100 Words

[Tzara]

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[Sara Crewe]

There is nothing sweet about sorrow whoever said that was full of shit and obviously addicted to alliteration. In reality, Juliet would have said, “Hey, Romeo, don’t go!” Or even better might be, “Romeo, get back here!” I mean she loved him, right? Why would it be sweet when he took off? Don’t get me wrong parting can be sweet. Who hasn’t done a happy dance when their in-laws left their home? It can be sweet or it can be a sorrow. It can’t be both. Someone needs to wake the bard up and tell him he was wrong.

[clutching_calliope]

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[Tzara]

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[Sealace]

In 2001, I don’t know where Heather got the idea to wear frosted baby blue eye shadow and designer jeans. Four-thirty on a Tuesday afternoon, she leaned into my classroom.

“No one believes Valene, you know, the thing with her stepfather? Her mom called her a little bitch.”


Things were different after school. I never told her to get off the lab table or to throw away the bubble gum. She never told anyone how I dipped copper pennies in acid or held them over the bunsen burner to watch the green flames glow and flicker, how hot metal screams under water.

[vampiredust]

There's a disabled lady who lives in a ground floor apartment near where I live who has four cats - a ginger, a black and white, a mixed tabby and a siamese mix. They usually sit on top of her books in the lounge staring at people as they walk by.

But now I don't see they anymore. Her balcony is stuffed with plants and flowers obscuring the view of her lounge. She's rearranged the furniture in the lounge and has new blinds on the windows.

I still get the sense I'm being watched, even though I can't see them

[Tzara]

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[Tzara]

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[Tristesse2]

When I grow up I want to be like that eccentric woman with her untidy hair in a Gibson girl and her red high top sneakers talking to plants, animals and herself. I want to be as unconditionally content as she seems. It's never too wet when it rains I just duck inside and the sun is never too hot that's why there are trees. No one really looks at her, she embarrasses them. Yesterday we finished The Times crossword together. We make a good team. she said as she pocketed the creamers and shuffled off to who-knows-where-or-what.

[clutching_calliope]

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[clutching_calliope]

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[cherries_on_snow]

Exhaustion, the polluting exhale of failed hope, stings my eyes regularly as trains running from Jersey. But when the corners leak, he daubs. When my shoulders sag, he wordlessly pulls the strap from my arm and walks alongside. How could I not love him? I may, but will not say.

Not when he googles the best way to make pancakes then flawlessly executes. (It's process, he tells me, not ingredients.) Not when he argues well and fairly (his points wrong, but well argued nonetheless).

Not even when he proves I'm ticklish.

Not (quite) yet.

I know. I'm a coward.

[Tzara]

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[clutching_calliope]

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[clutching_calliope]

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[clutching_calliope]

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[cherries_on_snow]

He's such an optimist that it tinges everything a little pink (probably even me). Sometimes it is a funny game. When I say "animal testing," he thinks of white poodles wearing red lipstick. When I say revolution he thinks "Dance, Dance." Sometimes it's disarming, like how he introduced me to his mother on my second day here (an optimist too: unflaggable girl scout still, at 60). But sometimes it's dangerous. Like the rich kid in the after-hours bust who mouths off to the gun-wielding cop, he believes nothing bad will happen because nothing bad ever has. Not yet . . .

[Tzara]

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[clutching_calliope]

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[Tzara]

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[clutching_calliope]

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[clutching_calliope]

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[Tzara]

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[clutching_calliope]

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[clutching_calliope]

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