101 Words

“Tilt back your nose,” my uncle said. Blood ran in two streams across my upper lip and slopped down both sides of my mouth. “You’re always staring at the ground. That’s probably why the punk popped you.” His lips were squeezed tight. He had been in two wars and one prison. When he died, his friend Alejandro knelt by the casket. His shiny tears fell to the floor. My mother stared at him. Her lips pressed so tightly together they made a single line. Then she looked at me and said, “It’s good he’s dead. His life never made any sense.”

I recall, as a teen, an incident on the beach where I was surrounded by a group of boys trying to beat me, claiming I had stolen a ball they were playing with. I had asked to join their game and they had agreed; so I was shocked to hear their accusation and see them homing in on me. My mother saw and came to assist, much to their mockery of how “I was not really a man because I was hiding behind my mother.” Yet none of them came any closer when they saw that broken bottle in my hand.

God created man on the sixth day.

He rested on the following day. On the eighth day, while gazing at his creation, He got bored.

On the ninth day, He glanced at the future of man but got filled with wrath.

On the tenth day, He thought of ways to punish the most rotten among them.

On the eleventh day, He unleashed the power of nature. Hurricanes.

His wrath, rain overflowing in torrents, taught them a lesson and made them obedient.

He showed them violent winds from his rage.

On the next day, He would decide whether to continue the experiment.

I watch her dance. She moves like a river, floats like a cloud, like some kind of magic. Shining brilliantly, just like the sun.

I’m mesmerized by the nature of her. I try resisting, but she overpowers my senses. I know that our love was written in the stars long, long ago.

She pulls me close with her silky smooth movements. With every inch towards her, the more I swelter. It’s unbearable.

I realize too late that I never stood a chance. It was over before it began.

Now I’m burning, burning hot.

“Dammit, Greg…another moth flew into the flame.”

When we set our clocks forward for daylight savings time this spring, who knew we’d instead enter the twilight zone? That shoppers would fight over toilet paper. That I’d have the time to clean the junk drawer but still wouldn’t. That I would view a repair man coming to fix the toilet as a dress-up experience or that dress up would mean yoga pants instead of pajamas. That I’d long to shop at Walmart. Who knew I’d flinch when a friend sneezed? That leaving the house to make a supply run would rain down danger. Who knew that I would die?

It was a toy truck that convinced me it was best for him to see the pediatrician. He didn’t play with it like one would expect, but he turned one of the back wheels with his fingers over and over again. There was no imaginative game of the plastic truck traveling around my parents’ living room. I’d even sit with him and try to show him how to ‘drive’ the truck. However, he’d either go back to the wheel or start lining up his toy blocks.

I had spent months in denial, only to learn acceptance from a six-dollar toy truck.