She walked as if she was afraid she could fall apart, limb from limb, at any second. Her hands hovered outward from her body, bringing to mind a casual balancing act. Each foot was placed carefully, deliberately on the ground, and every step seemed calculated. Anyone could see that she was carrying a child, and that every spare thought was directed ( Read more... )

She couldn't believe he had said it. Of all the people that had ever stopped supporting her, she had never figured him into the bunch that would look at her with that disapproving scowl - a virtual finger-wagging if she'd ever seen one ( Read more... )

She stretched her arms to the sky and wondered if she would ever be able to reach it and pull down its inky blackness around her like a blanket. A blanket of a million twinkling stars, encircling her body, making it all beautiful. Laying down in the grass, she let the coolness of the earth and the warmth of the air be her comfort, her eyes focused ( Read more... )

Some days I wake up and I'm not quite sure if the day will be one to remember or one I'll hopefully forget. Sometimes you know -- if you have a test you didn't study for or a meeting about the last crappy thing that happened at work -- you want to forget the entire day before it even begins ( Read more... )

The moment I walked into the joint, I knew. Cassie was there. Of course she was there -- she was always there. I knew that no one was going to see me ( Read more... )

The clock had actually started ticking backwards. No joke. She sat on the couch, watching the seconds tick by, waiting patiently for the phone call she knew could possibly end her life, and the damn second hand had reversed directions and began ticking counterclockwise ( Read more... )

The high-pitched screech of the cherry-picker's machinery reminded him of the out of tune screech emitted from a beginning violinist's sadly brow-beaten instrument.

~*~*~The large room hummed with quiet activity. No one spoke, but instead focused intently on their own tasks. I watched as a young man delicately turned the brittle page of an aging ( Read more... )

"Is silence really golden, or is that just something people say to get you to shut up?" she asked ( Read more... )

It was this thing that flittered by and never really landed anywhere around her. She watched it nest in other places -- her friends, her enemies, people she didn't even know. It had this way of always missing her somehow ( Read more... )

She sat, a smile on her face, talking with the people around her. The party was pleasantly small and quiet. A huge relief in her mind, and she was able to have real conversations with her friends. A few of them sat in a lopsided circle talking about movies and music, anything that came to mind, really ( Read more... )