Spring is a dangerous season.

The floodwaters rise, like they do every year, and if you don’t watch out they’ll wash away everything in your life that isn’t weighty enough or bolted down. And then one day you’ll wake to find that you’ve divorced your husband and cut off all your hair, and you’re running half-naked through the streets of some strange city with a foreign woman holding your hand.

Mirrors aren’t much good, in Spring. They can only show what’s holding still, and what’s practically dead already: all of the unnecessary stuff, all of the stuff that has got to go.

Week after week of empty pages. You call me on Monday; I let the phone ring.

Week after week of rain — the Fall kind, that precurses only greyness and death, and the endlessly frozen days to come.

On Tuesday, I sit and remember Spring rain — green waterfall rain, Persephone rain.

On Wednesday, I look in the mirror and see that every hair on my head has turned silvery-grey. All the pages are on fire; they fall to the ground like burning leaves, leaving a house full of books without souls.

The lights were still on in the living room, and there were flowers blooming on the mantelpiece. Anne had been here before — somewhere, in dreams? The house was always pristine, full of windows and doors, without even a speck of dust to settle anywhere.

Outside, birds hung like stars in the day sky, frozen in mid-flight, silenced in mid-song.

Anne looked around her, and suddenly knew that no one had ever been home.

inspired by Borges

He had been walking through the labyrinth for what seemed like weeks. His mouth was filled with dust, his feet sore to the bone. All around him there was nothing but rock and dirt. The only thing that had kept him pressing onward was the thought of his goal: the City of Dreams.

He had spent his whole life searching, following the trail that had led him into this maze. Now up ahead he saw a gate, and he knew in his heart that the day had come — that his prize was finally within reach. He stepped through, stopped, and spun on his heel, expecting to see wonders beyond his wildest dreams.

But instead, he saw only a familiar sight: skyscrapers, trees, buildings that he knew. Streets whose names came easily to mind, because he’d walked them his entire life. Looking down at his worn boots, he realized that he had made a great circle — that he stood exactly where he’d started, outside of the building that he had once called home.

Then he looked up at the piercing blue sky, with its color like nothing he had seen in days; and he looked at the cars and the people and the trees, and all the world humming with movement and life. His days in the labyrinth had left him accustomed to solitude, quiet, and deathly still air. Now he felt intoxicated, enveloped, swept away.

Suddenly, he understood it all.

His quest was at an end. He had reached the City of Dreams.

He turned and went into the apartment, greeting his wife with a smile and a hug.

Cally only ever smoked when she hated herself, when she wanted to do herself harm in some way. Then she would breathe in the nicotine as deeply as she could, watch it stream out of her nostrils in two little threads and shatter against the bright Upstate stars. The smog that surrounded her kept others away, or perhaps it was just a certain aloofness — that subtle touch-me-not attitude that made others so nervous.

So Anne would yell at her and then she would smoke, and this would happen over and over again.

Cally watched the orange ember burn down to a stub, until it sparked her finger and she dropped the butt, grinding it out against the cold, bare mud.

Edit: Why does everything I write sound like chick-lit right now? Bleh.

Even that night when they made love, she couldn’t stop thinking of the other one. Him with the startling eyes, whose gaze she could only ever meet for a second before she had to look away.

She saw him standing there in front of them like a ghost, watching as they did their predictable dance. In the space of one breath, she felt a decision arise and pass, before her conscious mind could even weigh in with its pros and cons and rules and rights.

She turned her head away from her lover, smiled, and looked her ghost straight in the eye.

Lately I’ve been trying to think of something interesting I could do with this blog. It’s harder than I thought, coming up with things to write about that aren’t too personal or work-related. Originally one of the major themes of this blog was going to be Philadelphia and my experiences discovering the area, but to be honest with you I haven’t had anything new and interesting to write about that for awhile. (Maybe I’m over it, just a little bit.)

So I’ve decided to introduce something new: the 5-Line Story.

The idea is that, at least once a week, I’m going to post a very short story, no more than 5 sentences long. (And no cheating with semicolons, either.) I think it’ll be a good writing exercise for me, and hopefully some of them will be interesting to the 2 or 3 people who read this blog, too. (Hi, Drew!)

The first one will follow within a day or so, and I’ll keep going until I get bored with it or have another idea.

Look for some additions to this site within a week or so, too; I’m looking to add a gallery section where I can put up some of my old artwork from school. (And new stuff too, if I ever get around to finishing any of it…)

I.
you mean,
even when i think as loudly as i can
you still can’t hear me?

II.
she is a minefield
you wander through.
and she throws her body over each blast
just to prevent you from being hurt by it —

III.
there are most certainly
daffodils
now.

seeds are waiting
under the snow
just like i am waiting
under my skin

get ready to grow

the essence of good relationship:
we take turns.