Short Stories
My Day
My day started out well enough. It started out pretty good, actually. It was one of those mornings where you wake up early, not really for any reason, and you just lay in bed for a while, kind of sleepy but not like a nighttime sleepy. The opposite of that. The morning version. Sleepy but heading towards an energized feeling. This morning I had that.
Nighttime
The heels of my boots click-clack-ack-ack-ack on the solid marble, high arching echoes swimming through the tall ceilinged, hard surfaced building as I gallop down the stairs. Not a thing in sight tries to impede the stampede. Rather the walls applaud me until I stride through the portal and enter the empty street.
Shabbat On Base
I’m sitting inside of an old wooden…I’m not really sure. Kind of looks a rail car. The planks are dry, a once green layer of paint now just flecks and chips speckled under heat caked dirt. Rusted iron cross beams with enormous round bolts are the same color as the bare wood. It has the feel of an old barn, once clean and proud, made simply and well for a simple purpose, a simple life. Except it’s on an army base, so that doesn’t really make sense. But neither does rail car.
20-something
The sun sets on its vertical axis while its colors stack in their horizontal layers. The desert flashes by left to right and I zoom down the straight black ribbon running flat through this bumpy place and I can’t help but feel I’m just moving through some sort of overlayed grid, being taken for a ride. Nothing feels natural, it all feels dead, or worse, that it never was alive
Sometimes on a Shabbat Evening
Sometimes, probably always, all it takes is to start. I open my mouth and allow whatever comes out to come out. The dam breaks, and the parched valley receives it’s deluge, the water beading like jewels on the leaves so thirsty after such a hot day. She tilts closer to me. Our mouths and ears open alternatingly, and our hearts are constant. The clip-clop, clip-clop of our sandals keep a beat to our conversation, our never ending conversation as we wander through the village, the last light of Shabbat slipping slowly away.