raspberry pie
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Posted:Aug 26, 2016 1:35 pm
Last Updated:Aug 28, 2016 8:29 am
10223 Views
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Wild raspberries grow in bushes along the edge of woodlands, seeking sunlight to ripen the fruit. The thick foliage is a lush green, with a slight fuzz that prickles the skin, the twigs covered in small snappish thorns to protect the precious berries.
But to pick the berries you can’t wear gloves, you need to roll the berry from the husk and gloves are too bulky to allow that slide of the fingers. She winced often as her tin pail filled with red, smiling only when it was near to overflowing and she could finally pick for her tongue that craved the tart sweetness.
Sitting down, legs wrapped under her, elbows on the still damp earth, she turned her face to the sky and watched the clouds chase each other morphing as they ran toward the tree line on the far side of the meadow.
I love this land, she said out loud, then laughed.
Tomorrow she’d pick more, enough for jam. Today, a pie had drifted into her mind after she’d washed out the milk cans and she just couldn’t abide the idea of an apple pie…not yet. Maybe by fall. Then it would be nearly 6 months since he left. Lifting herself from the ground, she could feel the baby shift inside her and her hand moved to support her growing belly. Odd how things keep growing and moving along even when it seems as if the whole world should have stopped and stood still. When her mama passed over, she thought she’d never get past that pain but in time, she’d worn it down to a rock that she carried in her pocket and now she only touched it maybe five or twenty times a day. Though she still said “mornin’ and ‘good night” to her after she was done with her prayers.
Almost home, she looked back at the tree line and marked her spot in her mind. She’d start there tomorrow.
The house welcomed her in. The shifted but did not move more than that. She put the kettle on to boil and pulled down the flour and sugar canisters from the top shelf of the cupboard. As she mixed the dough for the crust her mind drifted……
She fed the stove with firewood and waited until the temperature steadied; no on likes burnt pie. As she leaned over to place the finished creation inside the stove, the door was flung open and slammed into the wall.
She dropped the pie, berries splashing like blood across the floor. She slipped, fell, her hands now covered in red; she could feel the heat from the stove on her back.
Strong arms pulled her hard and fast away from the stove. No sounds escaped her, her eyes were frozen on the man.
Damn, he said, I was sort of hoping for pie.
She wept into his shirt, swatting him as he carried her to the table and set her on the edge.
I’ll make you one tomorrow, she sobbed.
That’ll do just fine.
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coming home from work
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Posted:Aug 25, 2016 2:10 pm
Last Updated:Sep 1, 2016 1:11 pm
10743 Views
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Her soft purple velvet dress is almost floor length but not quite. The vee cut, front and back exposed her neck and the curve of her back almost to her waist. Long, bell sleeves with cuffs at the wrist were slit from the shoulder down. The fabric skimmed her body and the folds moved, moved with her as she crossed the room to set the Shiraz and the crystal on the table by the fire.
Her feet make no sound as they are bare but the crackle from the fire and the smell of the cedar log is heady and she reaches for the chair back to steady her trembling legs.
soft grey curls frame her face when she turns, slipping to her knees, assuming the position as He enters T/their room. This is always the moment she fights….wanting only to run to Him. To throw herself into His arms. This is also the moment she desires, when He alone can free her to be His.
He sits by the fire. She can feel her lips turning into a smile and wills it away. Minutes pass.
Come to me girl.
It is like being alive for the first time, like waking up and seeing the moon outside your window while snow falls at the same time. Her nerve endings flare.
She nearly topples a chair as she swiftly moves to take her place by Him.
Hello, she murmurs
As he chuckles, she smiles widely and offers the wine. His hand slips the soft velvet off one shoulder as she hands the glass to Him.
Thank you….. Now, please, tell me all about your day.
Climbing onto his lap, she begins to talk.
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choose
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Posted:Aug 24, 2016 2:27 pm
Last Updated:Sep 1, 2016 1:13 pm
11263 Views
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I love science fiction. The other night when I couldn’t sleep….again…. I watched close encounters of the third kind which I hadn’t seen for eons. I had forgotten the players and the fact that the movie is all about denial and frustration leading up to a final 15 minute orgasm.
BUT, the young dreyfus was so good as a man driven by a life altering experience that I was swept up anyway. The scene as he destroys his yard with the help of his while his neighbors stand, stunned and his wife runs around trying to do anything she can to fix it is funny as hell and utterly wrenching……. all at once.
I wonder what I would do, met with such a moment. Would I believe my eyes? Would I trust myself as he did? Or having had years of social service experience would I take myself to a hospital and check my ass in…….sure that I needed an intervention or major meds?
