Inspirational

Ten Commandments

I asked her why she never told us about the Ten Commandments & she said she wasn’t ever that good with numbers so she loved everything as best she could & I remember thinking who needs all those rules anyway with a mother like her around.

Stress Management

I can imagine it working out perfectly, I said. I can’t, she said & I said no wonder you’re so stressed.

Straight Forward

Start here & go until you die, he said. What’s so complicated about that?

Star Gazer

likes to navigate by the stars even when she’s just zipping over to the mall

Spider Princess

If I was a spider princess, she said, I would spin webs the color of sky & catch drops of sunlight to give to children who watch too much TV & then everyone would remember to come outside to play. If I was a spider princess, she said, things would be different.

Songs to Herself

She waved at all the people on the trains & later, when she saw they didn’t wave back, she started singing songs to herself & it went that way the whole day & she couldn’t remember having a better time in her life.

Sorrow

This is a box filled with the sorrow of all the people who have been forgotten & some day it will wash the world clean.

Soul Mate

How can you be sure it has a soul? she said. You can’t, I said, unless you’ve got one yourself.

Solid Effort

It’s taken me a long time to get here, he said, so I don’t really care if it’s wrong.

Some Kind of Ride

feels like some kind of ride but it’s turning out just to be life going absolutely perfectly

Slow Pitch

How’re you doing? I said & he said we’re undefeated in our appreciation of the game. That’s against incredible odds, he added.

Smiling Eyes

She turned to me & whispered, don’t you just love it when you get so excited you forget to breathe? & the thought of her smiling eyes still makes me laugh.

Slow Cure

has some sort of disease where you hallucinate & start to not believe in love, but after a year or two, or even sometimes ten or twenty, it cures itself & all that’s left are a few little red spots that twinge & ache whenever you get too near someone else that has the disease & it’s all you can do to stop from reaching out & holding them close

Simple Pleasures

this is the moon dark as a bird wing & softer, he said
& at that moment I knew only the joy of my child

Side by Side

We sat side by side in the morning light & looked out at the future together.

Sideways Ladder

This is a sideways ladder because she likes to feel she’s making progress, but she’s afraid of heights.

Silly in Public

I figured out that if I keep it up, someday I’ll probably get wise enough to be silly in public but I probably won’t wait that long.

Secret Notes

He wrote secret notes to people he hadn’t met yet. Some of them aren’t even born, he said, but we live in a strange neighborhood & they will need help figuring things out & I won’t always be around to explain it to them.

Secret Potion

this is a secret potion that makes you see the world differently & she’s found it safest to use only on the weekends

Self-Conscious

He is self-conscious because everyone knows he has wings but they’ve never seen him fly. Now & then there will be a feather in odd places or maybe a footprint to show he was there. All in all, he thinks it’s nobody else’s business what he does with his free time.