West With Giraffes

by Lynda Rutledge

The spooked Allies handed it right over, believing in fairy tales told by a madman.

This world of misery is in dire need of some natural wonder to learn secrets to life from.”

“Life is life no matter who or what is living it, boy—a thing to respect,” he said. “You don’t get that, then you’re just a waste of skin.”

The land you grow up in is a forever thing, remembered when all else is forgotten, whether it did you right or did you wrong.

But if a man leads a handful of lives inside a long life like mine, I can say she was the love of my first life.

Some things are so much yours, you just have to keep ’em to yourself.

It’s a strange thing how you can spend years with some folks and never know them, yet, with others, you only need a handful of days to know them far beyond years.

Time heals all wounds, they say. I’m here to tell you that time can wound you all on its own.

In a long life, there is a singular moment when you know you’ve made more memories than any new ones you’ll ever make.

I marveled at the power of a soul’s truest story to staunch life’s cruelest ones.

It is a foolish man who thinks stories do not matter—when in the end, they may be all that matter and all the forever we’ll ever know.