Archive for the ‘Not so true’ Category

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Loading zone

January 2, 2011

The drivers idle their cars beside the station in the dark. They await the whistle and the rolling suitcases and exchange tired hugs with travelers they collect.

He used to hug her half-heartedly, when she rode back and forth to Sacramento, before their plans derailed. If he’d known how easily she’d slip away, he might have met her trainside, taken her suitcase for her.

Sometimes, he still parks, walks past the drivers to the platform, and stands there as the train pulls in. He wonders if he just missed her, or if maybe she’ll finally come home.

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Second chance

December 26, 2010

Years before, he saw her run across a bridge near Venice. He watched from the boat passing below her, grateful to catch a flash of her before she was gone.

Years later, on a train in Romania, he thought he saw her again, asleep against a man’s shoulder. This time, she was so still he couldn’t be entirely sure.

He spent the whole ride watching without attracting notice. He had wanted to find her for years, but he could barely believe he could have two such chances in a lifetime.

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Sunset

December 20, 2010

We needed room to breathe on that milestone day, but didn’t quite know why nor how much space we would need sooner rather than later. We found our way to the sea, following the waves’ piper call, innocent as children to what lay on the other side of that horizon.

The sun set while we sat on the steps. That sun, it was forever setting, sinking deeper by the day. Each disappearing ray waved goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

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Mersenne prime

November 20, 2010
It took two months before the mathematician found the overlooked Mersenne prime in the server logs, then a week to verify the discovery. All that’s left to uncover now are megaprimes, giant numbers that would require rolls of butcher paper, equations that would take sleepless weeks to write by hand. In the modern age, everything happens across a hummingbird network of computers. Still, he wondered how it would have felt to be Marin Mersenne himself, making calculations by candlelight in a monastery, relying on instinct where problem-solving, testing, checking the work proved impossible.

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Barometer

November 18, 2010
She left the house that morning expecting sun, but her soles squeaked, slightly, on thin snow underfoot. It was not yet the season, and she eyed the sky warily, then rubbed flakes away from her eyelashes with the back of her hand. She had always been clear that she had no control over the weather, but she also knew betrayal could come from any direction—above, below, from the side, like a force exerted against the atmosphere of her heart.

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Microclimates

November 16, 2010

She is navigating microclimates, moving from one small zone of temperature to another, slipping from hot to warm and back again. In one neighborhood the weather is reasonable, in another, inhospitable. There are storms by the water, and fog near the top of the hill. She carries a jacket and a scarf at all times. She is prepared for anything.

 

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Illumination

November 14, 2010

Are you there? she asked, as if she peered into the door of a dark room. She thought she could hear him breathing, thought maybe she could hear his skin against the molecules in the air.

She closed her eyes, imagining his face. She opened them again, hoping for more illumination.

 

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