Peanuts

“Peanuts” was what Tom said when asked what his favorite food was even though his favorite food was probably closer to something like lasagna or roasted marshmallows. Things of softer texture. Tom didn’t actually even particularly care for peanuts.

Time and time again he would get a peanut butter birthday cake from his parents. Today, the number 27 was spelled out in beautifully roasted peanuts. Today, like always, he would give his piece to the dog.

But peanuts reminded Tom of circuses and school fairs and boardwalks and so this is what he said to people when they asked why peanuts.

Bloodlines

Florence’s aunt had a confused expression at the Thanksgiving table. She rubbed her chest and eventually left the dining room coughing. Her heart had betrayed her.

“She’ll lose a lot of blood,” said the surgeon to the family as he pricked each of their arms. “Hopefully one of you will be a close enough match so that she can get her transfusion from inside the family.”

Later on, Florence watched as her aunt, now a pale woman bent around the chest, was wheeled into the operating room.

When she returned, she returned with a clear heart full of Florence’s blood.

During a time in which I was somewhat delusional

During a time in which I was somewhat delusional, I believed myself to be a deer caught in multiple headlights, completely surrounded by a group of woodland hunters in large jeeps, their dogs peering out at me with glinting pink or maybe it was yellow eyes and as they were salivating controllably as if their owners had trained them exactly to produce a specific output of spit every minute they panted, I stood there, feeling firmly planted on the road but suddenly aware of how spindly my legs were in comparison to these men, and I did not feel scared.

Gloop

That was the sound of slushed-up cereal and milk dripping off Tom’s spoon.
“Tom, don’t play with your food, for god sake. You’re a grown man!”
Hunched over, elbows lodged firmly in their usual spots on the table, Tom glared at his mother. Nagging at 7:30 in the morning. Are you kidding, he thought.
“Tom, what do you want for dinner tonight? I was thinking of making lasagna.”
“I can’t eat dairy.”
“Like hell you can’t! You’ve been eating my lasagna for the past thirty-one years!”
He grumbled. But the rent was low, the food was good, and it was comfortable.

Click

I walked by a girl at the beach. Beautiful; I told her to blow a kiss to the camera. Smile and click, and she asked me if I wanted to have a beer and hang out.

I told her that I’d been to countless weddings and graduations, traveled three continents, and never felt like carrying a camera with me. Every now and then I’d play with my friend’s in the grass at a music festival or wherever, but I never wanted my own.

“So what finally got you into photography?”

“I got a camera to take photographs of pretty girls.”

 

 

Vacation Away From The Convent

The bear tore straight through the bag of food left on the campsite’s table. It was midnight, and Sister Margery peeped from a gap in her canvas tent, petrified. The beast’s blunt muscles rippled beneath its black coat. Its alien-dog movements fascinated and horrified her.

Before, back at the convent in Tennessee, Sister Alice had warned her. Margery complained that she only saw ants in their garden, and Alice countered that old nuns weren’t prepared for much more than that.

The bear sniffed and grunted. I’m too old for this, Margery suddenly thought, laughing, longing to return to their garden.

Lemon Meringue (Glass) Pie

Steve pulled his lemon meringue pie from the oven. Holy smokes, what a pie! What luscious yellows, what crispy crust! He set it reverently on the stovetop.

Shattering explosion! Flinging, tinkling shards of glass everywhere! The light above the stove had combusted. Shards of glass buried themselves in a warm, soft sea of meringue.

Distraught, Steve hesitantly ate a finger-scoop of his pie. It was too good. A magnificent pie that would shred the innards of the eater.

Later that night, he resolved that his pie should not die. Bite after careful bite, he swallowed the lemon, glass be damned.

The Library by Charlotte

Handing the librarian my thick plastic card, I can’t seem to discern that she remembers I was in here two days ago. If she’s impressed at the stack of books I’m returning.

I want her to be impressed. I need a partner, a cheerleader in this race I’m in. Only a lifetime to read all these books. And who knows the dimensions of this life I’ve got.

What have I left behind, in this book? Fingerprints, eyelashes, the crumbs of my lunch, a bit of my soul. Will its next reader think to look for the traces I left behind?

About a Girl

Not sure why she’s been so hard to write about, given how much fucking fun she was.

Let me just say, she’s the hottest I’ve ever been with.  My height, tan, light brunette hair, beautiful big brown eyes, tits are small C’s / large B’s, her skin couldn’t be smoother. And she doesn’t wear makeup and doesn’t need it. Oh and she’s got freckles. The list doesn’t end. She’s fit, and just… As I told her, a lifetime isn’t enough time for her to realize how good she looks; she’ll never know what she does for me as a guy.

Mom’s Eulogy

He began writing his mother’s eulogy at age 24, seven years before she died.

Someday she would pass away, and he knew his family would depend on him, always the performer, to memorialize her life.

His mother was perfectly healthy when he began writing, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was killing her slowly with each word he committed to paper.

He had read that newspapers prepare eulogies in advance for notable figures. Macabre, really. But ample time makes for good writing.

When the day came, everyone told him his words were as warm as his mother’s smile.

 

Value in Knowledge

“Knowledge has value not for its truth, but for its use.”

That was always his attitude, she thought of her father as she rubbed her eyes then dove back into her pile of Latin texts.

There was something calming about learning the dead and unchanging language and culture that had contributed so much to modern thought. There seemed to be a purity to the great Roman thinkers, a pursuit of knowledge for its truth. Truth is absolute, and it is the foundation of rational thought.

She wondered if her dad considered these things. He seemed too smart not to have.