A Note from The Curator

Welcome to June, my friends. May has said her goodbyes and moved on. And we, the DrabDayMoMay-ers, have packed up our drabbling ways. But only until next May.

Thanks for joining us on this venture. If you wrote every day or just when you could or even if you just read a drabble here and there, it was a pleasure to have you along for the ride.

See you next May!!

- The Curator

It all comes down to this

Grand epics and great songs. Forgotten things that will never be remembered. Remembered things that should be forgot. Majesty and might. Glory and power.

And yet, underneath all these tales and adventures there is one great yearning that binds us all together.

To shake off fear and embrace all that could be. To trust without shame. To know and be known. To love and be loved.

There is an hill upon which a god once died, stretched out on wood between earth and sky. Look there and see the answered yearning. Blood that saves. Death that brings life.

Love Incarnate.

It All Comes Down to This

It all comes down to this

Someone happy to see you when you arrive

A hand to hold while you pray

The kitchen occupied

And the bathroom sink is always wet

And there’s a stack of tires in the extra room

And you sit in patio chairs

It’s not choosing the sofa so much as laughing in the furniture store

Not choosing a movie so much as staying at the end of each night

Nowadays many couples prefer separate sinks

We are just excited to be brushing our teeth together

And that is what it comes down to, my friends

It All Comes Down to This

I'm all alone.  Exiled to the desert--a fitting punishment, I know.  I'm the reason they're all dead.

He was my responsibility: my pupil, my friend, my son...  But I couldn't save him from the darkness.  And in the end, I couldn't kill him either.

Their blood is on my hands.

But there's another son.  Strong like his father before him.  He can restore balance.  Succeed where both of us have failed.

So I'll watch over him from afar; wait until he's ready.  With him, I have a second chance, an opportunity to correct my mistakes.

He's my only hope.

Doubting Again

Remember what you told me that long ago day after I pushed you down the hill and then came tumbling right after you? That moment as I watched you careening down, I could hardly breathe for excitement and elation and fear. You’d come back to me and I’d just shoved you away. I plummeted down that hillside with no thought except you. I could have flown.

You told me that death cannot stop true love. I’m holding you to your word. Because you’re lying there on that bed, not breathing.  You promised this was just a delay.

Please be right.

One Last Love Letter

You're better off without me now.  And I'm fine with that.
I'm just a footnote in your life, in a section you'd rather keep closed forever.  And I'm fine with that.

But you only saw me in pieces and fragments, only through the lens of what you didn't want to see.

I took the loss so you wouldn't have to.  Because if losing means that you'll win, then I will lose every time.
If misery is my only reward, then I'll take it.  I'll gladly trade my happiness for yours.  Every single time.

I never wanted it without you anyway.

Curator of the Kiss Museum

Over here, we have number five. A precious moment between two… Excuse me? What was that?

I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen. I have to interrupt our tour for a moment. We have just reached the top five kisses since the invention of the kiss. I, as the Curator, personally rated them the most passionate and the most pure. However, I’m now receiving word of another kiss that has just occurred which appears to have surpassed even these.

I’m sorry, what? Oh really? A farm boy and a princess? You don’t say. Well, I’ll take a look at it straight away.

Super Saturday Title

We're almost at the end of May, drabblers!! One more Saturday to close out the month. Even if you haven't kept up, it's never too late to write one last drabble.

The title this week is "It all comes down to this".

Drabble away!

Determined

Perhaps you carry the weight of a broken heart

Still under its heaviness, dance

A boring life seemed choreographed for you

The painful steps predetermined

Keep time to the quicker 1-2-3’s

That you hear from the life inside everything

When you have no music, tap out the rhythm

Hear the snap of fingers and the clap of hands

Maybe the lyrics didn’t give you joy

But no tempo has ever torn you down

You never forgot what the spotlight taught you

And no one believed your final bow

Take to the stage again, my friend

The crowd is awaiting you

Between the Lines

It sits on the edges of our lips, leaning forward, hoping to tumble out.  But we both keep silent, an unspoken rule that we're afraid to break.

So here I am, hoping you'll read between the lines.

Because I want you to know that not a day goes by that I don't regret it.

Because I want you to know that I'm the one to blame.  Not you.

And as much as you wait for the seasons to change me, I have to tell you what you don't want to hear and what I don't want to say:

I'm sorry.

The Sick Room

She opens the bedroom door, quietly. She doesn’t want to disturb the two people inside. She needn’t have worried. Her father-in-law and her son are utterly engrossed in the story being told. The older man reads from the book open in front of him. Her son, still dressed in his pajamas because he’s recuperating from being sick, sits forward on the bed, mouth slightly open in intense concentration.

She smiles to herself. She had almost hesitated asking the boy’s grandfather to come. But this was the story her husband heard when he was sick. Now it was his son’s turn.

Ang

          You never had any talent for dancing. No talent really for any of this. Doesn’t everyone presuppose that a hooker can never lose her job?

          You didn’t become your mother then. She could keep you alive. But she worked so hard to purge herself of invisibility that she forgot to make sure she hadn’t passed it on to her daughter.

          Her body would wave from the pole like a banner. It seemed she could rally them from the ends of the earth.

          “Keep love in your heart.”

          “Love is a work of the imagination, Mother, as you very well know.”

First-Person Narrator

One word, one letter: "I," and everyone thinks I've really done it.  My friends are angry I've been keeping secrets from them.  My family thinks I need professional help.

Listen.  I've never lost my cousin in a car accident, or my girlfriend to a movie star.  I've never joined a band of outlaws, or gotten tackled by airport security.  I've never had to watch my best friend die, or keep my wife from killing me in her sleep.

So please.  Calm down.  Remember it's just fiction.

And please, don't ever mistake me for that loser, Kurt West.  He's messed up.

Resurgence

I spent my whole life clawing my way to the top so that I wouldn’t have to feel this ever again. This clutching fear that stops my breath from leaving my body.

I haven’t felt this since I was a child. The bully down the street laughed at me and beat me up. Just because I had six fingers on my right hand. I swore that next time I would be the one laughing. I killed him. And I laughed.

Now this man who says I killed his father won’t shut up and won’t die. And the fear is back.

Angel

She used to say her men smelled like water. They wore colognes with names like Ocean Blue and Pure Ice. “They’re lonely,” she would say. This one lost his mother recently. That one’s wife doesn’t give him what he needs.

Mother, where did you find these genteel men? All of my men smell like piss. I cannot help but wonder. If a mother is missing, if a wife is not enough, what are their visits to us but motes of dust with which they try to fill their emptiness? Mother, won’t you get out of bed and answer these questions.