Missionaries, Guyana 1852

You drug me to this godforsaken place, promising renewal. Instead, I got a scrub board, and laundry hung outside to dry until it is so stiff cardboard would be more comfortable. Look what lye has done to my hands. Look.

Ah, my sweet, you were becoming too soft, too complacent. You rant at no longer having housemaids and gardeners but the money previously wasted on them now helps our village children – provides books, inoculations.

You purchase chickens for people we don’t know.

We have new friends who share food, stories, laughter.

I feel trapped. Water everywhere. Four rivers, an ocean. Mountains with unpronounceable names. The jungle. Take me home.

We leave tomorrow. A kiss.

Tomorrow? I will pack this instant. Oh, how I long to see New York. Thank you, my love, thank you.

Wait, you misunderstand. You and I are traveling deeper inside the jungle. Our help is needed elsewhere.

Bad Company

This is my contribution to Pegman. What a creepy place the Overbrook Lunatic Asylum must have been. Thanks for reading my 147-word story.

Yeah Luke was a phantom all right sliding in and out of the gang like vapor from our pipes he’d smoke a little of this a lot of that then disappear come back clean and start all over again we didn’t mind he was funny brought bloom flakka krokodil crank disappeared for good one day that was o.k. we’d already decided he was crazy anyone that lived in the decrepit lunatic asylum had to be of course authorities didn’t know or they’d a booted him out every now and then one of us or all of us or three of us would go in there to hang ’cause being inside creeped us out James was the one who opened the drawer and found Luke wrapped in a straight jacket dead as any doornail with hyde tattooed on his forehead hell yes we scattered ain’t been back since

A Wasted Opportunity

Today Pegman took us to Ljubljana, Slovenia. While looking at pictures of this beautiful town, I was reminded of the ungrateful me at sixteen when my parents sent me to Europe with my sister. What an opportunity. I enjoyed most of it but was so distraught over having to “leave my boyfriend” who was actually fighting in Vietnam at the time, I didn’t allow myself to absorb the culture. Ah, hindsight. Anyway, here are my 150-words. I hope you enjoy my wee bit of fluff.

“Mom! I don’t want to see another church!”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to go home.”
“Honey, this is the trip of a lifetime. None of your friends will ever get a chance like this.”
None of my friends want a chance like this.
“How ’bout we get something to eat. Come on.”
“The hotdog I ate last night made me puke.”
“I think that was the ride on the boat, not the Kranjska Klobasa.”
“Whatever.” Dad has taken me sailing for the last twelve years. I doubt a boat ride was the problem.
“We could go to the square to see that statue Valbotg told us about last night.”
“I will stab my eyes out if I see another marble statue. Mom! Really?”
“Think of something, anything you’d like to do. Anything.”
Oh! Wait! Look at him. Look. At. Him. “Let’s rent some bikes!”

Choices

No need to tell me your sad story. I know how your world worked with Angela. Upside down. Crisscross. Days and memories folding over one another until you couldn’t tell up from down.
Sometimes she was the woman you couldn’t wait to see, other times, angry times, you ran from her, faster than the wind. Even after your children disappeared you found reasons to stay.

No crying on my knee. No bunching my skirts and wailing about Angela locked behind bars. She made her choices, you made yours.

At one time my choice was you.

I Love You

Before your heart turned
break-your-back mean
you were giving
softer than a goblet of deep red Bordeaux.

For two years you and I followed the same path
making love between clean cotton sheets at sunrise
or
perhaps
many hours before

And at noon
in grape fields
littered with angular stones
that scratched divets in our backs
divets we laughed about while lathering one another in our open-air shower
kissing, wishing
hoping
for a child

Or at midnight, underneath moss-covered cliffs
my favorite
if the rain held

But the rain didn’t hold
Squall followed squall for 106 days
conjuring your anger and my angst

You declared you wanted freedom
Another life

The air I breathed smothered you
How could that be?
My fault?
Your fault?
No one’s?

Now, even as I leave you
hoping you find the man you want
all I can say is:

I love you.
I love you.
I love you.

Pain Relief

Boy-o-boy! Don’t know what me and the boys drank last night but it must’ve been good.
Must’ve been plenty.
Nothing’s in focus. Buildings are all wonky and, at this end of the street, there’s a giant caterpillar face.
Do you see it? Just there?
Oh, never mind.

Džons. That’s what we drank! That’s what the clean-up crew always drinks.
Me, Juris, Edgars, even Ilze drink when we’re done digging through rubble looking for the remains of our families.
Ilze. So beautiful! I hope we’ll marry when this ugly war is over.

Džons is the only way to relieve the discomfort of concrete dust that dries our nostrils,
and clear the stench of moldering flesh.
Džons. Džons. Džons.
Džons runs through my veins day and night.
Džons keeps me sane.

“Come with me, Love.” Ilze gently steers her husband’s wheelchair out of the garden and into the asylum’s foyer.

The Remodel

Today Pegman took us to Middle Torch Key, Florida. I had fun researching flora and fauna and bugs. I hope you enjoy the result.

When Roger drug me to Middle Torch I figgered I’d died and gone straight to hell without even sniffin the boundaries of purgatory.
Our slapped-together house on stilts was so far offshore we rowed through a mile of skeeters just to climb a ladder into what served for a kitchen.
Not sayin nothin bout the bedroom.
Screw worms, ants and love bugs that didn’t show love to no one but theirselves tormented me like the devil hisself.

Days brightened when Calusa Injuns showed me a few things.
Best thing? Torchwood.
Roger bout peed his pants laughin when I done told him to use lit-up Torchwood to attract shrimps at night.
Later he claimed he’d conjured the idea hisself. Kept the profits in his raggedy pockets.

So, when he got cut up fightin, I kept the knowledge bout the antibiotic nature of Torchwood to myself.
Yessirree, now I’m redoin the kitchen.