The Big City

The big city is supposed to hold allure. It collects smog, I can tell you that. It’s crowded, I can tell you that. It’s noisy, and everyone seems to think it should be even noisier. Music is turned on high. Voices are raised. What’s the attraction?
Oh, yeah. The culture. The museums, the concerts, the stage [...]

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Sailing

 He fancied himself a sailor. He spoke of sailing in the bars he frequented. He spun long tales of days at sea, of winds, currents, stars, and jumping whales. On Saturday and Sunday he walked to the local Starbucks in deck shoes and read the morning paper over coffee while regaling the other Starbuck’s regulars [...]

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Acceptance

“I’m at peace with it,” she said. “I think my song now is moving on up to a higher place.”
She did sound oddly radiant and happy. For so long she’s struggled to fight off the inevitable, cursed her situation. She alternated between anger and self-pity. Now, when the trip to hospice was certain and everyone [...]

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Smog

Janine left the desert where the air was clear and the sky was blue. She descended into Chicago in mid-afternoon. It was not raining. It was not foggy. There were a couple of clouds in the sky. Yet Janine couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing. The air was full of—what—smog? A cloud [...]

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Perfect flower

The daisy looked at me
Its perfect flower face
A round and cheerful orb
I held its long stem
A wagging tail in hand
And thought of summer sun
Such a simple thing
This daisy-face
To lift my heart
Please leave a comment with your first 50 words on the topic “perfect flower.”

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Nightmares

Remember the wolfman? Unless you are well up in the double digits or a fan of really old movies, you may not. The wolfman gave me nightmares. The first I ever remember having. Big metal ants in a playground don’t scare me a bit. They just make me want to crawl on and go for [...]

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Favorite Toy

She loves that raggedy old stuffed dog. His fur is soiled from handling and dragging about and being slept with. His stuffing is bunched up in spots and thin in others. He looks as loved as the Velveteen Rabbit, except he still has both his eyes. Other toys come and go, but the dog is [...]

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Blessing

My tire was flat. It was raining. I was late for an important meeting. My cat was high up in the peach tree and wouldn’t come down to be put back in the house because she didn’t like the wet tree. I was struggling to regard this as a blessing. I know I promised myself [...]

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Travel Tunes

You have to have the right travel tunes in your car so you don’t fall asleep at the wheel and drive over a bar ditch and into a stubbly corn field. What ever happened to that two cassette set of a live Tina Turner concert I used to throw on about 30 minutes before reaching [...]

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Parent

Sharon MacManus stepped out of her unit. Out of habit, she checked the placement of her .38 in its holster under her left arm. She was a homicide detective. She shouldn’t be checking on elderly parents for out-of-town children who can’t get anyone on the phone. She’d gotten thrown off a case and was assigned [...]

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