Lying Next to Me

by Gregg Olsen

I couldn’t get off work from SkyAero early Friday because my director was up to her neck in some kind of leadership training that’s supposed to make her more effective with our team. She insisted that I stay to run some reports so she could focus on learning more ways to help her team members create work-life balance. The irony of this wasn’t lost on me.

I wonder if sometimes I mistake

quietness for kindness. Silence for caring. When it gets right down to it, no one ever really knows what other people are thinking.

arborist

Puget Sound.

just hands the phone back to Helen, who in typical form offers up a non sequitur.

bereft

milquetoasts.

the way people do when they try to keep random evil at bay by affixing blame.

modicum

astuteness

prophetic

Fecund

cacophony

begrudgingly

monolithic

überindividuality

omnipresent.

Thinking and dreaming of what happened is a far different experience than giving voice to events that haunt you. You cry when you tell someone something. You shake. You get sick. You seek comfort. When you don’t speak about it and just think it, you don’t fall apart.

Everyone makes a choice on what they want to do with what was done to them.

intonation.

backwater.

eiderdown.

morass

fortuitous,