Category: Creative

The lilacs were wilting in their little vase.

She’d only cut them from the bush yesterday. The stem at an angle with a sharp scissors, like her mother had taught her. When the window was open, they filled the kitchen with the scent of freedom and boredom and first love. She’d only wanted to bring a small wisp of that feeling inside, to keep the memories in the air when the window was closed.

And now the flowers were dead.

Continue reading “Wilted”

The day was sweating-lemonade-glass bugs-swimming-through-the-air thunderstorm-building hot. And yet they sat there on their plastic lawn chairs, eating sunflower seeds and spitting the shells into the grass.

“It’s too hot,” he said, but didn’t move.

Continue reading “Pink Bedroom Door”

Every time it rained, she would lie on her back in the middle of the street. The water drenched her black hoodie and gray sweatpants until their shadows clothed her. It pooled in her sneakers and soaked her socks. But she stayed there, gazing up at the lightning, with a thousand droplets anointing her eyes and street lights sparkling on the asphalt all around her. It was as if she’d flipped the sky, so that she was floating in a sea of stars.

Continue reading “Rainmelt”

The long marble hallways of the museum echoed with a disorderly line of squeaking sneakers here to look at the bones. They pointed their fingers at the glass displays of rocks and minerals. Ancient rainbows. Who knew those bright and crusty beryl crystals inside half a brown stone egg would make a little girl with sequins on her shirt say “so pretty”?

Continue reading “Bones”

Five glass water jars

sit on a windowsill.

Each contains an identical scene

complete with sunset and silhouette.

All the same.

Continue reading “Five Glass Water Jars”

It always starts around the fire. The air is still heavy with heat after dark here, for a few weeks in the summer, which it was that night. The Dennon’s live outside of town and don’t have any neighbors close by, so there’s nobody to snitch about noise, or beer. Time runs backward when the sun goes down. We turn into kids again, and there has to be a game. Sometimes truth-or-dare, or telephone. But that night at the Dennon’s, our legs itched to run. I was scratching at my mosquito bites, too. They’ll leave scars.

Continue reading “The Night of the Bonfire”

(Written for The Hundred Microfiction Contest – 3rd Place)

There are nineteen of them. Lined up against the brick wall. Waiting to taste the cool, metallic stream of water in the shade. Scratching at scabs on their bony legs. Drumming damp hands on the hot brick. Sticking out their dry tongues like dogs.

They will be too sweaty now to squirm while she reads a picture book. She’s tired, too. Maybe the rest of the afternoon will pass without incident.

Then, a scream. Blood sizzles on the pavement. A triumphant hand in the air, something glinting white between two pudgy fingers.

“My tooth!”

Pandemonium.

“One hundred billion stars in the Milky Way and you’re telling me we’re the only planet with intelligent life?”

Don’t get Luca Tumlin started. In between swiping rewards cards, writing names on plastic cups, and blending up drinks with one shot of this and two shots of that, he likes to pretend he’s an astronomer. Other days it’s a philosopher. Or a paleoanthropologist. He’s under the impression that he’s got a brain bigger than an elephant’s and it’s filled with useless knowledge and strong opinions. He could rant for hours about the various conspiracy theories he subscribes to, and he does. By the end of a long shift, he’s got half his coworkers convinced. At least it’s entertaining. Sometimes.

Continue reading “Opening Shift”

(Written for Day 4 of the Writing Rules Mini Project)

“It was a good day, yes?”

Continue reading “Three Years”