I looked for you in the window of the tiny egg that Melanie gave me. She said that if I planted it in the back yard and watered it every day, a tree would grow, and when it blossomed, the scent would remind me of you. When the tree grew, the trunk was too slender for me to wrap my arms around. I reached up into the branches and your leaves brushed my face.
“Is he. . .” “Not dead, miss, although he’ll awake with a headache. Fortunately, that Grecian statue looks to have been hollow clay. Why keep such a thing above the door?” “He’s kept it there since my sister gave it to him as a gift, years ago. He looks upon it and mourns, though it be more than two weeks since she died.” “I see. The bolts seem to have been removed from the…
In my closet, there is an idol, whose name I do not know. The man at the store said it was the Virgin Mary, but I do not think so. She looks at me sometimes. Would the Blessed Mother do that? I think she just smiles on her baby or her broken son. This one watches me, not in a malevolent way. I think she is just interested. The real mother of God lives on too spiritual a plane…
The 5:51 From Providence I’m waiting for you at the station. Maybe you missed the train. Or maybe you’re ghosting me. Then, there you are. You’re tired and grimy, but you pull me into your arms. Bruce, you whisper as you kiss my ear. I missed you. Me, too, I whisper back. We walk to my 2014 Nissan. “Not taking the work car?” you joke. I smile at the thought of driving around the city with the Son of God…
When Sara got off the bus from Ellison Middle School on Friday, there was a package on the hall table for her. She kicked off her snow boots and dumped a book out of the padded mailer. She already knew what it was: a copy of Ninja Invisibility Secrets Made Simple that she’d ordered from the back of the comic book. She padded damply through the kitchen and upstairs to her room in socks which had gotten wet in the…
When did people first start living here? In this neighborhood, you mean? or on Earth? Both. I guess the Indians lived here for a long time, but I don’t know when they were first here. Why? Well, they didn’t keep written records. But why didn’t they just know what year they moved here? I don’t even know how they kept track of years back then. It was different from the way we do now. Well, so how long have there…
The goddess of nothingness unrolled and stretched herself out of the void. She created stars, dark matter, electromagnetism, the strong and weak forces, and to be mysterious, gravity. She created asteroids, comets, planets, moons, and dust. She created many, many planets. I will tell you about one of them. On that one, she raised distant, aspirational mountains. She poured out deep pooling water, gushing streams, and restless, undulating waves. She created living things: banana trees, banana slugs, lactobacilli, llamas, and…