Read. Write. Live deliberately.
It was a Monday kind of Tuesday. Ellis sat on the bus with hat in his hands and briefcase on his lap as he did on any other normal Tuesday. But this Tuesday was about to get as unnormal as it possibly could. Ellis waited patiently for his stop. Standing silently when it was his…
It was a perfectly good day for vultures. When the sun is high and the wind just right, vultures like to play in the warmth just as any of us would. On a day as fine as this, the committee leaves their post on top of the neighbor’s garage and takes to the air, swirling,…
Carla stepped into the sunlight as she had on a hundred other Monday mornings. The bright beauty of the day was stark contrast to the terror she would experience once she completed the journey from school bus to classroom. The brutality was relentless. She suffered in silence, no one aware of the battle scars she…
“So tell us, Molly, who are you and what do you bring to our practice?” Molly sat quietly for several minutes. She had acquired so many titles and skills over the years: obedient daughter, loving granddaughter, straight-A student, oldest sibling, responsible babysitter, loyal friend, college graduate, wife of Sam, successful lawyer, former lawyer, mother of…
There is an amazing level of quiet that exists in the hours after “very late” and before “very early.” I’m honestly surprised at how much. And also at how dark. It isn’t often I look out across our circle and see…darkness. The world is still right now as if holding its breath. I think maybe…
Leslie grabbed her head in her hands, tugging at her own hair as she tried to think. The noise inside her head was deafening – a million words crashed through her brain, each one clamoring to emerge as the clear answer in her mind. “What part of ‘for better or worse’ is so damn hard…
Leslie turned her mug in her hands several times, exhaled a long, slow breath, then added her mug to the table beside Peter’s. “I’d want a guarantee, I guess,” she said, shifting her focus toward repeated unsuccessful attempts to secure some wayward strands of hair behind her ear. Leslie knew it was not in her…
Liz stared hard into the darkness. There was that familiar sound, just enough like someone walking in the attic space above that it made her start. Every time. Probably a squirrel or a bat or the pair of mourning doves who lived in the neighbor’s tree. Still, the sound frightened her. Not because Liz believed…
“It’s not a question of love, Peter, it’s a question of practicality.” Over their usual weekend coffee, Leslie finally found herself able to say out loud to Peter what she had been deliberating internally for so long: their relationship wasn’t working in its current state and some kind of revision, adjustment, or violent shakeup was…
Is it wrong if I just start this with a huge sigh? So many things have elicited that reaction from me today – and the sighs have all been different. Sighs of frustration, of sadness, of relief. I’ve run the gamut of emotions today alone, never mind the last week. Never mind whatever lies ahead…
