One Last Night

Like he’d done for 40 years, he placed their breakfast on the table. Since the stroke his wife had little appetite for food. He watched the morning news and she stared out the window. Later, in the garden he picked tomatoes and she watched the sun fall below an orange horizon. He said, “I love you.” She had no reply. As darkness crept in, they undressed and went to bed. When he awoke the next morning she was not at his side. In his frantic search, he found the check from the life insurance company lying unopened on the table

Helen

“There’s absolutely nothing good that can go on after midnight, there’s no movies, no restaurants, no school dances. Only one thing happens and you don’t want any part of it if you want a normal life.”

If anyone knows about not having a normal life, it sure as hell is going to be me. My piece of shit father was a man of few words and never the right ones. I never once in my life heard an “I love you”, gotten a hug or even a smile from the rotten bastard. He preferred to let his belt do his talking for him.

The woman that I called mother just hid away in the bedroom, sniveling like a child herself, with never a word or lifting a hand to try to stop him. One day, in a drug induced moment of courage, she pointed the sleek, cold steel of my dad’s .45 at the wrinkle just above her nose and pulled the trigger. As far as I was concerned, it was just another coward’s move from a weak minded piece of shit. The powder and lead might have driven away her pain but a lot of good it did for me.

So I fled into the night and let the darkness seduce me. Where I could feel the coolness of the shadows against my naked skin dance with the heat from whoever was willing to pay for my passion.

My dear daughter Leanna, you were born on my seventeenth birthday. That day, I vowed to make a better life for you, my precious baby girl. I was going to give you all the things I had never gotten from life; a home, love, compassion, support and honesty.

I just forgot that all those things came with a price. That all the money in the world couldn’t give you those things, only time shared with each other can do that.

Now, all I can do is bring flowers to your grave.

“I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there for you while you were being seduced by the night.”

My Brother David

He loathes the city with all its bright lights, glitzy neon signs and noise that makes it impossible to think. It seems to demand every second of his attention, always screaming at him, “Focus on me and don’t you dare look away.” Yet, it has never offered him anything in exchange for his obedience, except a headache.

He is an open field of wildflowers, a tree lined ridge, the coolness of a slow moving creek, a dog at his side and a pole in his hand. He needs the softness of grass under his feet. He is a country boy.

Only One Chance

Death is a natural occurrence, like drying leaves dropping from trees in the waning days of autumn. We don’t mourn their absence but we do remember them for their brilliant colors. At times during the despair of our winter when the cold turns our hearts icy and the landscape bleaches into shapeless shadows, we may think of them. But for every winter there comes a spring and with the warming of our souls, the memories of them step aside and each blossom of the new beginning smells the sweeter for it. Celebrate the time you have with those you love.

Everyone’s a Poet.”

When loves gives us a call, we have
to answer the door.  Part of that love it
seems is the need to pour our souls out onto paper.

Is it because we are so inspired by the feeling we have that we can’t resist it? Or, as I believe,  is it the fact that we know our partner is going to goo goo ga ga over each and every word. Because love is also blind and deaf. 

So go ahead, write away, even if it’s:

Gretchen, your so fetchen

Debbie, you aint heavy

Jim, you’re so slim

Or

Girl, you make my heart twirl

Trust me on this one… they’re going to love it.