I would like to think that if shown the face of God, or even just an alien, I would be able to accept that this was a glorious moment……a gift if you will. That maybe, for reasons I didn’t know, I had been chosen. Vanity? A little maybe, but it’s also that I’ve been living, waiting for something big all my life like most of us have and so when it comes, I wonder if I will I shrink from it or run towards it with arms open? Will it scare me, will I back away or will I grab hold?
It’s a gift, right?
The single most ridiculously huge thing that ever happened to you in your whole life. Your heart pounding a mile a minute. This is YOUR moment, whatever it is.
Choose.
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the more things change....
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Posted:Aug 22, 2016 12:39 pm
Last Updated:Aug 25, 2016 10:29 am
9835 Views
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in this world we live in, we often think things have changed when indeed they've simply become less visible, more insidious. While slavery is not legal, it's certainly still practiced and human trafficking is a billion dollar enterprise. and so this is my offering. you see, I've never been denied entry to a place because of the color of my skin, and most of you haven't either. and while i mayhave fought for equal rights all my life tbh, fighting for them is one helluva lot easier when you're white. so speaking from that point of privilege, i want to say that TODAY, there are nearly 21 million people being trafficked every year. trafficked sounds so much nicer than sold, don't you think?. but the reality is they are stolen........sold......and that's the ugly truth. call it anything you want......it's slavery.
so when blacks say blacks lives matter......unless you were a slave or trafficked, don't say anything except "yes they do".
In the smallest corner of the smallest hut on the shortest mound in the tiniest village in a place that had no name because really it was not big enough to matter to anyone, a baby cooed. Born only two months earlier to a girl, not a woman, the little one lay naked on grasses covered with a sheep’s skin.
Outside in the bright sun, the girl lifted her head, smiling at the sound of her waking, while she continued the task at hand. The men of the village were hunting today and the sounds of her village were muted and soft, women sounds and sweet laughter.
Wee ones ran back and forth with impunity stealing bits and pieces of food, eating off the many fires and the women batted at them like flies while laughing at their gall and admiring their speed. Smiles spilled into the air and rose like butterflies.
She looked up. The birds. The birds had stopped singing. Other women paused as well and soon the village was still, except for sound of the 's feet running.
A roar louder than the lion’s split the silence. The flew to their mothers like moths to flames.
Their men, there they stood shackled in front of them, bleeding.
Men with skin the color of the sky on a day with no sun were running and tearing at the women, binding them with harsh rope, ignoring their cries, beating the smallest of the to the ground, setting the huts ablaze. the sounds of terror were so loud they filled the sky and blocked the sun.
The girl was fleet and ran to the jungle, her crushed to her chest, stifling his cries, eyes so wide she saw nothing.....nothing. In an hour, only silence remained. The babies and the battered , they became her tribe and they moved deeper into the jungle.
She mourned the river that her would never know. No longer was there safety for her kind. This was the beginning. This she knew.
#blacklivesmatter
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clap if you believe in fairies
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Posted:Aug 18, 2016 12:10 pm
Last Updated:Aug 24, 2016 1:42 pm
9763 Views
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This weekend I host the fairy tea for the neighborhood. I have a very large tree in my yard with nooks and crannies, some big enough for apartment buildings if someone wants to be entrepreneurial. So far I have 17 little ones coming. They will arrive at 1:00, when cake and sweet tea will be served. I have assembled acorns, twigs stones, leaves, grass and they can pick anything from the rest of the yard or bring anything form their gardens at home….the only caveat is that it must be natural or found, not something they buy
They are to dress as they would should they wish to meet a fairy.
I have coming from my street, from two towns away, and from out of state who will arrive tomorrow with their Wiccan mom. This is our 5th annual fairy house build.
My tree has never failed to shield us even in the rain.
I send the mothers away…they tend to fuss and try to control the construction process. The see in their minds what they want their fairy home to be…..they are the architects and the builders.
Once the tree has all the houses in her, the choose how to bless them. Sometimes they sing or dance, sometimes they just sit and honor their work. Little ones tend to sleep, older ones tend to survey. It is a peaceful contented time.
Wee sandwiches and tiny tiny ice cream cones are served to begin the celebration. A riotous parade with banners made of shining mylar ensues as we march up and down the street with tambourines and kazoos and bells and whistles. My neighbors are used to this now and will stand and cheer on the as they pass.
And, If it’s very hot…….we may even engage in a water balloon battle to protect our village. My next door neighbor Jim is the Ogre…….his roars are loud and terrifying. But we are nothing if not brave.
