Robin Hawke

A remarkable woman convalesced. Mid-sentence, her breath left her body before her last thought formed. Poor dear lady, poor attendees, all robbed of a quotable moral.

Married five months before the knives came out. A cradle wedding, a coffin divorce. The news anchor reported she was buried in bridal finery.

The daily grind ended with a cup of coffee.  Too many haphazard events (demands) kept the writer from a promise to herself. A clean stream of life beckoned if heavens would pour and drown the cobbles.

Phyllis bred feelings of good will. It was her honor. Until one afternoon, when charm fled and plastic smiles remained, then she asked for a raise not forthcoming.

Enraged, beaten, Bethany withdrew a sum of money. Now who would keep it? Stocks wore flimsier dressing than a mattress.

Granite and gargoyles. Limestone and ivy. Graduation and roses.

The hornet, drunk or stupefied, walked the rim of the rain barrel. I didn’t understand why it walked around and around: a peculiarity. I filled another bucket and left it to its circling.

Tina’s neighbors despaired. Tina grew dandelions and violets. Lovely blades of grass, the few, lacked the charm of carefree weeds.

The study couldn’t be replicated. Gumby fingers pointed in every direction, even skyward. Half truths multiplied faster than cells.

He held an umbrella open. She preferred the net of water webs on her hair. Is it too obvious: he walked the shade of buildings while she danced the gutters?

The dress was white. An optimist, the mother took a picture. A pessimist, she didn’t forward it to her daughter.

The line of cars stretched around the curve. Their owners waited patiently to drop off household hazardous waste. A turkey decided gas emissions posed little danger and crossed the road.

Under the sun, players moved chess pieces. Fingers pinched heads in timed maneuvers designed for stealth. A quiet body hunt on a lazy day.

My lovely silver car is dusty and the color of snot. Underneath, mice eat their way into an airline. Let others provide carbon for air full of pollen—I’ll stretch my arms heavenward in my exile from the roads.

A college student reads Buddhist poetry on a bed between four blank walls. A pregnant mother intends to buy a crib and a stroller but maxes out her credit card. A daughter looks at the gloves her mother wore to a wedding twenty years before and wonders why she kept them.

The ‘she’ in the last sentence is ambiguous–would pinpointing an antecedent help or hinder this story? The motivation of either mother or daughter (to keep the gloves) is similar so I allowed the word to remain vague.

During pollen season, dust motes circled the air, small galaxies. They drifted through wide and narrow spaces.  Minor irritations, they created small bangs of flying matter.

My stories become pedestrian when my thoughts follow the trenches on the left side of my brain. And it is another beautiful day, despite the pollen.

Except for sneezes, the day was perfect: dry with a whisper of cool. The day called chores to hibernate, frisbees to fly, lizards to sun. I resisted writing about the weather, but an invitation to contemplate Eden banished thoughts of conflict and ruses.

Disease, hurricanes, rot. One after another, the oaks that divided the neighborhood disappeared. Immigrants sawed and chopped; boughs fell; a neighbor mourned.

Charity served rhythm. Between a creek’s babble and an insect’s hum, she found a spark of muse. Slow rhythms penetrated; frenetic beats countered.

I’m hoping to get back to writing. I work in silence to follow the rhythm of my thoughts without distraction. First, though, my patriotic duty to taxes, and then!

The little boy next door: the only trick-or-treater in the neighborhood, the one who watched the dogs one weekend only, the mage—or was it shaman?—that hitched a ride on the neighbor’s WOW account and who came by for Easter chocolate, he grew. Grew into size football player.  I returned to days of handing out candy when I watched him light a pipe.

I’m celebrating my daughter’s birthday today. She grew into size lovely human. Happy holidays to all!

A spiderweb tent, gray as sky, settled in the crook of a lower branch. Rob pulled the branch down in two quick steps. The hand torch drew like a gun and ignited offending squirms.

Squirms is not a noun, but—with dictionary and thesaurus in place,  home in front of my roomy monitor—I indulged my writing. (Tent worms are capable of eating through tall trees and have shown up on the apple tree, the one that looks like a cribbage board, the one that looks like it will die any year, the one that is almost as tall as the telephone lines, the one that I climb to prune.)

Yesterday was the first day I was unable to post the story I wrote. I knew the day would come—an internet connection can be a tenuous link—but I feel defeated. I shouldn’t. I wrote this story in the car and on the day:

Sarah, with a sunny day off, went shopping. Her route took her through consignment and thrift stores. At every stop, mink and fox furs held fast to hangers, the bookmarks of eras.