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Showing posts from July, 2019

Even the Lilies...

The saint felt a disturbance and looked down at her alter to see a man weeping.      His hair was long and windswept and greasy.  His face pockmarked and dirty.  His clothes were black faded to dull gray, caked in splatters of crusted mud.  Brown stains that looked like dried blood and others of mustard and olive - probably vomit - had streaked their way down his shirt as though in uneven pinstripes.  Hands lined with dirt clasped one another, long uneven yellow nails digging into the backs of them.  His shoes were tattered, once perhaps maroon, the soles coming off from the toes to the arches against the floor as the man flexed his feet.      His soul, though... that was pure white.      Why he wept, the saint did not know.  That was the business of the Almighty.      Even so, the man had peaked the saint's interest.  It had been a long time since she had performed a miracle.  The time was ripe.  She bent an ear to make sense of the sounds that came softly off the man'

The Caretaker

There was, once upon a time, a garden.   It had the loveliest flowers, born of a time when the air was sweeter, the rain purer, and the magic deeper.   A time when, of course, the flowers could talk.             For such a garden, a caretaker would reside in a nearby house, whose work it was to weed and water, plant and prune, and generally hear what it was the flowers had to say.   And all went well, until the caretaker decided he was uninterested in the words of flowers.   The purpose of so exquisite a garden, it came to his mind, was for looks and accolades from passing acquaintances—and there was nothing that could be learned from listening to the flowers.   And though he did not notice, the flowers, in being ignored, began to droop.             Until, that was, a young girl happened upon the garden one moonlit night.             The child was sickly and pale, courtesy of a home of cruel words and harsh beatings.   And when she came upon such a beautiful garden, she lay amid

The Carousel

All around you the world gets loud.   It starts to scream.   It’s so loud, you hear nothing at all.   And the dark of the shadows start to suck and sink and pull and suddenly you’ve sunk down into the underworld and everything around you stinks of darkness.       But that’s the thing about darkness: the stillness.   The silence.   Everything’s stopped.       Your eyes blink in blackness.   And the air feels like it’s got dirt in it—but its clean dirt.   Is it so bad if you can’t see?   Is it so bad if you can’t hear?   Soundless, dark, stopped.   There’s no world spinning—you’ve finally stepped off the ride.   And just for a moment, all is sweetness.       That’s when the light starts to creep in, like cracks in a stone filled with fire.   Fissures, all around you, popping like fireworks.   Until suddenly it bursts in.         And that’s when you wake up.   You didn’t get off the ride; you just changed horses.   Sometimes that’s all it takes… to get a little peace.

Those Who Speak Last...

When the trees spoke, they roared.             Whispers of their slow demise had come hinted upon the wind for an age or more.   It is the nature of trees to listen; and so, they waited.             But when their roots touched deep and found need to go ever deeper, and when their leaves stretched up and found their height stunted, a menacing quiet fell among them.   It was hope that made them wait.   And hope that made them roar.   And when they roared, well… so quiet had they always been that the world took note and listened.