Category Archives: Fiction

Making

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Mommy had it out!  She had it out; it was time!  I jumped and clapped my hands and ran over to the couch where she had set out the fabric for my dress.  “You’re making it for me, Mommy?  You’re making my big four-year-old dress now?”  I grabbed for the fabric and pulled it down so that fell open and over to the floor.  All those little purple flowers would be on my dress!  As I looked at my fabric flowers hanging down to the floor, I wrapped the part at the top around my hands, because it felt nice and cool when it touched them.

“Now where did my sewing scissors go?  What do you think, Melody, did Daddy take them again?”  I looked up to see Mommy turning around from her cabinet.  “I’ll go see, and then we’ll get started, okay?” Continue reading →

A Walk Through Reflections

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It feels like there should be a story in all of this.

I walk along, looking down, thinking.  It’s wet today.  Bare tree branches and patches of mottled gray sky glimmer up at me from between grass blades and shine out of the pavement blackness.  They draw my eyes as though into another world – into the muted, fading new colors and the vast expanse of clouds.  And then- all of that crisp, clear existence cuts off abruptly against an edge, dissolving into submerged ice and green and long-dead leaves.  I somehow find myself surprised.

It’s that other world – that feeling of a story.  Except the story is missing: a story-feel without a story.  So what is the story to go with the feel? Continue reading →

Searching for Marplies

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It’s not often that you crawl back into that unused corner of the attic and find a civilization of marplies, or a kilargy kingdom, or a trivith triad.  And I can’t help but think that’s a pity, because there are times when I’d like to, especially on boring, rainy afternoons.  I know, of course, that it can’t be helped – if things don’t exist, I suppose there’s nothing they can do about it.  I can always wish they’d try, but I do understand.

If they will insist on not existing, though, it would be nice if they’d at least stop teasing me.

Like the time I was hunting in my closet for my other shoe (I usually am hunting somewhere for my other shoe).  Continue reading →

Dear Baby

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~ To Ashley and Hannah, who gave me this picture of trust*

I held you, Little One, today,

And you watched the world from my arms.
As so many unknowns
Passed you by on their way
To and fro, you looked on unalarmed.

And I walked and I rocked you,
And you, dearest child,
Slowly settled your weight against me,
Laid your head on my shoulder,
And for the first time
In my arms let yourself drift to sleep.

There you lay, and there I,
In a quiet and deep-settled calm,
Stood and treasured the moments
I found in the trust
Of your rest to give shelter and hold.

And I saw as I held you
That the gladness I felt
Welling up just in giving you care
Could not ever come close
To the joy that God finds
When I trust and let Him hold me near.

Changing Hands

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~ for Mom and Dad

Mark half-turned toward the house, reached back to grasp the door handle, and pulled it shut.  Tracy waited at the bottom of the porch steps.  He joined her, and the two set off down the sidewalk.  She caught his hand.

“It’s a beautiful evening,” she said as they began to walk.  He glanced at her face – her slight, relaxed smile, the brown, silver threaded curls bobbing about her forehead.  He followed her gaze to the quiet street and the trees in their late-summer green.  He looked up at the blue, cloud-wisped sky and the lowering sun.  He nodded. Continue reading →

Nothing

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Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

– Gene Fowler

       Nothing. Her desk, a disarray of blue, white, and purple papers, of black, pink, and yellow pens, sat before her. Her keyboard – useless, useless thing – sat in her lap. And she sat, stuck, her mind hopelessly fixated on the vast, all encompassing nothing of her inspiration. The empty, glaring white page on the screen in front of her seemed a fitting image of nothing, she thought. Not that such an image was helpful. 

       She needed to write. She glanced at the blue, hard-backed notepad that sat open on her desk. Read Ch. 7 Lit due tomorrow, crossed off. Read Ch. 5 Ancient History due Fri, crossed off. Do probs. 3, 5, 7-18 Chem. due Thurs., crossed off. Write story due tomorrow. Nothing.  Continue reading →