The Kiss of Death

Consciousness hits as you’re fighting suffocation. Face down in a basement room of Dante’s Inferno, you’re flattened against a sea of bodies caught trying to roll over. You feel your lips press against the hollow below Yannick’s left ear. His good side.

 

Morgan’s 100-Proof Excuse

The pirates came, like every Tuesday. You know how they’d kidnap me, hie me away to some dive out on Rte. 128 and dump me on the lawn by the hydrangea in the morning. So I unlocked the liquor cabinet: shoot me.

History Lesson: Schrödinger's Light

You all think you’d know what to do, when to do it. I’d like to see you try. Try not to see that nothing is illuminated, that no one’s walking up the path. You try leaving it on all night. Every night.

Did not make this week's grid, but in exchange was given a cooler title. Thanks Rowan!

They Didn’t Match My Jacket

When it finally occurred to me to glance up from my perfect crouch, the pole was headed straight at me. I leaned hard to the right, and there was the snow bank. Obviously, the rental guy gave me the wrong color boots.

Always Doesn’t Seem Like Such a Long Time, After All

His beard, grown as camouflage for a dove,

curves around the smile that widened just for me.

Gentle fingers squeeze hard between my ribs

for the photo, pull me in tight, make me gasp.

Taken, poof, in a rainbow-bursting flash of sunlight.

Names Blown Past

Really, there’s no need for light. Better to leave the curtain tangled. If that bulge in the middle seems to ripple, call it the wind. If the wind calls, listen. When it skulks by tinged in frost, it cries Mary. Screams Mary.

Honored to be chosen Editor's Pick by Rowan for this challenge : )

Before I Sleep

On the darkest evening of the year, I follow the downy-flaked trail out past the village. Between the woods and frozen lake, I locate the dollhouse. My sister can’t drag it any farther. Stopping here, we watch it fill up with snow.

Somewhere Not in the Hills of the Spanish Civil War

I was lying in bed without him, recalling how it used to be before Hemingway ruined it for all of us. There was a shuddering, and the night froze. Now I’m left hanging, forever facing Venus, butt of some juvenile cosmic joke.

Sundering

She sits as his last breath rises. His soul, energy, life-force hovers goodbye. No, she says. Rising, it disperses, turning into universe. No, she cries, how will I know you? Out near another galaxy it flinches. Gathers. Returns. Reenters her atmosphere. Ignites.

Girlfriends

Tina pinched my cheeks red, Jody called me stupid, and Carol threw my headband up onto the porch. All I had to do once they left was climb up and reach for it between the wooden posts. That was the easy part.

River Rules

At the end of it all, James and I position ourselves on the bridge. We gauge the rapids. Cabal is barking from his perch on Devil’s Rock. Whoever reaches it first has claim to him. On the count of three, we jump.

Motherhood, Part III

Of course it’s clear now. Bull-headed, know-it-all me never wavered. Still. Couldn’t they put out a manual, or some sort of notice? I was ready for backtalk, missed curfews, but bellybutton piercing? A tramp stamp? I might’ve thought twice about that cesarean.

Defloration

My dress, wrapped like a collar, smells of grass.

After I kicked his face, he pulled off my boots - hips jerking, rocks scraping against my back – and heaved them into the creek.

The grass smells like warmth against my cold body.

Shelter

The deluge began in the foothills and quickly flooded the delta. Dolores left puddle prints as she slogged her way to the plains. She whistled her lips bone dry, sucked up the clouds of mystery. Stood barren before the one good man.

Motherhood, Part II (*Editor's Pick GB#187)

A slice of cake once a year may not seem like much. A lock of hair in a drawer, a little tooth. What they don’t tell you is how the power of a kiss unleashes your inner goddess. How you become invincible.

       

End of an Era

Me, a stone’s throw away from dotted i’s, t’s crossed in the sand, tossed in the waves. You, a thrown stone. Each crash of wave, tumble of sand smoothes your jagged edges, while May’s full moon erases our trail across the bay.

 

Waterways

Despite all her trepidation, the jump was exhilarating; a shock of water that tugged at her, pulling her down. She let herself sink. When she did kick out, her ankle met an unmoored figurehead, perhaps, adrift in the undercurrent of the creek.

Elephant Opera Company

Always loud - coming or going -

we could not get rid of them fast enough.

Neither fashionable nor punctual

- unwieldy, spectacular, lumbering -

they ate up all the adornments

that kept us safely disguised

and then would not leave until

the fat lady sang.

 

Adult Education *

North light fills a row of windows high above the wooden platform where I’m told to stand. Easels scrape into place like a flower blooming around me. I hear easy chatter, lean into the paint-smeared stool, struggle to unwrap this borrowed robe.

*This piece placed third with the crowd, and was also Editor's Pick (Thank you Christine!)

Jaqueline T. Miller, Policyholder

“Northeastern Mutual, Jerry Dunne.”

“Jackie Miller here. I’m calling about Thursday.”

“Ms. Miller. How can I help you?”
“Sunday’s all squared away. Bathroom. Burst pipe. Tuesday’s the eight-hundred deductable. Julie’s fender-bender.”
“I see. What about Thursday?”
“Flooded basement. I’m guessing five thou?”