Inheritance

They were gathered around post Christmas dinner, discussing things of the past when someone suddenly said, "I'm not so sure about these genes things. For example, who inherited our Grandfather's light eyes?" And my Father smiles, "Well, my daughter of course..."

portrait #3

immature,
you held on
to your thoughts and ideas
and conversations that were meant to be

stubborn.
like a tiny child
holding on to a dream
and refusing dinner for a unicorn

or ingenuous.
like an adult
who saw a beautiful hat
in a store window
and came back later
to buy it, but it was gone

Teeth

He said something funny. She began to laugh. Wide, happy, unabashed, mouth-open laughter. And that's when he saw them. Within her mouth were rows and rows and rows and rows of razor sharp teeth. Uncomfortable. Like too many layers of clothing. Cluttered. Like bats on the ceiling of a cave. Sharp. Like knives on display at a butcher's shop. He tried not to say anything funny for the rest of the evening.

Aphasia

Words. They float up, free from the connections that bind them. Like a pond with large lily pads on the surface, you look beneath, expecting to see each fine leaf attached to a long thread-like stalk, and roots further down. But no, the leaves float, devoid of the stalks that should hold them. The water is clear and settled as the muddy substratum is calm. Then, she wonders, where are their stalks? How can all these words be floating up, with no meaning attached, without bringing an image to the mind's eye, without any semantic association? She gestures that her feet are turning cold & that she's feeling queasy. 'Fear', she would call it, if she could only remember the word.

Author's Note: If you'd like to know more about Apasia, try this link or this one.

#MicroFiction

his heart was a stone, a diamond in the rough

Unwritten

For those pieces that I haven't  written, for those whose ideas have slipped away like salt, for those that stick in the wedges of my brain as old, grey, chewed out chewing gum might, for those whose titles I'd scribbled in haste on a leaf of my notebook, before I'd turned the page; for all these and so many more, I have no words, and no time.

Free as a Bird

They use that phrase like if should mean freedom; they think that a free bird should fly, that the moment you open a bird's cage, it will fly free, as water does flow from a point of high potential - swiftly & without stopping.

But have these people witnessed an opened cage? I have. And free birds do not fly. Open the cage to a captive bird and it will stay, for it does not know what awaits beyond the door. And then gingerly poke one foot out, not its head, but a toughened claw instead. And then it waits. In time it will hop out, but from there again it waits. It waits for a while, it looks around. Half an hour has passed since the cage was opened, the bird is finally on the window and ready to leave. Which it does, but slowly.

So are we free, like singing birds in an open cage? I think not. We're free-er still...