Trust Your First Guess

“A tenner on Marmalade.”

The guy with the eyeshades burped. It was a disparaging burp. “You’d bet on an orange horse. Take my advice. Save your money.”

“Well what would you advise?” The lady, or maybe she was a floozy, asked. She fluttered her eyelashes and tugged at dangly paste earrings. “Help a girl out.”

“God, my feet are killing me. Take my place so I can sit down and I’ll give you a winning tip.”

The lady was used to dead feet. She had on heels that were half her height. “Deal.”

And it was Marmalade by a nose.

Let Us Eat Chocolate

The Easter Bunny wore a polkadot tie to the Last Supper. The feast was well attended. The patriarchs wore yamakas, clerical collars, or golden chains of office. They made nice on the dais as an example for others. It was the Easter Bunny who’d brought it to their attention. Holy wars, though none is really holy, were on the rise.

Everyone agreed, if it got to Crusades level conflict, they’d need to call on Mother Nature to create another Great Flood. Yes, it was her. She gave a moving speech about climate change. The Easter Bunny passed out chocolate eggs.

We’ve Cornered the Market in Tragedy

Fall colors pull me into the corner boutique. Rich burgundy, rust, and hints of black, abstract shapes intertwine, chase an Asiatic pattern over the five foot silk length. I’m in love. When I wrap the scarf three times around my neck, the sales lady says, “It suits you. You have a long neck. A dancer’s neck.” I’m not a dancer. I have two left feet. But I take it because the colors perfectly suit the melancholy of the fall day. On the sidewalk outside, there’s a newspaper in the box at the corner. The headline reads, “People’s Temple: Mass Suicide.”

All of Paris is a Museum

We came to Paris for the museums. L’Orangerie in the Tuilleries, Musée Marmottan, Musée de Cluny. We walked everywhere; it’s a small city. First stop was Gallerie Lafayette. “It’s like a museum,” she said.

“No,” I said. “It’s a department store. See the price tags.”

When she approached the register with full shopping bags, I asked, “How will you pack these home?”

“I’ll need a suitcase.” So she bought one. At the Cluny, she browsed the gift shop until nearly closing. She purchased a full set of pillow covers on the Lady and Unicorn theme. That was the first day.

It’s All Greek to Me

Rain came down in buckets. Frogs poured out. They hit the ground with a splat. No one knew how frogs had spawned in rainclouds, or if that was what had happened. But, absolutely, frogs were falling from the sky.

Some landed in marshes, maybe on their heads. They sang silly songs. They offended poetic sensibilities with ignorant chatter and stubborn opinions. Dionysus was out for his morning constitutional when he heard the cacophony. “Fetch those frogs for me.”

No one could. The frogs had leapt into the air, back into the clouds, loud, louder; oblivious to the noise they made.

Three Things to Carry When Hiking in the Sierras

She always wore the silver-banded jade ring, hiked in the red shirt scrounged from a garage sale for two dollars. The color attracted hummingbirds that flashed color, buzzed sound, came dangerously close. They thought she was a flower. The shirt’s power, the contrast of tame jade and wild hummingbirds, the contradictions that lived inside her. Sometimes it scared her.

Her knife, an extension of her red-shirted arm, cut bread, spread peanut butter. Like the wild hummingbirds, she hovered on the edge of aggression, starved and looking for something to eat. The jade, it’s calming green, a promise to heal herself.

Brain Fog

The garage is cluttered. Before I start, I need to organize.

But first, I should think things over. Clarity first.

Focus, clear these old magazines.

What’s the timer for? What’s that smell? Do I have something in the oven?

It’ll wait. Out to the recycling with these.

Pick up the mail. The Economist is having a laugh. Trump riding bareback, bare chest on Vlad’s polar bear. Wasn’t Vlad’s a horse? Bears in Greenland? So many interpretations.

Let me close the garage door.

What is that smell? Oh my god, I’ve burnt dinner again.

I think I need a glass of wine.

Things People Never Get Over

“I’m at the airport.”

A deep fake? They’d talked this past week; she hadn’t mentioned a visit. “Who is this?”

“Don’t you recognize your mother’s voice?”

“Then, when did we last speak?”

“Saturday. Marcy left you and I’m here to help.”

“She’s having a midlife crisis. She just needs…”

“It’s not what she needs, it’s what you need. Pick me up, or I can get a Lyft.”

He’d made peace with his wife’s decision. His mother would give him the advice she wished she’d had when his father left. She wouldn’t notice the salt she was rubbing in his wounds.

The Subject is Words

An avalanche of words slows. Letters pile to a stop. You sweep them into pages of prose, organize the words in sentences. The sentences describe familiar subjects. The subjects are coupled with tasty verbs that whet the appetite, the filling in a subject-object sandwich. Pair with a fruity adjective to finish.

Thoughts and feelings spring into paragraphs willy-nilly; words leap to the page in disorganized, repetitive chaos. It’s time to wind down and mine for meaning. A pot of gold waits at rainbow’s end. The end of patience, of an era, of the sentence, the end of the line. Edit.

Small Sins; Have Mercy

Jack couldn’t afford the sensitive toothpaste. Not if he wanted to buy groceries for the kids. His teeth hurt so bad, though.

“Do you want it?” The clerk pointed at the toothpaste in the locked case.

Like it’s diamonds or something. “Let me see it.”

Another customer needed another case unlocked on another aisle.

“Why do you lock everything up?”

“Store policy. Put it back if you don’t want it.”

It might not work. Jack’s stomach rumbled. The guy trusts me. Or doesn’t care. Or sees I need it.

They locked Jack up. But not before he’s brushed his teeth.

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