No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story. No Kings.
‘I'm creating a pile that can reach heaven,’ explained Sanju.
‘Why?’ asked Chhotu as excitement gripped him.
‘I'll climb right to the top,’ said Sanju ‘and meet God.’
‘Meet Bhagwan!’ repeated Chhotu clapping his hands. Then he paused. ‘Why?’ asked Chhotu.
‘So that I can ask Him to make you less foolish,’ said Sanju feeling happy.
I pushed the housekeeping cart into the middle hallway and braced myself for the day. I’d been a technical writer not long before; this job hadn’t been part of the plan.
I rowed through the lifeless water, gripping the jar between my legs. I was alone in the bay. Too early in the season for lobster boats and tourists. A light drizzle soaked through my jacket. I didn’t feel it.
Dad used to take me rowing in the cove at night and tell me Penobscot Bay ghost stories. Pitch black, but for the stars, and the fog light he’d leave on at the shack. My favorite story was my great grandfather’s.
Julinda knew it wasn’t her place to take her sister’s seventeen-year-old daughter to get birth control, but she also knew Amalia wasn’t going to do it. Would she be furious when she found out? Absolutely. But Julinda was willing to face her sister’s anger if the trip to the clinic succeeded in preventing yet another teenage pregnancy in the family.
Talent is an island.
Education is not.
*****
Photography: DH
The next town was small, slow, and quiet. The skyline was bare and only steeples broke its plane. There was no traffic. The people were mostly older and paid little heed to William as he followed along the storefronts. He came to an alleyway behind a strip of restaurants where two older men sat on food crates. Cut jean shorts, yellowed tank tops. They looked up at him and then one of them waved him over. “Do you have a extra cigarette?” asked the man.