I Will Wait

three line tales, week 214: woman standing in dilapidated building

Photo by Jorge Flores via Unsplash

 

“I will wait for you,” she said. “Even in cold ruined places where wind blows in the refuse of the city and where more is broken than is whole. I’ll wait, so you can know I’m here when you are finally permitted to come home.”

 

 

For Three Line Tales #214

 

 

In The Gray

https://sonyca.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/tltweek171.jpg

Photo: tltweek171

 

Most had left already. Evacuation was taken seriously after the previous storm had wiped out a dozen residents and many homes. Sam stayed. Life couldn’t get much grayer with Meg having drowned. He’d survive or join her. Either way was okay.

 

 

For Three Line Tales #171

 

Cake To Go

three line tales, week 170: an unhappy birthday party

Photo via Unsplash

 

She spaced the candles as her grandmother had instructed. Not equally, but with one candle lording over a bigger chunk. “You’ll remember me by it,” Gran had said, “and by the sour faces of the ladies when they see you’d saved me some cake to go.”

 

For Three Line Tales #170

 

 

A Moment Before

three line tales, week 169: San Jose

Photo: Peter Gonzalez via Unsplash

 

There will not be another night so drenched in sorrow, bereft of even the wish for the downpour to turn hope. Yet they held to the moment right before the speeding motorbike intersected their car … and bled their child to no more.

 

 

 

Note: dedicated to those who know this loss, and to the hope that fewer will ever do.

For Three Line Tales #169

 

Unworthy

three line tales, week 158: a border with a barbed wire fence

Photo: Robert Hickerson via Unsplash

 

They brought them in at dark, under the covers of secrecy and night.

Children, torn from loved ones, placed behind barbed wire, watched by burly guards.

“Your fault for coming,” they were told. “And now you’re too much work to reunite.”

 

 

For Three Line Tales

 

Bones of Monsters

photo by sam loyd via unsplash

Photo: Sam Loyd via Unsplash

 

When she rose from the depths to where the world mirrored dark, she observed the bones of monsters no one disposed of, and the hulks of others poised to glean the phosphorescent plankton from the indigo above.

 

For Three Line Tales #156