Every year, the same
traditions,
the same memories
binding us together.
There are those
who think of them
as a mud that
weighs down
our feet,
keeps us from moving.
I like to think
they are the mortar
that holds together
our House.
Dec 24th
Together
We crept along the hoary ridge, boots breaking the blades of green-grey glass under our feet. We did not look down, but ahead, toward our prize.
Home.
A veritable feast awaited us, ready to assail our senses. We knew it, even if the halls were cold, even if the floors were thick with dust that bore no footprints save those of mice. Even if there was nothing, it would be everything, for we would be together again — we three.
Together, and home.
Posted in Fiction, Flash
Tagged adventure, fantasy, fiction, flash, flash fiction, halls of man, pieces, writing
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The Next Morning
After the longest night of the year,
we waited quietly for the morning to come.
We held hands and sang lowly, in the cold,
our breath mingling in frosty fog.
We did not know the world had passed us by,
and so we waited, and waited, and are waiting,
still, for a sun that shall never rise.
I was cold then
I haven’t been this cold since the time I died, and you didn’t want to be near me. My eyes were still open, and you said it was creepy, and you wished you’d had someone shut them for you, because you couldn’t bear to look at me like that. I was cold then, but your hands weren’t, and when you shut my eyes, I couldn’t see you anymore, but I could still feel you. I wish I could let you know.
I can still feel you.
In some other life
In some other life, we hung stockings and filled them. Our three children had to be shooed off to bed every night so we could wrap presents and eat the candy we told them not to eat too much of. We drank hot cocoa stirred with candy canes, and lit every candle we could find, and you always chided me for tracking in snow, and I always had to tell you to stop letting the cats eat the popcorn off the tree. In some other life, there were no bullet wounds, no secrets, no ridiculous brain hemorrhage getting in our way. You and I built the Christmas fire together, and you put your finger down while I tied bows, and you wrote out gift tags immediately because I could never remember which gift was which. In some other life, you tasted like fire against my lips, and you told me I tasted like whisky and pixie sticks, and everything was exhausting and hard and wonderful.
In some other life, I wore your ring, and under that, I wore your name, tattooed around my finger. In some other life, you wore a ring, and my name. Yours was the first face I saw in the morning, and the last I saw before I went to bed. We were never out of reach of one another, always able to grasp, to hold a hand.
In some other life, we never let go.
Posted in Fiction, Flash
Tagged alternate universe, fiction, flash, flash fiction, grief, loss, love, pieces, writing
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