family
Family unites us; but it's also a challenge. All about fighting to stay together, and loving every moment of it.
A Mother's Wish
“That can’t be right”. She cancelled the transaction and snatched the plastic card out of the machine. Taking a deep breath, she looked around and wiped the sweat accumulating on her palms with her jeans. “Just try again, you clearly did it wrong”, she went through the motions once more. After inputting her PIN, she waited for the screen to reflect the options. She selected Balance Inquiry. After some time, the screen stared back at her with her account information.
By Jessica Hector5 years ago in Humans
Hands, Heels, Hope and A Little Black Book
Olivia warmed herself in the orangish fanfare of an Australian dawn as it pushed the night sky out from across Port Phillip Bay. Tiny waves quietly kissed the sand, pirouetted, and retreated with the outgoing tide. Olivia flipped a stray curl off her shoulders and pulled a mandala patterned beach towel tight around her shoulders. The bare backs of her thighs sunk into the cool moistness of the sand as she inhaled the serenity generously offered by calm waters of the bay. All too soon, her peace would be shattered by tribes of cabana pitching beach goers with their squealing children and hoons on jet skis racing and churning the water. But for now, the beach and the bay were hers, and hers alone.
By Char Weeks5 years ago in Humans
Just a Smudge
She pulls off her shoes and peels off her socks. The water is so calm today. No one is swimming this early in the morning. She isn’t planning on it either. Suddenly, she puts her shoes back on, forgetting the socks. Today is not the best day for this.
By Caitlyn Davis5 years ago in Humans
Be Longing
Jean Luca was a singular man. His life was that of a roamer: not aimless, but free nevertheless. He was a stout man, salt and pepper hair, a beard prickled by the elements, and a stomach rigid with a diet of salame and fontina. His skin was leather, his fingers thick and the nails lined with earth, his eyes were a deep brown. In their reflection, an eternity of snowcapped peaks hiding starkly blue lakes and spotted with green pines. Jean Luca belongs to the Alps, he spends his life caring for his cattle, tending to their every need, walking alongside them as they graze the prairies of green. Every day his alarm rings at 3. The morning greets him with a sky of constellations and herds of fleeing mountain goats. He walks to the corral, close enough to still hear the breathing of his cows throughout the night. Water, feeding, cleaning, milking. Cerise follows loyally behind, wagging his tail as he assumes his responsibility of gathering his hooved companions. The sun emerges from the depths of the valley and the cows reluctantly trundle out of their evening pens. The cacophonous ringing of their bells echoes the squeaks of the marmots, scrambling through rocks and ducking back into their underground cities. Jean Luca mechanically folds his loaf of bread and a half eaten wheel of cheese into a cloth, tucking it away into his satchel alongside some logs of salame and his opinel knife. He has wandered these mountains since he was a boy. He knows them well enough now to realize just how insignificant his presence is in all of their magnitude, how menial his existence is in this flourishing and vast ecosystem of life. Despite this internAlized realization, he walks on. Along his way he tends to the hiking paths, adjusting the signs, repainting the colored wax indicators on rocks and trees. People come from the world over to walk the trails of Valle D'Aosta and Lucano treads solemnly ahead, his work unknown, his footprints concealed by the changing flows of a nearby stream, the colossal destruction of a hail storm, or the imprints of a German tourist's crampons. Most days are the same, bringing him a few hours closer to the advent of a new season or another cattle competition.
By Océane Mauffrey5 years ago in Humans
High Expectations
Why is it that on the days we need everything to run smoothly nothing seems to go quite right, or more accurately, everything goes every which way but right. It is 7am and my 2-year-old son is pulling on my eyelashes, trying to open my eyes saying “Mommy, Mommy breakfast please.”
By Portia Louise5 years ago in Humans
The Safe Ivory Place
Something had shattered. I had felt it looming for what felt like hours, days even. The gradual unravelling of my moorings until I finally came completely untethered. And then it just shattered, the slim, ceramic thread that had held me to the dock, the safe haven on which I teetered.
By Billy Green5 years ago in Humans
The Letter
The girl shut the door firmly behind her. It was made of shining oak and had a painted golden eye upon it that would watch her retreating form long after she stopped thinking about it. Outside the Reading Room, the sullen man who had shown her up through the long passageways, up twisting staircases, and around sharp bends, until the girl was certain they would never find their way back out, was waiting patiently for her. His grey face was no longer hanging in perpetual sadness but was filled with a bright warmth that had not been there when she’d been shut into the Reading Room. He took off down the hallway and the girl found herself half running to keep pace with him. Her Reading had been successful. The overly bright passage now seemed to have taken on a heavenly glow and the girl couldn’t help but smile gently.
By Saskia Reed5 years ago in Humans
Until the End
The breeze blew through my hair. A soft, gentle breeze, like that of one coming off the lake amid spring. I lay there under a tall oak staring at its immense beauty as if seeing it for the first, drowning out the noise around me. The buds have begun to blossom, giving color to its desolate bleak branches. It brought life to the tree, I thought.
By Daniel Murray5 years ago in Humans
Annulment
As the rain threatened his day off, Noah looked out the window once more, gently clenching the stem of his glass. His happy place would be invaded very soon; Noah’s cousin Bernard had been pestering him to talk. He figured meeting in a coffee shop half drunk and underdressed for any occasion was, quite literally, the least that he could do.
By James Éoghan Kenny5 years ago in Humans
The Revisit
In the middle of the sweltering and isolated desert, Dana stood there staring at the limitless view of dry land as a gust of breeze breaks the silence. The wind brushed her long, wavy golden locks into her face, slightly obscuring her view. Her eyes became fixated on a foreign rock formation that caught her attention because of how out of place it seemed amongst the flat, barren terrain. She felt intensely compelled with an irresistible urge to make her way over to the stone as if she were being pulled into it by some unseen force of gravity. This phase of curious attraction decreased as she approached it. Looking down at the ground beneath her feet, it was not difficult to notice a patch of disturbed loose earth that was equally inconsistent with the surrounding environment. The peculiarity of it all only managed to reignite Dana's curiosity. In an instant, she fearlessly stuck her hands into the loose sand-like soil when she felt something tangible. She retrieved two items; patting and dusting them off to reveal a quite ordinary little black book in pristine condition and a sizeable folded, brown envelope.
By Jasmin Tate5 years ago in Humans
