Posts Tagged ‘The First 100 Days’

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Unfortunate stones

February 10, 2017

She took a moment to breathe deeply and straighten her dress before the cameras turned on. She had rehearsed and memorized her talking points. She understood every ramification. What she said would make all the difference with the people who were listening most closely. She didn’t like the deal, but she had made it for reasons to be revealed later.

The lights blared and she leaned slightly forward—she’d always been told that made her look thinner. It was time to say the words she’d practiced. It was time to let alternative truths spill from her mouth like unfortunate stones.

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So very close to midnight

February 9, 2017

Are we running as futilely as ants scattered by hot water? Are we 30 days, 30 hours, 30 minutes from apocalypse? I run a finger over a fissure in my knuckle that could as easily have been caused by dry air as by punching a wall. Will it heal? Will it matter?

Fatalism is a quagmire of hopelessness, and yet, on certain nights, I hear the warning sirens in my head, and I wait for the crackle of my own skin. We are so very close to midnight, and it is difficult to imagine the clock turning back.

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Outside our feeds

February 8, 2017

We made faces at each other through our child fingers, slouched as teenagers on our parents’ couches, made questionable young-adult decisions after seven too many beers, and grew into the people who should have noticed this was coming.

There were signs nailed to telephone poles, stories whispered on radio stations we never dialed in, sad-eyed people who would have told us if we had only stopped to listen.

Is it too late? Maybe. But in the meantime, we can put hands to the backs of those who needed our support long ago. We can listen outside our feeds.

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Expectations

February 7, 2017

He shook the rain off his coat and settled himself across the table at their bar, chosen for its unpopularity—neither party in town had adopted it.

She had already ordered bottles of cheap beer, and she was half into her own, which meant she squeezed his hand across the table sooner than he expected. How are you doing?

I may not make it, he answered. Everything is so empty there, and no one understands the light switches.

She tilted her head. Starting a new job is always hard, she replied, but shouldn’t you expect more?

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Significant snowflakes

February 6, 2017

They peered through microscopes at snowflakes on slides, the six-sided patterns softening as they melted. These are not fluffy, the students noted, squinting down at the barbs in the ice crystals.

The professor put up a photograph of a high wall of snow carved along a road in the Sierras. Individually, he said, these may not be very effective, but when combined together, when millions layer upon millions, they can be quite significant.

The storm is coming, said a student in the front row.

A student in the back row replied, It’s already here.

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Voiceless

February 5, 2017

Days after he ascended to power, she awoke voiceless. She opened her mouth to speak, and though her words shaped her lips soundlessly, her vocal cords muffled as if held in a vise.

She had calls to make. She had messages to leave for important people. She was determined to express her dismay. But it was as if her thoughts were moths trapped by a small bulb in the back of her throat, unable to fly out into the world, incapable of release.

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Rendering stone to sand

February 4, 2017

On the long, narrow beach at the edge of the continent, she spread out a towel and sat, looking out over the water, over the relentless waves, the froth crackling on the sand, the pounding of the surf, every 10 seconds another wave, and another, and another. She sat with it, with all of it, with the constant noise and motion, and she thought about how long this had been happening, how long before she came into being, how long it would continue on, each wave, one after another, rendering stones to sand, drowning memory, effort, action, remorse.

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