She said; he said.
She said he said.
He said; she said.
He said she said.
She did not say, she said.
He did not say, he said.
She said she said.
He said he said.
They said they did not say.
They said.
They did not say.
And what was not was said.
And what was, was not.
Posts Tagged ‘Flash Fiction’
The Argument That Ended It All
In Uncategorized on July 3, 2019 at 7:50 amAll Grown Up
In No Particular Path, Uncategorized on December 31, 2018 at 9:11 amThe old man asked the child.
What do you dream of doing in your life, what would you like to be?
The child responded.
Do you mean when I grow up?
And the old man shook his head gently, but smiled, remembering.
Grow up? Why on Earth would you want to do that?
Listen to me. I have become old learning this.
Some day; at eighteen or twenty-five or forty or eighty years of age, perhaps; you may get up out of your bed, or linger wistfully over your breakfast, or stop halfway through chewing a bite of your sandwich, or see yourself mirrored in a darkened window, or sit alone in your chair, and suddenly see that you are grown up. And you will wonder, oh my god, when did that happen? You may even feel a bit of panic, wondering if you’re ready yet, or if it is already too late.
But the truth is that there is no time or place in life where you will be grown up. For growing up is the work of your life, not the end of it.
Choose well who and what you want to be today. Do as well as you can what you want or need to do today. Grow a little more like yourself today than you were yesterday; and you won’t have to think or worry about what you will be when you are as old as I am now. You will simply be what you have always been and what you have wanted to be.
Whatever you choose to do; whatever goals you set; whatever your accomplishments, large or small; whatever titles or labels you accumulate, and whether you wear them with pride or humility or uncomfortably or with regret; don’t let them trap you into being all grown up. Don’t let them define you, for definitions can become limits.
And the child looked sad then, and the old man wished, for just a moment, that he had not asked the question.
Why, the child asked, have you never told me this before now?
And, alone in his room, sitting in his chair, looking out the window at the new day, the old man sighed deeply. And a tear ran down his cheek.
Finally, he stood up. He put on his jacket, opened his door, and stepped outside. He turned around and looked for a moment at the walls within which he had been living for so long.
Today, the child said, I will be brave. Today I will do something new. Today I will stop being grown up.
And tomorrow I will, if I can, be whatever tomorrow offers me to be, and I will do whatever tomorrow brings me to do.
So, the old man, with the child guiding him, faced away from the walls and stepped into the world.
A Very Short Love Story
In Uncategorized on January 10, 2016 at 12:54 pm“I’m afraid,” she said.
“What are you afraid of?” he asked.
“Does it matter?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered.
“I’m afraid of loving you,” she replied.
And he looked at her across his coffee. And she looked out the window at a leaf still clinging to a branch long after it should have fallen.
After a while, he got up and took his cup to the sink.
“I am also afraid,” he said, with his back to her, “of loving you.”
And she looked at him now. She looked at the way his hair stood up in an unruly hedge in the morning; and she thought of the way his eyes seemed always to stay so shyly behind his lids. Then he turned around and he looked at how the one wrinkle had deepened on the side of her mouth where her smile mostly went, at how she slipped one finger through the handle of her cup as she encircled it and lifted it to drink.
“But,” he said, “I am not at all afraid of being loved by you.”
And she smiled. And he smiled.
“No,” she said. I am not afraid of that, either.”
And they agreed to live in what they were not afraid of. And after a time, they came to realize that they were no longer afraid at all.
wholepeace 