We’ve just finished the second annual challenge over on Twitter to write a 30-word story every day in the month of April. I did a lot of playing catch-up, but here are my tiny stories from the second half of the month. Read Part One over here.
You’ve got to have a thick skin and the ability to blend in to make it around here. It’s harsh, unforgiving, kind words as rare as water in the desert.
Oneday, will I ever break the pattern?
Can I ever be anyone but who I used to be?
One day, will I stand up loud,
Shouting, “No regrets from me?”
Harold tugs at the collar of his shirt, feeling the walls close in. The air is close; his boss is closer, and Harold’s sure he knows. Defeated by silent interrogation.
I don’t remember being told
How much it hurts, this growing old
I am still quite young inside my head
But everyone I love is
Holding on for dear life.
They’re not that different, love from hate, so potent this clashing pair. Where one sprouts, the other can grow; which one’s weeded out is up to no one but you.
She’s a gentle rain
She’s the smell of coming home
She’s as quiet as the morning of the first snowfall
If she were an element, she’d be lithium
She calms
The only indication left that Simon ever existed is the void of unfaded wallpaper where his framed picture used to hang and one mateless sock collecting dust behind the dryer.
Just below the surface of the water rises the bloated former resident of apartment 103, barely recognizable in his fish-nibbled state. Alas, the author of his demise used insufficient weights.
The pitiful thing looked wide-eyed back at me, skin and bones and patchy orange fur. Now stretches like a just-fed lion on the back of my sofa in the sun.
Is it supposed to build character, the way you pushed my heart off a ledge like a housecat nudging glass just to hear it shatter down below? Are you satisfied?
The wind chases ripples in the fields of winter wheat, kissing wavelets in the creek that murmurs past the willow tree, singing bittersweet duets with the mourning dove to me.
I’ve spent 13 years lost in your labyrinth of lies, unraveling myself one stitch at a time, but I’ve got a thread to follow out, and you’ll be left behind.
Arnold always saw the world in shapes, his life a tight square, his future a narrowing triangle. But she was round, his one true love, and suddenly the corners softened.
Once Genevieve comes back down to earth, once love’s cotton candy clouds clear, leaving that lingering feeling of sick in the back of her throat, do you think she’ll bolt?
The air is tinged with essence of spring, all manner of pollination and baby-making. Flowers blossom and leaves unfurl and mamas lead lines of toddling fluff. It’s beautiful, but — A-A-A-AHCHOOO!
They’ll find Edgar facedown at seventh green with his lucky clubs, one shoe missing, and it’ll never be known if it was the booze that caught up or his wife.
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Aly Writes 