We picked up little pieces of my heart. All across the beach they glittered in the rays of
sunlight peeking through the clouds. We looked for the shiny bits while we laughed and talked
and created space in our minds to remember ourselves. To remember this day.
Serendipity, Renaissance, Monique
There’s a girl sitting on my doorstep in a lovely Renaissance wedding gown, crying her eyes out, was Elise‘s first thought. The second was that the gown was muddy and torn. The girl’s mascara had run all down her face; her lipstick and hand prints had smudged the glass on the door of the shop. The peculiar scene looked all the stranger for the lack of any evening traffic out front. There was no one chasing her and no banged up car in the road. Elise had no idea who the girl was or why she was crying.
She stood back in the shadows, watching the girl for a moment. Long dark hair, cut in that new layered look that was so flattering these days. Her bangs were sticking up in the front and tangled. Large brown eyes stared at the door in front of her, not seeming to see anything at all. There was a scrape on her elbow and you could see where she had brushed against her dress, marking it with scratches of blood and dirt. The girl didn’t look panicked, just…despairing. Like she’d given up on something that meant everything. Had the groom left her at the altar? Had she tried to chase him? Elise stepped out of the shadows, she simply had to know. Read the rest of this entry
Bojangles, Vineyard, Jackalope
Carl and Martha Dubois were sitting on the porch one summer morning. Eighty year old Martha was doing a crossword puzzle from the paper, eighty-one year old Carl was reading the sports section.
“Carl.” She had a distinct northern accent, and sounded a lot like Katharine Hepburn in “On Golden Pond.”
“Hmm?” He absently waved at a fly. Read the rest of this entry
The Short and the Long of it ~ Monique Nagel 