make up his mind.”

“Huh. You going to take the twins with you next time?”

“Winnie, you know I don’t have room at my place for all three kids.”

“So why did you buy such a small place?”

“It was all I could afford. The support payments are killing me!”

“Well maybe you shouldn’t have fu… fooled around on me!”

“Mom?”

“Oh, Billy. I didn’t see you there.”

“Can I finish the cake in the fridge?”

“Sure you can, Honey. Dad was just leaving. I’ll come and join you.”

***

Today, we were to write a story all in dialogue as our prompt at a Story A Day. Julie suggested we use the two characters we wrote from the last two days, so that’s what I did. It worked out well.

The previous two posts here on my blog introduce you to the characters in this story. They are “Cake” and “Stones”.