Fourth Person

"The better option." she quipped as she smothered French cheese on her baguette. In all her self confidence and nonchalance, she didn't quite know how much she would be missed in the coming weeks and months.

"Just friends." he confessed as he tossed a dart that buried itself in her chest, just off to the left of her heart. It wasn't enough to kill her, but the doctor said it would take 8 weeks to heal.

"I was just basking in all the genius." She remarked to her friends as she laid in the greener grass across Walden pond.

There's another character here; the recipient all of these statements.  With hands in her skirt pockets, she stands quiet in a lost road with hunched shoulders. What hurts her more than these words and the scenarios they are packaged in, is knowing that La Vita e Bella. She's a Swede writing Spanish poetry, and she never did quite have a chance in Italy. That leaves her with a heavy weight in her stomach and a dry taste in her mouth, because having a hope disappointed when there really was no hope to begin with is the hardest thing of all.

Now, she is simply stitching up the hurt and miss inside her. She shows her pain in the form of cheap poetry, so common it's as ubiquitous as a stubbed toe. She fills in the holes of her heart with streaks of rain against the smouldering sunset, making the sky look like inverted light rays.  Slowly, she straightens her spine and raises her chin an inch to look up from the dusty path on which she stands.

She looks up to find that God is standing there in front of her. Their eyes meet and a small smile starts on her face that almost reaches her eyes. She parts her dry lips and a whisper escapes them.

"Glory."

Shout Out to Shug. 

A Sunday Kind of Thought

I have never truly desired fame or glory. I only long to do good.
I don't want the praise and adoration of "the world", because how can you measure an entire planet's approval? And besides, you'll never get it.

I simply want to rest on a Sunday and feel closer to God than I did on Monday.

The Honest Prayer of a Moth

"There never was a moment in my life when I felt so in the Presence as I do now. I feel as if the Almighty were so real, and so near, that I could reach out and touch Him, as I could this wonderful work of His if I dared. I feel like saying to Him, 'To the extent of my brain power I realize Your presence, and all it is in me to comprehend of Your power. Help me to learn, even this late, the lessons of Your wonderful creations. Help me to unshackle and expand my soul to the fullest realization of Your wonders. Almighty God, make me bigger, make me broader!'"    -Kate Comstock, The Girl of the Limberlost,  by Gene Stratton Porter

Blech

I don't know what to think.
Talking about boxes and dog-ears is confusing.
It seemed liberating at the time. Metaphors do that, you know. They express emotion that can't be expressed directly, so it feels like emotional freedom when you share a metaphor.
But you know, after too many metaphors I've simply become a dog-earred ball of string and clay that's been put in a box and hung on a tree by a string of my own literary making.

^The above is a paradox, but don't think too hard about it.

8, but rotated 90 degrees.

I saw a young father playing with his toe-headed daughter out in the grass today. It made me glad. It made me glad because of families, and the fact that people still believe in them. It’s an awe inspiring idea, families. When you get married, you link the rest of your life forever with another person’s and you are both aware of it, both inspired by it, and both a little overwhelmed by it, because you consciously perceive at least a portion of what is taking place. 

When you have a little child, a little toe-head girl, or dark haired boy perhaps. You are completely, utterly, and irrevocably linking your life with the entirety of another human’s life for eternity. Every step they take, mistake, and laugh and tear they shed from day one is now somehow a part of your life, whether or not you are present when they occur. 

I simply suggest that we make it an effort to be there for as many tears, laughs, smiles and mistakes as we possibly can.