Category: Fictional Musings

There are moments of waking, in the still, darkness of night; the question echoes, an almost silent thought; where am I? There’s a displacement when consciousness is first roused. Sometimes there are several of these moments in the seemingly eternal night. Sleep is heavy here. Short, usually. The journey weighs, the phantom weight on his shoulders, even as the backpack sits slumped in a corner and he rests his back on the heated floor. His eyes heavy as this foreign continent disappears and he drifts again to the oblivion of sleep. The journey has begun, this journey; his previous sojourn […]

-She was the one I held onto for so long. Her warmth long gone. She was just a memory. Her smile and the sweetness she revealed. Her laughter. She laughed much, if the memory correlates correctly to the moments shared. That was long ago. She was the one I held onto. The innocence, it just permeated her space and maybe drew me close. It was about the way she made me feel, about the way I made her feel. For so long a ghost. Her voice has yielded long since and there is no sound that would remind me of […]

-Hey you…I’m dead…died Sunday morning…some sort of fall from the graces that keep us alive…I’m not sure what it had to do with…didn’t wake up, that’s what was said…it was more than that…eyelids were still warm…there had been a moment of consciousness, maybe longer…the impression of lights, maybe people…maybe it was everyone I could remember…then there was darkness… …I never saw myself, I don’t think I remembered myself…many other faces…eyes and smiles…some were laughing…it was a pleasant flash of light…and then eyes closed…someone else’s…then my own, though they were never open…and then darkness…and yes now I am gone… …in the […]

-What was it, he wonders. Her, simply her. That’s too simple isn’t it? A smile almost escapes him. Maybe there was more. He drinks his tea. She always had tea. Maybe it was the way she drank her tea, not that it was all that distinct, but it was, her. She would pour honey on the spoon, then squeeze lemon over it, before she sank it into the cup to dissolve. She’d never take the spoon out, even as she drank. She liked to mix the tea, even after the honey and lemon had stopped being honey and lemon. She […]

-She sits trembling, her heart swells. To etch love into paper, she tries. The pen pressed into the 4×5 canvas in front of her. A card. She likes cards. She bought him a card. It made her smile when she bought it, thinking of him. Writing in it, makes her heart ache. Tears fall, as her heart swells and her pen trembles, along with the rest of her. She breathes deeply and heavily. There’s an emotion, now alive inside, she’s never felt before. And as she writes, she writes it down as, Love. She smiles, as the tears fall; it’s […]

– The event lasted twelve years, and it was an event in many ways. A daily event. Waking together in each other’s arms. At first, anyways. Then it slowly became a different kind of event. It brought other events. The first lasting ten years so far, a beautiful little girl. The other, six years so far, a gracious little boy. These too were daily events, beautiful events that made the event so much more, at first. Then, maybe they had a negative effect. Maybe she missed the undivided attention. Maybe it made the event more beautiful than she had ever […]

-The smoke dissipates into the air. The window is open. He didn’t notice until she left. The cold. He stares out at the city lights; somehow they look a little different now. A little less magical, perhaps. There’s an ironic smile on his face and he lights up another one. To keep warm. He would follow her, and she might come back, but he understands, and he doesn’t. He feels, a certain, weariness set in, and his eyelids weigh. He takes one last hit off his cigarette and as he exhales, it feels as if his energy leaves with the […]

-She’s made up her mind and she packs her things. Everything’s together and she has to separate hers from his. There’s no anger, maybe just hurt, maybe fear. She does it gently, as if everything he owned was somehow an extension of him, and she doesn’t want to hurt him. But she’s determined, now, to leave. Maybe she thinks if she stays she’ll be the one suffering the worst pain and her heart is already aching. It’s hurt too much already, not with him, but in life. Maybe she’s the one getting short changed, she thinks, and she can’t let […]

-He resuscitated her, the image of her, if nothing else. She had been absent from his mind for years, except for the occasional thought of what if. The thought itself had been so ephemeral that it was hardly a thought. But it was that dream, her resurfacing. Like with most people and events he had encountered in the length of his consciousness, when he attempted, he could never remember them well enough to remember them, simply a vague impression, but in that dream, she was more real than she had been at any point of their material acquaintance. It made […]

-They sit in his car, the water trickles down the windshield, as the raindrops fall. He’s telling a story. Something to do with a couple of friends of his. She makes those gestures, the ones that make him think Gui yop ta. She watches him, almost as if waiting for something. She knows. And there’s the moment, he leans into her, his eyes on her, and their lips touch, softly. He pulls back and almost without missing a beat, he continues telling the story, smiling a little wider now. He looks at the door, at the handle, at the umbrella […]