Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Two Creative Writing Openings


 At Lake Charleston

Light gleams
veins
across my neck
a sun tree
climbing
an upturned chin
veiling
a tan face
with worn gauze
thinning
over a lake
like currents
behind
a heron’s dive.

Beside
a verdant shore
a sunfish
struggles
to swim

away. 


The Gift

He arrived just days before Christmas, stopping by in his new car to pick up the last of his possessions. The Christmas tree was up and decorated, perhaps because I forgot our divorce was final just days before. Or maybe I meant to brighten up the sterile sunken living room, the stained white carpet reminding me of the coffee he’d thrown in my face and the cats he euthanized without telling me.

“I’m the only one who knows what you want,” he said, as he placed a wrapped box under the tree.

He’d chosen a Santa Claus theme and left off the ribbon, but the paper was neatly folded around the square, and the multiple taped corners made it difficult to open. I opened the gift.

Inside the wrapper was a plain cardboard box. And I hoped at this point it was whiskey. Some friends and I raided the liquor cabinet after he left, emptying the expensive bottles the weekend after my court date. He wasn’t there.

Inside the box, though, I found a cheap reproduction of a Japanese tea set, clearly bought on the fly at World Market or Pier One.

“Thank you,” I sighed.

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