101 Words

I opened the front door just as my wife reached her climax in our bedroom.

Her ecstatic moaning echoed in the hallway as I snuck closer by and peeked inside. To add to the shock, the man she was having sex with seemed to be my doppelgänger. I stood there, gobsmacked, for at least two minutes before they noticed me and stopped the fornicating.

My wife looked at me unapologetically. “He’s exactly like you, but he doesn’t lick his knife after he uses it,” she said.

How can you argue with that? I packed a bag with my clothes and left.

It was a bushfire.

Having lost his crops of the year, the farmer came home in tears, crestfallen.

He saw his little girl playing with a small sand dune.

“It is the third castle of the day, papa”, she said happily!

She did not mind as to how many times she wiped and rebuilt them.

The farmer thought, same with the crops. Wish I had the same stoic stance to losses. The bushfire was not just for my field, the loss was not just for me.

Getting the clue, he wiped his tears.

Smiling hopefully, he stood up to start anew.

The ball didn’t spin. Not even once.

When it left dad’s hand, it was as if he put the baseball on an invisible stick and shoved it my way. You could count the stitches as it came closer.

The ball flew in slow motion, and it hit my glove with a sharp, painful crack. I meant to catch it in the webbing, but it hit the palm part of the glove instead. I yelped like a little puppy, and the ball popped out of the glove and hit the ground.

I never could catch his knuckleball, and I’m okay with that.

The chef hovered over the scarred counter, a petrified cucumber peering up at him. He was a frenzy of precision, hand and blade a haze of function as he committed agile homicide.

Brandy floated into the matchbox kitchen, her tangerine uniform snug, pressed and desirous. She winked at him. Jason purred.

She reached for a lone carrot and placed it before him, her tongue slithering across her lips. “Take it apart for me?”

He wobbled.

The hum of infatuation sliced through their shared emptiness as he diced the defenseless vegetable, her eyes carving into him like a pair of amber hatchets.

For heaven’s sake, stop, she said.
Stop what?, he asked.
Stop hurting yourself and me. Just go away.
He did.
In the moment, she forgot about the children.
He was their father, after all.
She went on with her life, happier than ever before.
Her children carried on, coping with the hole their father left in the center of their lives.
They longed for him. It broke her heart.
You left me, not them, she said. Come back.
Too late, I’ve started over, he said.
Wrong again, she said. Do you ever get it right?
Stop, he said.
Never, she said.

They say Geometry is sacred. He’s acute angles and tangent lines with globe blue eyes. When he concentrates his muscles tense up, and his jawline radiates a sense of power. Watching him, I’m lost at sea in waves of admiration.

Our words touched today, and I imagined it was skin. Holding the weight of his whispered word on the tip of my tongue, I explored the texture.

He said, “Hi.” Then he crossed the quad and kissed the blonde, the one that shares my room.

He never heard my, “Hey.”

Solving for X with no why—love is not simple math.

School recess. Girls turn skipping ropes in Double Dutch. Boys chase each other in Cops and Robbers. Voices jubilant. Energy boundless. Children engaged in games I never played as a child.

Not running as I ran from sniper bullets. Calculated bombs. Strategies designed by grownups, played out by children. Forced to participate in their game of pull and push.

We excelled in Hide-and-Seek. In places breathing death and destruction. When our strategies were discovered, rows of hopes tumbled as tiles would fall in Dominoes. Game over.

My son runs up, tags me. “You’re it!” he hollers.

I’m in a better game.