101 Words

“I graduated, Mom!” I held up my diploma.

She said nothing.

“Professor Parker said she will write my letter of recommendation for grad school.” I beamed a smile wide enough to hurt my jaw.

Wind blew behind me.

“I’m considering Fordham University.”

Autumn leaves stirred around the tombstone. Red leaves sprinkled on Mom’s grave and highlighted it like spreading wildfire. I maneuvered my diploma to the crook of my left arm and crouched to swipe away the leaves. I stopped midway, realizing how foolish I must have looked to her.

I traced the engraving and whispered, “I hope you’re proud, Mom.”

I heard the ping and suddenly found myself flying through the air, landing unceremoniously on the floor at the other side of the room.

Elaine shouted, “I’ve lost my clip.”

“Its only a bloody paperclip,” retorted Ted, “not the end of the world.”

Elaine glared at him. “It might not seem much to you, but that clip holds papers that mean the world to me. They release me, give me the chance of a new life. A life without you in control.”

I felt myself being lifted. With shaking hands, Elaine returned me to my rightful place, holding her world together.

Growing up, Edith felt homely, unwanted, unloved.

At seventeen, her stepfather taught her how to express her affections. After years of neglect, she finally felt loved. She told her mother of this love, but her mother admonished Edith for having a creative imagination and silently accepted her husband’s love for her daughter.

After graduation from college, Edith fell in love with men who loved her the way her stepfather had. She believed and accepted that their attentions and her reciprocations were what love was.

At eighty-two, she met a man who loved her the way all the other men should have.

Ever wanted the whole world to yourself? Well, I have it now. What’s left of it. Barren wastelands, mined craters. Seas of tree stumps logged decades ago. The ocean, clogged so thick with trash that I can stand on top of it. Vast metropolises of skeleton steel, where only ghosts live.

Some days I try to live. Some days I try to die. Some days I make art. Some days I wage war. One day I explored, and I found him. Almost dead, curled in an alley. Fur: long, matted. Hungry, injured, lonely. I saved his life; he saved my sanity.

A rifle takes careful aim.

Unaware, zebras graze the hot savannah, a contented herd in stripy camouflage. The grass is lush after rain, ripe for lactation. The mares, tails swishing tik-tik flies, whicker to new foals, touching noses.

Lions, replete after feeding, growl in the shade of an acacia tree, bickering over stripped bones. Lionesses, lazy in the midday sun, yawn and stretch, and cuff their tumbling cubs into submission.

Worse predators creep closer, hidden by anthills. Poachers who see only payday.

The rifle fires—a perfect killing shot. Zebras scatter. The lead poacher falls. The park ranger drops her rifle.

We slipped into the room, Dad and I, shading our eyes from a bright crack of sunlight, which had managed to cut through the heavy drapes. She was sat, hunched, her legs all bone.

Dad stepped forward. “Mum?”

Silence, then the faintest of murmurs: “Son.”

A rare moment of lucidity.

We carved our way around the carpet. Her chin had sunk into her chest, but her eyes whirled up to meet mine, and then Dad’s. She smiled, her lips parting knolls of ancient skin.

Dad reached down, took her supine hand, and a glimmer of the sun flickered in her eyes.