Sighs…………life is filled with magic……..find it.
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Bullying.....HNW in pink
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Posted:Aug 17, 2016 8:40 am
Last Updated:Aug 20, 2016 1:21 pm
9380 Views
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Aside – no one wants to see me half naked in pink……so here’s Pink……half nekkid.
There is an art to bullying. Not when you are young of course. Then it’s just blunt force trauma and most of us remember the pain because it was physical. I had never been bullied until I got to High School and a group of jock girls decided that I was somehow “off”. Maybe it was because I was in advanced placement classes, so was easy prey despite the fact that I was marginally a jock girl, on the basketball team and running track myself.
It became a daily thing to shove me into my locker, to make sure my nylons were striped with runs before first period, to tip my tray in the cafeteria, to generally make life a misery in all the small ways they could find.
My best friend Margaret was a quiet girl, religious and soft spoken and we walked to and from school together and despite the fear of being hurt, she never left me to walk with someone else. One day this boy, a greaser (weren’t we just awful with the tagging of groups back then?). his name was Stephen Facenda and he had a Ducktail greased back with enough vitalis that you surely did not want to light a match near his hair approached us.
Each day after, at dismissal, he stood at my locker, an errant prince, and without saying a single word collected Margaret and me and walked us a few blocks away from the high school, turned and left us. Each day we thanked him and he nodded. He was a little scary at first but we soon grew used to his presence and favored him with cookies and cake to try to get him to smile.
One day, Margaret had a drama club rehearsal and I was waiting for her so no Stephen. I was standing outside the auditorium and three girls came up behind me and started pulling my hair, kicking me and despite my cries for help, no teacher appeared. But the doors to the auditorium swung open and out came Margaret. And not sweet Margaret………avenging angel Margaret with a bag full of history books and a look of redemption in her eyes. For someone who never played a sport, that girl had an arm.
In seconds they fled.
We sat on the floor, crylaughing. Holding on to each other.
That day the walk home was filled with laughter as we celebrated Margaret’s warrior status and the realization that a green book bag, once a symbol of shame, was now a shining sword of freedom.
Stephen continued his mission for that entire year. The next year, he was not in school. I wondered about him. His kindness was such a gift for two weary girls.
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rare birds
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Posted:Aug 15, 2016 1:24 pm
Last Updated:Aug 20, 2016 1:23 pm
8958 Views
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The ladies by the river laughed and chattered as they washed the clothes, beating the fabric against the stones and then laying them across the rough bushes to dry in the midday sun. When everything was washed and placed to dry, they removed their own clothing and did the same to it, the river sweeping the suds downstream and their long dark plaits laying against bronze skin. The tossed stones, riding sticks and galloping naked along the sand like tiny ponies while the women loosened their hair, squeezing soap and oleander through the lengthy tresses, watching them loosely as one does a sight seen so often it is already a memory.
The elder lit a fire next to the largest rock, the one they used as a table, spreading fruit, mixing maize with water, shaping patties as the women glided from the water to help her. The sun was so hot, the clothes nearly dry but no one moved to dress yet, there was such a sweet freedom here for these few hours.
ran by, taking food but not stopping their play, grins wide and wild. Here, smiles were given without thought or intent, freely. Here touch was gentle, soft, loving.
In time, the remains of the meal were packed, the clothes folded and placed into baskets, hair plaited, the slowed, knowing it was time. Clothes were donned.
A long slow string of women and moved, an elegant parade wrapped in reds and azure away from the white sand and silver river into the green of the jungle.
Quietly without a sound, they disappeared as though the waning afternoon light was insufficient to hold them.
Until the last beautiful bird was lost.
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6
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sideways
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Posted:Aug 9, 2016 2:03 pm
Last Updated:Sep 1, 2016 1:17 pm
10038 Views
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Walking through the aisles of the store, she began to wonder if she, if anyone, was thinking about anything at all, or if they were just walking up and down, mindlessly performing functions they had been programmed to perform. It reminded her of the stepford wives, no really real people. Her heart sped up as she tried to make eye contact with, well, anyone and couldn’t.
No, she posited, it was more like the matrix where there was another world and she was acting out her part in this one and a cog had slipped and she’d become aware that she was just acting out a part when she wasn’t supposed to be aware. She’d seen past the façade and now it all looked rigged to her.
Of course, this panic was just panic and this idea was just part of that panic and she was allowing all of this to go way too far and reality was there, all she had to do was step sideways and she could hold it again in her hand…just step sideways…so she did.
She ran the groceries through the checkout, drove home, put them away, started the laundry. See…….
