simirites Aeonity Blog

10 Minutes/Entry 19

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:32:20 -0500

Pain blossomed along her jaw as she ran into the door jamb. That's gonna leave a bruise. She felt her legs scrabbling for purchase on the slick, moving floor to no avail. Her hands, bruised and clumsy in the cold, wouldn't grab at the handles she'd so carefully screwed into the panels so many miles ago. Down she went. Curling into the fetal position, she instinctively covered her head with her arms. Sharp blows to her bony elbows and over the too vulnerable vertebrae left her gasping for breath through the pain.

10 Minutes/Entry 18

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 16:58:51 -0500

Irene looked out over the moors. The setting sun spread its magnificence across the sky. Bleargh. Cat's cuddled in carriers as they slept and dreamed of large, legless mice and oceans of half and half. Bundled together for warmth and protection against the unknown worlds that waited outside. One cat, a large tom with impressive markings, stared into the aether. His golden/green eyes unblinking in the golden sun of the late summer afternoon.

10 Minutes/Entry 17

Mon, 26 May 2008 17:35:26 -0500

Here, in the lack of sun, there are no hard edges. There are no shadows--only shadows of shadows. Those shadows' shadows lightly mark the footprint of everything in the yard. A light switched on in the garage spends itself beating against the dirt encrusted window, and leaks only a little light to the lean-to shed. Last winter's leaves and pine needles washed up against the bulwark of the fence. The fence that lists and leans, with deep gouges from some previous property owner's dogs. Dogs? Yes, two at least. The gouges occur at vastly different heights, not explicable by one dog's standing on its hind legs. My second grade self smiles in eternal childishness at me. Who is that little kid with the huge forehead and the eyes older than the face?

10 Minutes/Entry 16

Sat, 24 May 2008 21:16:38 -0500

He stood and stared into the grey mask of the dawn. Scarred. Disfigured. But not alone. Never alone, never again. For he'd found his best friend and, best of all, she had boobs. She ran, tying to catch the foolish man. Her hair in sodden streamers down her back. Her shoes squishing with every step. She slammed the door as she ran out of the house. It didn't matter what the servants thought. It didn't matter that everyone thought she was mad to fall in love. It had happened, and she wasn't about to lose her second chance. He stared at her back. For all her sweet passion from the night before, she was just as cold as all the other women who'd lusted after his fortune--but not him. "Is that your final answer, madam?" he asked. She nodded her head. "Very well then, wife, you may remove yourself from my household this Wednesday next. You may leave with what you came." "I'm pregnant," she said bluntly. Then she blushed.

10 Minutes/Entry 15

Wed, 21 May 2008 12:47:26 -0500

Miss Flufferduum sat at the lunch counter in the back of the drugstore. Outside, angle-parked cars baked slowly in the sunshine. Jagged, chrome grills glinted in the sun. Miss Flufferduum sipped at her fountain soda, a cherry-cola. Jim, the jerk, pulled the drink for her. He had smiled and chatted as the soda water hissed into the tall, narrow-bottomed, fluted glass. Now he was helping Mr. Whiggen choose his lunch. Something simple. Something soft. Mr. Whiggen had famously lost his teeth in the big tornado 10 years ago. He'd never replaced them. Said he didn't miss them. Much. Miss Flufferduum looked over to the magazine stand. The latest issue of Bats Monthly enticed her with its cover, an Egyptian Rousette.

10 Minutes/Entry 14

Wed, 21 May 2008 00:24:05 -0500

Singing in the night with lights. Fireflies call to their beloveds. Or is that Ms. Right Now? The bulls snort and shuffle in the twilight. Their impatient stampings and swish of tails tinge the barn a shade of impatient. The peeper frogs call from the creek, with a occasional baritone from the old bullfrog that lives under the bridge. He's like a troll, demanding payment from gruff goats. The dance that we do when confronted with the longing for sex can kill us. It can cure us. It is the most frightening and the most living thing that we can do. We dance. We preen. We sidle into each others' lives. Sometimes we stumble in, and it's a surprise all around. Sometimes we know, and it's a matter of patience waiting for the other. If we care, we wait, cultivating a non-smothering patience. For love cannot be forced. It moves more powerfully than mountains, and more gently than a kitten's softest kiss.

