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Spoons, toothbrushes, socks, tweezers, tennis rackets, and other household miscellany hung suspended in long, sticky tendrils that dangled from large sheets of cobweb
eye patch again and asked me how I’d like to have one of my own.
?
“I know how you feel. I lost my mom.” Weylyn’s expression shifted gears. I could tell, even before he spoke, that he had drained his mind of his own sadness and replaced it with empathy for mine. “I’m really sorry,” he said, and meant it.
I admired the personal nature of her spirituality, even if I only kind of understood what it was.
“If you’re the only girl I ever see, Mary, I can’t say I’d be sorry for it.”
The Tempest
“I feel like … before, I had one way of looking at things, and now, I have a million possibilities, and I get to choose.”
The hungrier I got, the less I cared about the outcome of Tom’s trial and the more I thought of home.
It was the saddest noise I’ve ever heard. Only rain, not tears, ran down his cheeks. He wasn’t a real boy, after all. He was a wolf, and he cried like one.
Ha ha
wanted to learn everything about everything so I could be the best teacher ever, but I ran out of time and ended up settling for knowing a little bit about everything—
At first, I was crushed. I had spent the last ten years teaching freshman biology, and I had finally gotten the hang of it. I knew what labs my students would respond to, what experiments yielded the best results, what silly rhymes would get them to remember mitosis and which ones would later be mocked in the
wasn’t a great scientist myself, but I brought out the best in the students who were, and to me that was doing something. That was doing a heck of a lot.
Yes!
Five years ago, Nate and I signed up for an adult softball league. In one season, I set the record for number of outs, foul balls, and times traveled around the bases in the wrong direction. “I think I’m just going to have them run laps while shaking tambourines. Kill two birds with one stone.”
Ha ha!
“Don’t cry over the same thing twice. Get it all out the first time, even if it’s loud and messy. Then it’s over.”
pig farm, I guess,” I said. From the unimpressed look on Weylyn’s face, I realized he’d hoped I’d whip up a more whimsical origin story. I thought for a moment, then added, “Or maybe he’s from the future.”
“Because without beauty, we’d be bored. Without science, we’d be dead.” I realized then how miserable I must sound. I thought of Quan’s and my first date, and how we’d spent the whole night talking about the things we disliked and found that we had a lot of those things in common.
“You’re right,” I said. “I am lonely.” Weylyn glanced up at me, then looked back down at his still-cupped hands under the water, waiting patiently for something new to fill them. “Me, too.”
“Someone worked really hard to make this,” he said, pointing to his slice with his fork. That’s what sealed it for me, that simple appreciation for something that most of us take for granted.
“The weather…,” he spoke quietly. “It’s tied to my emotions, I think. If I’m in a bad mood, it rains. If I’m in a good mood, it’s sunny. And then there’s the damn rainbows.”
could drink half a bottle of Southern Comfort and go mountain climbing the next morning. At forty-one, those days were long gone.
Ha!
“Then who shall I mourn, good king?” “Mourn for the kingdom. For I have no sons.”
While Gus continued to list all the ways Weylyn had offended his masculine sensibilities,
As I did so, a green bud burst open and a glossy, new leaf unfurled right in front of my nose. I had never seen anything like it. It was as if time had momentarily sprinted forward, a short spike in an otherwise steady current. I touched the leaf, and as I did, the sapling trembled and spat out another one.
with Weylyn, I got the impression that the company of animals wasn’t so much a preference for him as it was a way of life.
“Actually, it’s kind of a love story.” Sophia raised her eyebrows and smiled sweetly. “Even better.”
Amish neighbors didn’t care about him enough to plot against him, but I think the paranoia made him feel important in a world that said he wasn’t.
How not to get stung by bees? Start by avoiding the back end. It’s the pointiest.”
Funny
Banana-chocolate face!” I smiled to myself and sliced up another banana.
After two years of this, I offered up a portion of my land to the city to build a windmill.
“Don’t leave anything you can’t come back to.” I know I can come back here and I will be welcomed, and that brings me more comfort
He wasn’t really my brother, but he was my family and one of the best friends I ever had.
figure … or maybe
This is the end?
