Friday, July 26, 2013

3 minutes. Go!

She was nineteen and tall. She could wear clothes. Some people have that gift - she always looked like someone should be handing her a drink off a tray. You remember; she always smelled earthy, but sweet. Like when the sun rides high over a mushmelon patch. You were thin and dirty and you knew she wouldn't look twice. Girls with boots like that...

But she did look and y'all talked and you roped yourself into a tilt-a-whirl insanity that had to end. At least it ended well. No broken limbs. No one lying limp beneath the snowcones. You stood in the sun and watched her go. And you knew, through the lump of pain, that it was right. Her boots were made for walking. And that's just what she did.

10 comments:

  1. Let me tell you about my dreams: I dreamed of a building so dark it scared gangsters and psychopaths. They yelped and ran, scattered like feral cats. It was actually blacker than black, and it sat in an industrial park, itself dreaming. Of something unspeakable. And someone said, "you need to buy the Canon PowerShot ELPH 330." And I knew. It was all heading downward and backward. A word appeared, hovering: "harpoontang." WTF? Whaler sex. Whale vagina. Anchorman. And we argued about the subjunctive mood in a paroxysm of grammarian ecstasy while dark umber skies gathered and fat drops fell. Not of rain but of blood and infection. The end of things was coming while we bickered about grammar.

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    Replies
    1. Yeah, we should probably stop bickering about grammar. Ace piece, G. ;)

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    2. "...argued about the subjunctive mood in a paroxysm of grammarian ecstasy..." LOVE it!

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  2. At eight, the girl already had swagger. She wore a fake tattoo she got in a vending machine and practiced her screw-you glare. She could outrun all the girls and most of the boys, but only when the mood struck her. She had to want to run. There had to be incentive. Winning a bet, a spare cupcake. Bragging rights. Otherwise she’d just give you that lifted eyebrow and lean back on her chair. She was dynamite waiting for a match. Trouble gift-wrapped and polished when she was made to dress up for parties and church. Then one day I took the bet, and my life was never the same. “Let’s go,” she said, kicking at the soles of my black Converse high-tops, and there was no question. You went.

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  3. I remember...too well. We danced the night away in those days. Her in Levis and cowboy boots, and me in black slacks and pointy black shoes. My, how those shoes shined. I'm six feet tall, and she was sparsely two inches below, but the heels on her boots put her eye to eye with me. Those sparkling, green eyes, with the emerald streaks. Always smiling, or laughing. It was a short lived and torrid affair, but one so memorable, it's burned into my mind these twenty years later. I have too many of these memories to recall them all, but she...she refuses to fade. (JT still writes non-fiction)

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