Old Men

 

The old men sat in their comfortable chairs, completely disgruntled.

Through the haze of cigars and bourbon, they squinted at each other querulously.

Their fathers had started with nothing, and worked like dogs to build their businesses.

Everyone admired them and that’s the way it should be.

It was the way of the world.

These men, these sons who were now old, had never had to work. Not really.

They’d never struggled or worried about money or wanted for anything.

And no one who worked for a living admired them.

So, they set the world on fire.

Because they could.

Gift

 

Sometimes, stress or trauma can bring out a person’s “gifts”; unexplainable things they can do, or know, that most people can’t.

She was thinking of that, lately.

Certainly, there was stress and trauma in her past, but…why this?

Starting in her early teens, she knew the make, model and year of any car she saw. She was not a car buff. Her dad and brother were not car buffs. And yet, she knew.

As her life improved, her “gift” faded, and was eventually completely gone.

What an oddly specific and not very useful survival tactic, she thought.

So. Thanks, Universe?

Self-Care

 

“You look so tired. You need to work on your self-care routine” a co-worker told her.

She had no clue what that woman was talking about, so she googled it after work, while she was eating what was left on her kids’ plates and they were watching TV.

She scrolled for a few minutes through videos of women in clawfoot tubs sipping wine, at spas, reading a book on a beach somewhere.

But, then it was time for baths and bedtime before her husband got home from his job and she left for her second job as an overnight cashier.

2am

 

“Good lord” he whispered to himself. Every night it was the same thing at almost the same time.

The first few times, he’d opened the door and hollered at the dogs to shut up, which worked for a few minutes.

Covering his head with a pillow, he wondered with exasperation what the hell was wrong with those damn dogs.

His dogs: “2am and everything’s quiet on CR 3606!”

Dogs on the next road: “2am and all’s well on CR 3501!”

Dogs on the highway: “2am and super peaceful on FM 314!”

And so on, all across the county and beyond.

Learning to Fly

 

The cat briar came, green and stubborn, lifting barbed tendrils through the forest as if the woods owed it a path.

The honeysuckle crept down from the tree, twining in long spirals that smelled like dusk.

They met in mid-air, one reaching up and the other down. Cat briar hooked and held; honeysuckle twirled, laying blossoms over thorns like apologies.

The wind knitted them together, and rain stitched them tight.

Before long, they made one rope—prickly, fragrant, alive—painful and lovely, impossible to get free of once you were entangled in it.

Especially if you were a baby bird.

Door

 

It didn’t happen all at once. These things never do.

One day, the doorknob was a little squidgy, but barely noticeable.

In the next months, it progressed to the point where in order to open the door, a prayer to the knob god was whispered, followed by turning to the left, then the right, cuss and repeat till the door opened.

Closing it required slamming (sometimes twice) even on a good day.

But she’d gotten used to it and didn’t even notice it anymore.

The day she had the knob changed, she wept the first time she opened the door.

 

Ghost

 

“I’m so sorry I can’t help you” the medium said, standing with one foot already out the door.

He put a hand on her arm, gently but urgently.

“Can’t you do anything? I’ll pay you extra. Whatever you want.”

She paused and turned to face him, catching the eye of the spirit lingering over his shoulder, and she pulled away till she was fully outside, then stepped just beyond his reach.

“No, I can’t. I’m used to dealing with anger and rage. Those are easy to banish. This (gesturing past him) is a sadness so deep banishment would be cruel.”