Growth
Peg watched by the open door overlooking the deck where her container gardens stood in the moonlight. A cool spring breeze touched the young plant leaves as it passed. She pulled her sweater closer, sipped her tea, worried that the night air might prove too chilly. She thought of the time and care she spent…
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Nightly Routine
Nearly every night after a mostly-quiet dinner, Nora and Vern assumed their usual positions seated in identical armchairs situated on either side of the fireplace that hadn’t hosted flames since the last Christmas any of the children were home during the holidays. His chair angled ever so slightly toward the television set on the other…
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A Different Angle
“It’s all about perspective, Aunt Jane,” said her niece. “Try looking at it from a different angle and you might feel more positive about it.” “There is no way I can feel positive about living in a silly apartment and giving up the home I have built and loved for so many years.” They were…
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Bridge into Darkness
The bridge ended exactly where the trees began. Although a few splashes of sunlight still played at the very edge of the woods, it was clear that these would be the last traces of light to grace the afternoon. Immediate darkness waited just beyond the final board, and yet I did not want to return…
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Crazy Day
It was a Monday kind of Tuesday. Ellis sat on the bus with hat in his hands and briefcase on his lap as he did on any other normal Tuesday. But this Tuesday was about to get as unnormal as it possibly could. Ellis waited patiently for his stop. Standing silently when it was his…
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Circling
It was a perfectly good day for vultures. When the sun is high and the wind just right, vultures like to play in the warmth just as any of us would. On a day as fine as this, the committee leaves their post on top of the neighbor’s garage and takes to the air, swirling,…
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Beaten
Carla stepped into the sunlight as she had on a hundred other Monday mornings. The bright beauty of the day was stark contrast to the terror she would experience once she completed the journey from school bus to classroom. The brutality was relentless. She suffered in silence, no one aware of the battle scars she…
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Decision
Leslie grabbed her head in her hands, tugging at her own hair as she tried to think. The noise inside her head was deafening – a million words crashed through her brain, each one clamoring to emerge as the clear answer in her mind. “What part of ‘for better or worse’ is so damn hard…
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Unsettled
Leslie turned her mug in her hands several times, exhaled a long, slow breath, then added her mug to the table beside Peter’s. “I’d want a guarantee, I guess,” she said, shifting her focus toward repeated unsuccessful attempts to secure some wayward strands of hair behind her ear. Leslie knew it was not in her…
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Rabbit Run
Liz stared hard into the darkness. There was that familiar sound, just enough like someone walking in the attic space above that it made her start. Every time. Probably a squirrel or a bat or the pair of mourning doves who lived in the neighbor’s tree. Still, the sound frightened her. Not because Liz believed…
