She sat quietly, breathing in and breathing out, breathing in the sharp-sweet-bitter-slightly-sulfurous tang of seaweed and of salt. She sat inhaling the scent of sea and seaweed and sea creatures and all things sea. She sat for so long, taking in great gulps of the smell-sight-sound-feel-taste of bright day at beach, that she felt, deep in her spine, the exact instant when the last particle of tension left her body. She felt a tiny click deep in her spine and suddenly she wa

[Continued from post of March 22, 2018] 1. Dream Boy I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, thought Dream Boy. Those stupid cows have gone all the way down to MacPherson’s barley field again. Don’t they remember how sick it made them last time? We nearly lost Emily, for cryin’ out loud. Emily was one of the few cows Dream Boy actually liked. From the scent trail, they’d been gone quite a while too. And the sun was going down. It set quick this time of year, once it started to go. H

1. Molly Molly peered cautiously over the fence. She turned her huge head one way, then the other, muttering to herself as one of those big noisy things — whaddya call em? trucks, that’s right — one of those big trucks appeared at the top of the hill, heading her way. She quickly put her head down, reaching delicately for the grass at her feet, nibbling at a few blades here and there, just for show, in case the driver was looking. She didn’t want to seem conspicuous, here by

She sat and sat and sat, waves of regret crashing on the shores of her heart, waves depositing the flotsam and jetsam of her broken life on the sand, with the broken shells, driftwood, seaweed, the odd plastic bottle, and every once in a great while an intact shell, whorls and circles and spirals showing its age, a memory whole and flawless to be turned this way and that, secret chambers that may or may not still contain a living creature. She mostly surfed these waves, keepi

She sat and sat and sat, carefully sifting memories like sand, memories of a seashore much like this one, floury silky white sand, those laughing days squinting in the sun collecting shells until happy hour, two-for-one margaritas that were far too good, and caused her to eat too many stone crabs and swear off margaritas for good, at least until the next time, those staggering evenings rolling home after in the dark on a starlit beach. She sifted the memories carefully, separ

She stood at the counter in her tiny kitchen, frozen in the act of skinning ocean perch fillets for Brazilian fish stew, frozen by memory sharp as the boning knife sliding between skin and flesh, memory slicing clean through her, sweeping her into a past so distant she’d nearly forgotten it altogether, depositing her right on the filleting line at the fish plant, where she had her first nervous breakdown. Actually, the trimming line, not the filleting line. And the breakdown

She sat and sat and sat. This time, it was a good thing, because she’d actually gotten up out of the the chair by the door and was now sitting outside. Also in a chair by the door, but outside, in a big red Adirondack rocking chair, on a hot afternoon in late summer. Still contemplating absolutely nothing. Not her life, the wrong turns, the many errors of her ways, the what-ifs and the what-if-nots. None of that, no. Contemplating exactly nothing. Losing herself in the nothin

We lived on a dirt road in a remote rural part of the country. It was an election year, so they were paving as many roads as they could squeeze in before the frost. We’d all watched with great excitement all summer long as the huge graders and pavers and whatever-you-call-ems made their way slowly up the road towards our place. Finally, FINALLY, this year it was our turn. Finally, FINALLY, the road would be paved right up to our driveway. No more getting stuck in the bright r