I had been Deceived

   When I pushed open the door with a boisterous creak, I knew what I'd see.  I just wished I were wrong.
   Clothes were strewn, blanketing the floor and hanging from the ceiling fan.
   It was the most disgusting sight I had ever seen.
   When my eyes finally reached my husband, he had a diaper in one hand and phone in the other.
   "Oh, thank God you're here," he said.

Long Time, Not Long Enough

   "Oh, yeah.   Things are great."  If I could say anything more sarcastic I would be shocked.  "What about you?"  But there's no way that I could be talking to anyone more oblivious and self-centered as Natalia.
   "Fantastique!"
   Oh, god.  French.
   Natalia fluffed her pink hair, "Just living the dream."
   I dearly wished her mountain of a ring would snag in her hair.
   Sucks seeing exes at class reunions.  

Yellow Hummer

   I was in a car crash once.
   I remember tasting blood, my heart stopping, glass shattering--the only thing I hadn't expected was the shakes.
   My heart pounded against my rib cage like the wings of a hunted turtle dove.  All the heat in my body rushed to my head, flooding it with confusion and leaving the rest of me shivering.
   It was the coldest I had ever felt, until I was standing in my living room and saw a yellow Hummer barreling straight towards me.  

Lesson for the Day: Listen and Learn

   Shelby asked, "Daddy, what does languid mean?"
   "Uhh," her father's brown eyes opened wide, "well, we should probably look it up in the dictionary."  He kicked in his recliner and walked to the bookshelf across the room.  "Where did you hear that word, honey?"
   "Mom told aunt Cheryl you've been languid ever since you said, 'I do.'  When was that, daddy?"
   "The only day I've ever outsmarted your mother."

The Wood

   As children, we'd always spent our summers playing in the wood.  Two scrawny boys could hide behind many a tree.
   Our father didn't see much harm in it, but he and mother would bicker and on occasion scream and holler over our being in the wood. 
   Whenever we could make out the words they were shouting at one another, we would run farther into the wood.  It may not have been the brightest idea, given what lay hidden in the deepest parts of the wood, but we were too young to be frightened and not old enough to be wise.
   On the days that it rained, we would stay indoors.  Father would read the paper, and mother would grin into her needlework.  When she would look over to us, on the floor and bored with our card game, she would smile with all of her teeth and then go back to grinning at her needle and thread.
   On one of those rainy days, father grunted and ruffled his paper.  It was something that he had done often, but he had never folded up the paper in a hurry and told mother to follow him like he did.
   We'd heard their bedroom door close, but try as we did--we couldn't hear what they were saying.  We looked at one another, and with that look we both thought, at least they're not yelling.
   They never told us what they'd talked about, but we were never allowed to go into the wood again.

Mother Marys

   Meredith and I started a church group called Mother Marys, where young, pregnant women can come into the house of God and pray for their unborn miracles.  We wanted to reach out and help those who have gone down the path of the unrighteous--bring them to see that their pleasures were sins and that to gain salvation, they must repent and pray for a blessed future.
   Many told us we were foolish--that the youth were an unreachable herd that had strayed too far from its shepherd.
   Yet we have been successful with thirteen young women these past three months.
   Those who doubted us asked how we did it.  How could we touch the hearts and souls of the far gone?
   We were once them--one of the forlorn--one of the damned.  I had no husband, Meredith is my daughter, and her daughter's only father is the Lord.  We are Mother Marys.  And we will carry on His work.

Be Careful What You Wish For

   As he walked down the crowded sidewalk, briefcase in hand, Rasheed's head spun round and round like an otter swimming loops through a river.  He raised his hand to steady his brow, and he wished that God would kneel down and pluck his head right off his shoulders like a child would a flower from its stem.
   Two weeks Rasheed had suffered in this way.  And, two weeks he had whispered gently to himself, promising that all will soon be righted.  The world and his body would soon be realigned.
   God heard Rasheed's wish and chuckled a rumble through the sky.  He searched for Rasheed as He walked across the clouds, darkening them with His shadow.  He had heard Rasheed's troubled whispers and had become amused with the young businessman's thoughts.
   There was much yet to be done in this young man's life, yet God knew that the pain Rasheed hoped would dissipate would only pass with death.  Rasheed would become very successful in the next couple of years, provided he can overcome the temptation of insurmountable greed in the coming spring.
   God watched Rasheed closer.
   When spring came, a dark, cloudy day watched as Rasheed accepted a briefcase of laundered money in exchange for his silence.
   As Rasheed waited to cross the busy street, he again wished for God to put an end to the pain inside his head.  He wanted to enjoy himself and celebrate his lucky day without this dreadful, incessant ache.
   God heard Rasheed and agreed that it was the man's lucky day, for his pain would end once he took his seventh step across Booker Street.

The Unseen

   Many days before the first spring flower bloomed, the sun rose to meet a damp and dark morning.  The shipmen stretched their way to the docks, and the merchants tallied their books.  
   All around them the crumbling stone walls are silent and cold, waiting to be admired once again for their regality, but the wind just bends the leaves of grass, brushes through the sand, and chills the passersby.