Here’s a piece of humorous flash fiction about another person who takes the reading life too far. It’s a tale of obsession and books – many, many books. It’s about 770 words and has an estimated reading time of about 3 minutes. Let me know what you think!
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Watching the horizon, bright sun rising above
baking the desert this lonely morning
I came here for mystical union, total silence
but the mighty sun cares not this morning
What of the Desert Fathers, who searched for love
retreated to their cells in the morning?
Did they unlock secrets, away from violence
find perfect solitude in quiet mornings?
I’ve read their books, listened to their tales,
but the words escape me this morning
I want my eyes to be removed of scales,
like St. Paul seeing Jesus in the morning
“Sometimes you can only find Heaven by slowly backing away from Hell.” – Carrie Fisher
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Here’s a piece of flash fiction I cooked up about going to rehab at the worst possible time. Enjoy!
It was all too much for Grayson.
On the TV screen, images of car bombs exploding in the nation’s capital and other various cities triggered his anxiety. Nothing was happening in his city – Philadelphia – just yet, but it was only a matter of time.
“Do we have any left?” Grayson asked his girlfriend, Thea.
“No,” she said. “I’m putting my foot down this time. Now is not the time to be doing Anvil. Look, I know you’re freaked out, but let’s just chill.”
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drugs alleviate pain
from terrible torment
but that’s before craving
sets in, like an ogre
dragging at my brain
Continue readingto say we were lost boys would be cliché
but clichés have ways
of cementing truths into language
like hard red suns that scorched West Philly & warm beers we guzzled ‘till we couldn’t walk straight & time went missing like a thief
who stole my innocence
& we packed into an old sedan on a road to nowhere &
perhaps, if time is not linear, this had to happen &
if free will is a myth, we had no choice in the matter,
merely swigging, smoking, fighting in adolescent wastelands
Continue readingFor my father
in the dining room, action figures were imprisoned in a green vase, and you returned from prison with my uncle, looking slimmer
from pushups in sunbaked yards
mustache and dazed look gone, down on one knee, arms open wide & smiling with teeth I learned were fakes
I thought you were fake, too
unrecognizable, a stranger from a blurred past we no longer spoke of, only at grandma’s house, when we opened letters decorated by your brother with cut-outs from Marvel comics
& were told you were away on business –
Continue readingNostalgia always comes with a bit of bad memory
back in the day, I remember life being calmer
but who’s to say?
My father stumbled in stadium parking lots drunk back in those days
+ I still had depressions that didn’t seem to go away
So what’s so different ’bout back then + the present day?
(Photo by Ajeet Mestry on Unsplash)