She covered her mouth when the doorbell rang…….why did almost scream?
She let the plumber into the basement and went back to her bedroom, picking up her kindle, swiping it open to the book she was reading. The was running in his sleep by her bed and he hand drifted slowly back and forth over his fur.
The sound of the plumber below was suddenly absent. He must have finished the work. She scampered to the front window to see if he had left but the truck was still there. When she turned, he was right behind her. Just feet away.
“How much do I owe you Hank?”
“I’m not an idiot.”
There was no way to parse the words. She shook her head and looked at him. ….. the world slipping sideways.
It was the endless barking that made the neighbors call the police.
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synposium post teacher
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Posted:Aug 6, 2016 7:03 pm
Last Updated:Aug 15, 2016 1:25 pm
16084 Views
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If you stand up for something you believe in
If you kneel down and to help another person stand up
If you sit without talking next to someone who is mourning
Or talk to someone who most people never bother with at all
Whenever you choose to walk away, Or demand to stay Refuse to comply Choose not to lie
You are a teacher.
When you listen to the stories that your whispers in your ear And you whisper stories back.
If the sound of voices raised in debate makes you smile
If your heart beats faster when you’re sharing what you know
If the moment of “oh yeah” makes you laugh inside Or gives you lily tomlin goosebumps
You are a teacher
We are all teachers. Some of us excel at it. Some of us should be paid money to do it. Some of us should not.
But in the end, it is the sharing of ourselves with the world, with each other that makes it possible for ideas and language and art and well, all of it to continue. If I were to discover electricity tomorrow which is indeed highly unlikely….it would be no less of a wonder just because it has already been discovered.
As t.s. eliot said… we will come again to the same place and know it for the first time. This is what learning is. Who cares that someone else already knows it. it matters that YOU know it……..that YOU hold it in your hand and marvel at it.
if you do THAT.........you are a teacher......
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12
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sawdust cigarettes
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Posted:Aug 5, 2016 9:41 am
Last Updated:Aug 18, 2016 11:10 am
9202 Views
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Not bothering with the lights, she moved through the silent house, the padding along behind her as he did most nights, keeping her company on this loneliest of walks.
Wandering the rooms that once had been filled with the sounds of life and were now so still, her hands fell gently on small things.
A box with a cover that is the sun and the moon, a piece of amethyst with an anemone trapped inside, a paperweight filled with the most fragile of ferns……..ephemera of her life.
Pieces. She curled on the sofa staring at the dark street, the beside her, her hand in his fur. Sleep would not come tonight like so many other nights.
Fear surrounded her. There were minutes when she would forget, but so few. And then it would be back even stronger with that tagalong guilt….how could she forget for even a second.
She thought back to a time when she was a and she had been so very frightened. She was sure then that she would forget how to breathe. It was a horrifying feeling going minute to minute trying to remember how to do something you knew how to do, to battle yourself. But she had won.
Love is awonderfulterrible thing. You don’t choose it. It simply is. And once it is, it takes your breath away.
It is what makes us more………it is what shatters us…….it is what holds us together.
This is for [Christylovesfun]. it is because of her that i survive, that many survive.
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good friends
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Posted:Aug 2, 2016 3:17 pm
Last Updated:Aug 9, 2016 2:05 pm
10617 Views
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I’ve had three dogs now. Each one has lived in my heart, taken up residence, never leaving even when they ceased to be of this world.
Waggles was a chuckler, the only female, a keeshond. She was supposed to be my brother’s but she was mine from the day she came home. The dogs always choose, doesn’t matter what we think, and Wags, she liked the ladies. Dad never wanted dogs because he loved his lawn and lady dogs leave burn marks with their pee, so poor wags, even in her dotage would have to trundle out to the street to honor her Poppy. She lived to be 14 and died in her sleep….Dad cried harder than anyone.
My second was for my . Nickthedog was a setter plus lord knows what. A pound and I slept with him on the floor in the kitchen for the first three weeks until he stopped crying. Once he settled, my husband, who swore it would be my ’s responsibility to do all the walking and feeding fell for him like a ton of bricks.
Nick was his dog……….through and through. He'd climb into bed with anyone who would have him though, a shameless hedonist. and smart…….oh lordy what a smart dog. He could tell when you were hurting and would curl around you like a blanket until there was nothing to do but give in to his love and cry it out while he licked your tears away.
Nicky died a bad death, in terrible pain. When we put him down I ran out of the ASPCA, shattered shaking so hard I tripped and fell right into this woman who caught me. She held me as tight as she could until my husband came out. Blessed be.