10 Minutes/Entry 13

Mon, 19 May 2008 23:51:13 -0500

Translated across the heavens she whooped and whorled over ice struck landscapes with bees as big as an elephant's head and livid corpses crawling from cupboards in the darkness and light she ran when she landed in the light time she sang the songs of the forgotten and the ones that remembered swallowing their wishes stealing them away keeping them safe in the dreamstores that exist down by the beach in between the tide marks but only at high tide in the kelp the cold the green the sea the sea the sea live like a river over huge boulders that have their own secrets that no one can hear because they speak so slowly that there's nothing on this planet that has the patience to listen to a rock even the lichen skitter across the surfaces on the stones heaved up from the depths of the glaciers that ran down to the seas scraping up continents and drifting ever towards the easiest way down down to the sea the sea the sea the sea narwhals live in the northern seas, their horns a fantasy come to life as other sea monsters are hidden away reasoned out of existence by the Age of Reason for when no one believes in magic, can magic be? Light ricochets around the room prisming bright colours spearing the unwary and ungoggled alike. Hands are held up in vain attempts to hamper the vivid violets and indigos that seem to seep within the very marrow of the hands that are held up against the brightness of the shards that move without reason or prediction. Her tiredness doesn't allow for failure. So she returns to the world. The memories remain. Who is to say that they don't happen if the experience is real enough inside your head?

10 Minutes/Entry 12

Fri, 16 May 2008 12:46:05 -0500

Walking in the rift of a dream, she felt pulled towards full waking and back into sleep. Her heart fluttered like a hummingbird, its edges hard against her lung. Its painful pounding on the inside of her chest made her breath stagger and lurch. The dream valley, forested and mysterious, favored small clearings of lucid detritus. Here, an apartment from childhood. There, the inchoate memories of infancy. Over there, urban euphoria--punctuated by thin screams of brakes and horns that floated up. Way out at the edge of the valley is a prison. Much as she hated that she was so conventional in her imaginings, she knew the prison well. She'd lived there for years, its walls and floors concealed by fear and pride. Now its walls cracked and peeled, barely holding in the mistakes of the past. Leaking moments of ugliness and sorrow. A flock of flashing masks fluttered by, level with her path along the rim. Sparkling in the dim sunlight, leaving a fairy-dust trail of wonder and discovery. She laughed, and followed along. Her upturned face bathed in the drifting glamor.

10 Minutes/Entry 11

Wed, 14 May 2008 01:51:39 -0500

Falling behind already. Some excuse for a writer I am. Her right knee feels as if a vole is gnawing from inside the joint. Sweat cools as the last burst of music fades away into the night. She breathes heavily, a hitch in her breath caused by allergies. She hopes. Her bra and shirt feel damp, like she's run through a sprinkler fully clothed. Remember the time she ran through a lawn full of sprinklers one summer? The lawn wasn't any ordinary lawn, it was the untouchable green grass of a corporate landscape. The greeness called to her from the desk. Making some excuse, she ran out to the grass. Pulling off her shoes and stockings, with garters snapping painfully against her skin, in the elevator as she rode down. Two VPs and a manager were shocked that afternoon. It was great. Cold marble, cool enough to make pastry on from being blasted with frigid air all day and night, shocked her toes as she dashed across the floor. The panic bar almost didn't give, but her will to get outside was unstoppable.

10 Minutes/Entry 10

Thu, 08 May 2008 19:06:33 -0500

Lost at sea, caught in a wave of adulthood, Marissa gazed to the shore of childhood. Its soft sands and rippling palms were all she'd ever known. Now, cast adrift on the clutching sea of reality, she wished for someone to tell her what to do. Where to go. "Ahoy there!" a voice boomed across the waves, "Are you lost too?" Marissa shouted back that she was. She couldn't see the owner of the voice. The sun blinded her. "You should follow me. I know the only right way to go. If you don't follow me, you'll end up punished." "Punished?" Marissa shouted, "Why would I be punished for not following you?" "Don't listen to him!" another voice shouted, "He's lying. Following him means you'll definitely be punished. I know the only right way." "No, no! It's me! I have all the answers! And you know I'm right because we've always done it this way," a third voice yelled. Marissa looked back to the shore. "Y'know what? I think I'm going to try this on my own."