She knots the pretty scarf around a branch already rippling with countless strips of fabric. The oldest are only rags now, ghosts of forgotten hopes and desires. She whispers her wish against the gnarled trunk before driving away, leaving the murder weapon to flutter and fade like every other dream.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
We counted bullets and money. Drank warm beer that fizzed sour across our tongues. Lay under wide skies and watched stars fall. You said they were bad souls burning, that I could wish on them.
I wish on one now, my cheek pressed against the bars.
Wonder if it’s yours.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
He’s impatient, insisting she experiences this fantastic view. It’s spectacular, definitely worth the strenuous climb. Turquoise sea, golden rocks, shy wildflowers. Swooping boat far below, sails billowing. He’s standing right behind her, laughing, pointing everything out. She suspects his uncharacteristic enthusiasm. Sidesteps just in time.
He barely makes a splash.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
We braved ferocious thorns to pick luscious tayberries. Petal-drenched in butterfly sunshine, liquescing, mouths laughing crimson juice and our pricked fingers dripping sweetness.
You again, years later: defeated, damaged, devastated by life. You buy homemade tayberry jam. Don’t recognise me. Don’t remember.
But you will, when you taste summer’s promise.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
She packs everything bad in a huge suitcase. House cleaned, car loaded, keys turned on years of indescribable misery. Then she’s gone, accelerating into this unexpected future overflowing with possibilities. That last blushing apple picked in passing tastes impossibly sweet, like freedom.
Someone will open the suitcase eventually. Find him.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
She cheated clocks, embezzling endless days from ticking hands. Distilled radiant decades in sky-coloured glass, stored for restorative sipping.
Spent stolen seasons flitting through hospitals, slipping away seconds before unexpected recoveries. Doctors puzzled over all those miraculous revivals, discarded azure bottles – and the timeless sparkle in their onetime patients’ eyes.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
Other tourists move on, but these two loiter in the pharaoh’s magnificent tomb. Selfies aren’t enough: they’re determined to leave a permanent mark. Laughing at ancient curses, about to scratch their initials into 4,000 years of irreplaceable Egyptian history…
When the guide returns, she stamps on two frantic, scuttling cockroaches.
She dips the brush, composes a haiku.
“Cherry blossom weeps,
Bitter winter wind laments—
Fierce hearts do neither.”
Compliant wives conform. But she’d rather confront her treacherous husband on the battlefield, beneath snapping crimson skies.
“Wielding Father’s sword—
Scarlet camellias bleeding
From my ink-black hair.”
Victory—like justice—is poetic.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
Scratchy – Stinky – she dances around Nana’s sunshiny garden, skipping along sweet-smelling flowerbeds, renaming plants – Shivery – Sickly – confident because Nana’s here and laughing, changing names shared with the vanished girls (Rose – Daisy – Poppy – Lily) who whisper and tap on her window every night.
Nobody heeds childish imagination. Until she vanishes, too.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
He plants green thumbs in fertile soil, coaxing every seed into life. Donates vibrant baskets to friends and carves Halloween pumpkins for local kids, while appreciative neighbours can depend on his generosity with mouthwatering fruit and vegetables. His scrumptious strawberries are especially prized.
Until digging police unearth his missing wife.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.