When my husband walked out, my needed to love on something. He found a on line who’d been left in a paper bag on the side of the highway. One of them looked like our Nick so we went to see him. He had a sister with him….we took them both. We were told they’d grow to be about 15 pounds. Up til then all our dogs had been big dogs. But with two, little seemed a good idea. God, they were like tiny ewoks. So fuzzy.
On our first trip to the vet , he set us straight. Our pups were going to be 75 pounds full grown…not 15 Setter, chow, corgi mix. Uh0h. We named them Charlie and JoJo. Charlie got long legs, JoJo got 4” corgi legs. They both got the chow tail and tongue. Beautiful dogs…….. light night and day.
JoJo was the devil incarnate, smart as a whip, could open cabinet doors and lived to make Charlie her slave. She now lives in Maine where she rules an entire farm with the will of a dictator. Charlie is an angel, a love bug, a dear sweet boy, but not all that bright. Charlie is my ’s dog. He sleeps in my closet. He dreams every night, talks in his sleep, he guards the house from the livingroom window, kisses everyone who enters, and looks like Nick with a plumy tail and a black tongue. He’s 12 now. most people call him bear, I doubt I’ll have another after Charlie. He is a good place to end. He is the ambassador at the park, known by all. can put their hands in his mouth and he will simply wait until they are done and then gently lick them.
A thunderstorm will undo him…….smiles…. but try to touch one of the in my house………..he’ll go wolf on your ass.
No….i think I’m done. It’s hard losing such good friends.
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9
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tear down that wall
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Posted:Jul 31, 2016 10:41 am
Last Updated:Aug 18, 2016 11:12 am
9515 Views
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Mr. Berman taught 10th grade American history. He was new to the high school, young, idealistic, scruffy. We were studying from a book that stood about two and a half inches thick and if I remember correctly had been written about 25-30 years before it landed on our desks in the mid 60’s.
Now it could be said that history is history and cannot be rewritten. It is what it is, right?
But perspective alters everything. Imagine a small about a year old and seeing everything from about two feet off the ground. How does that not change your view of the world? Is it any wonder that a just has to climb to try to make the world a more evenly seen place or that the sudden movement of a large thing would startle them into a squall.
To teach history, well, perspective is crucial and I became a thinker that year in a way I had never been before when we happened upon the grand ideal called manifest destiny.
We were tasked to debate manifest destiny. I was to support it. As I studied and researched, I found a million ways to slam this horror to the ground. The cheap tricks and “legal” legs it stood on were so flimsy that only the name gave it any credibility. It was the money that held it up….that and the religious bias.
“Manifest Destiny” was a racial doctrine of white supremacy that granted no native American or nonwhite claims to any permanent possession of the lands on the North American continent and justified the taking of Indian lands, firmly anchored in a divine purpose to spread Christianity, a deeply providential purpose….one with mighty financial gain to white men.
My opponent was not a worthy one. He was lazy and had not done his work. Had he, Manifest Destiny might have died that year in that room and maybe, just maybe, more than just me would have learned what Berman was hoping we would learn.
That a few smart but not just men stole this land, making the people we stole it from prisoners on land they once cared for as a legacy. And those same wealthy men brought other people over on boats, prisoners stolen from their freedom and their homes and made them work this land as slaves.
America………land of the free was not off to such a great start. So let’s not pretend we’re all that and a bag of chips, eh?
It was the immigrants that came to our shores……….the great melting pot that made America America.
And now, some would build a wall. I will tear it down with my own hands.
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surrender
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Posted:Jul 30, 2016 12:02 pm
Last Updated:Aug 4, 2016 1:08 pm
9098 Views
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Their world began with words piled on words, a dance delicate, intricate and sometimes endearingly clumsy. Hours upon hours of a voice that rumbled down her spine. A time when she was the middle, the core, the center, the world peripheral, meaningful only in its connection to her. A masterful seduction of the mind.
Although her time with him was proscribed by his time spent writing and her working, their hours together were intense. It was as if they were always joined. He would call each night to send her to sleep.
The first they lay together, it was a sideways time full of whispers, moans, deep sounds, a place she’d never been before, so joyous she wept. a time out of time, deep winter with snow on the skylight.
On a day, filled with lilac scents, she ran to his house to kiss him good morning, so filled with love she was. She had spent three days there the prior week, never once wearing more than his shirt. He had shown her how life would be with him, she was offering her surrender.
A woman answered the door, called her by her name, then called her lover’s name over her shoulder and he emerged from his study and walked towards her down the hallway. His eyes held hers.
Looking only at him……….she knelt in the doorway.
He touched her hair.
She stood.
“liar”
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