At night I reach for you, but you're not there. I wait, hear heels that tap across the floor. It must, most certain be a trap, a snare, Cruel trick, the phantom step beyond the door. In breathless trepidation do I wait For you, just you, no'ne else but you will do. “I do,” the words I've spoken much too late To bind our troth and make our life anew. Dear Kate, I beg, please come to me again. With heaving bosom, dance with me a turn. Such perfect grace together we attain That even Rose, her favor we might earn. Alas, I wish that this were but a dream, In fact, I fear it's all that it doth seem.
Mother, apple pie, wrapped in ribbons, red and white and blue.
Mother pie? Did you say you put your mother in the pie? In pieces? Only a madman would do that. Don’t upset your mother. Now try again.
Some things are patriotic. Apple pie, mother, blue and red and white, for example. And Blue Stockings. Because mothers are revolutionary. And so is the white, blue, and red. A proclamation of revolution was the original intent.
What the hell are you saying here? They’re colors. And food. And who wears stockings anymore. You make it too complicated. Light a sparkler. Relax.
A small black woman stands on stage, the sinews of her arms taut against the lectern. Do you hear her?
The call: “Ain’t I a woman?”
The response: “You are a woman.”
God revealed, though even now not everyone has heard, that women are entitled to respect, to equal rights, to the dignity of their person, to freedom. 150 years ago God spoke through this tiny woman who endured hard lessons about society, about the people close to her, most importantly about herself. Do you know the saying, “The truth will set you free?” Be a sojourner. Find the truth.
Shrew: An omelet, A suitcase, A change of clothes and then a meal. Maybe. A sonnet, An altercation, with the consequence that she leaves. Again. … Cool chick changes, reverts to wasp “An omelet, bonny Kate? And sit.” “On a moveable? It will not bear me.” “I mean to bear thee.” “Don’t go all Shakespeare on me, I gotta go.” … But then she said She would not come Into my bed. I said, “Your mum, I wish her dead.” She whacked my bum I grasped her head She said, “You dumb Ass, don’t you tread On me.”
We are prohibited from shouting, “Fire,” in a crowded theater where a (citizen, terrorist, madman, patriot, bad guy) will shoot, among others, a legislator who voted against gun control. The legislator’s good friend, asked who permitted the gun in the theater, will burst into hot tears of grief.
Still he says, eyes dry, gun rights are in the Constitution. Other rights aren’t. Women fighting for choice. Sanctuary. Union organizing. Driving a car. Registering to vote. The legislator’s friend explains that there is room for disagreement. These issues evolve. But on guns, the wording is clear.
Popping wheelies on a walker equipped with bright yellow tennis balls to keep it from slip-sliding away, he makes light of his infirmities in a dangerous, delightful way. Nothing interferes with watching Wimbledon on ESPN on the Fourth of July.
An old man, young at ninety, never one to let pain triumph over life. Not early on when it might have done. Not in the war. Not when the press of reporting the news, nor the ups and downs of politics sent him low and high for fifty years. Not even when his dear wife slid away like a dream.
Feels like it might rain, like something might trickle through the seared air and quench the thirsty, dusty ground. It’s just a feeling though. Nothing to make it true. Even the clouds lie.
Next thing is a flash, a thunder peal, dry lightning somewhere in the hills. You think it’s far away because the bolt is disconnected from its scream.
A fire smolders. The wind spreads it, jumps it over the plowed break in the dry, brown grass. Acrid smoke and deep hued sunsets linger after the flames run their course.
No one dies, nothing changes. We think we’re lucky.
It was a big tree, gashed along the side away from the barn. My grandpa calls it “The Guardian.”
Said he saw it happen in the big rainstorm of 2012. The sky alight, the thunder rumbling; the dogs scrambling for cover on the porch, yowling like every clap tore open an ear. Then a bolt hit the aspen. Hit it at the leafy top and seared into the trunk, so now you see the scar ripple dark down to the ground.
It’s grown some. Taller now. Stronger. Beloved. Hay bales safe under the barn roof feed the cows all winter.
A clap of thunder sounded and a bolt of lightning rent the sky. Was it Zeus, Thor? She speculated.
A man’s girth filled the doorway. “Move.”
“Give us a break.”
He wore a poncho, blue with an emblem, shoulders uncertain. “Go on.”
She held a square of cardboard above her head. Behind her she pulled a shopping cart, a torn tarp bungeed on top. Arranged so her things stayed dry. Her life, her books.
He turned and went the other way while she rumbled along, not lonely.
She pulled into the next doorway. Maybe some god had tickled his ear.
Looking at the blue jeans I have on today, I remember buying them when I was much younger. They were dark blue, whereas now they are washed blue, showing dots of white throughout. A stylish rectangular hole, approximately two by three inches, bares my knee. The tear had its start on a backpacking trip. I’d like to say a sharp rock abraded the cloth while I knelt to splash my face, but memory has its limits. I had a dog then. If he was here, he would lick my knee and then curl up on the floor for a nap.
Monica's Monday Morning Flash 