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.