Monday, January 27, 2014

Perpetual Silence

   "What does it mean to be alone?"
   Perpetual silence.
   "Anyone?"
   A girl rose her hand only a few inches above her desk.
   "Yes, Miss Rothcourt?"
   She flushed, folding her hands in her lap.  Her voice was low and soft as a baby chick.  "When everyone has their eyes on you and you feel unequal, inadequate..."
   "No," a boy said, eyes sparkling, "truly being alone is knowing that no one is looking at you."
   Miss Rothcourt stopped that boy outside the classroom door and asked, "How can you know for certain that no one looks at you?"
   The boy's chestnut hair shaded his eyes.  "No one important to me ever has.  I know because I always watch them, waiting for them to acknowledge me.  They never do."
   Before he could walk on, she reached for his arm.  "I have looked at you before.  Maybe your scale of importance is too narrow."

Monday, January 20, 2014

Power is in the Eyes of the Beholder

   The cold, empty whiteboard faced a young woman with a red marker, poised to plunge to the shiny surface.
   Math was no ordinary challenge, it was a feat that could change a woman's destiny.
   Her foe, withered in a tweed jacket, stood behind her calling out her first number problem.
   Men looked on from their desks.  They were bored but they still managed to smirk a salute to her ass.
   Problem after problem she solved, each quicker than the previous.  Her eyes twitched from side to side, at once searching for and seeing the answers in her head.
   One would think that the men would feel awed or threatened by this female prowess, but they did not.  They became bored with staring at her figure and instead switched to digging under their nails or breaking off into conversations among themselves.
   The woman only heard her professor and the problems that she knew she could solve.  And she solved them all.  She was breathless as her heart pounded with her victory.
   "Good," said the tweed.
   And that was all.
   The professor turned his back to her and the graffitied whiteboard.  
   She had been dismissed.
   The woman walked back to her seat, head down, but her heart soared.  She had won.
   At the back of the classroom, a student ignored his professor and could only be puzzled--dazzled by such an impressive woman.  After class, he would have asked her to share a sundae with him, but when he looked into her eyes, he couldn't.
   And she wouldn't have said yes.

Monday, January 13, 2014

Just Five More Minutes

   White dots and red spots glistened in the darkness through the blinds.  It was too early for sunrise, but the colors nagged all the same.
   The growing boy shrank from the now burning light and thrashed in his warm sheets.  He would not be going to school today.
   He would not be going anywhere.
   He would not even make it out of bed.
   Only the explosion would wake him.

Monday, January 6, 2014

Voice of the 1920s

   When a woman senses that there is something not quite right with a man--any man--her opinion is not easily swayed, especially if that man holds any form of power over her heart or over the hearts of those she loves.  It is what makes a woman a shy guardian, or a protector spurred by fear or skepticism.  She primes herself to be a shield, a blockade to anything troublesome or damaging.
   Most would call this an instinct or an intuition.  Mainly it is a willingness to hold people at a distance if necessary.  It is a tough thing and when wrongly placed, a harmful thing.  It is not to be used lightly, nor is it to be overlooked.
   This is the power that is woman.  Embrace it.  Live up to it.  Show the world what it is to be a woman.