Shaking from the core, her fingers struggle to find the keys

So much at stake, so many people she could fail to please

There they sit in rows and rows all dreaming of money and fame

If only they could see what it will be like to live in debtor’s chains

Every year they file in to this conference room to take that test

I set it up and clean it up, and I’ll be just another face they forget...

When you encounter it, there is a draw. Like a passionate ex. You know it’s over but there is a longing that you cannot deny.

You know it so well. The power it holds. The promise of joy, of peace, of escape. So often you reached for it in your times of need and always it was there, soothing your tortured soul.

It came in so many different forms. Sometimes it made you laugh, sometimes it wrapped ...

It was listed as a fixer-upper. According to the broker, the family one day just up and left, didn’t even bother taking their things. The bank repossessed the old 1919 house and put it on the market “as is.”

I love a good challenge, but even I had a hard time seeing the potential in this place through all the boarded up windows, dust covered clutter, and exposed wiring. It was hard to imagine any...

The rain was quickly turning to snow as the sun set and temperature plummeted. This high in the mountain range in late November it was to be expected.

He knew he shouldn’t get caught on the mountain when he left his car at the trailhead that morning, but he wasn’t worried. He knew this mountain well. He knew the weather patterns and the rocky trails that wound their way to the summit. He was pret...

Day 547. A year and a half. “Guilty.” The word still haunts the moments just before I awake each morning. I open my eyes and the nightmare is real. I stare up a the ceiling of my merciless six by eight foot box with nothing but shades of grey and a door that I cannot open.

I read the poem in high school, the one by Frost, with a line that put a strangle hold on my imagination - “I took the road ...

[A speech to a joint meeting of the leadership of the Songu and Plena Clans on their home planet Arcania]

A common enemy brings us together. We have fought countless battles in our struggle to control the riches of this land, but today we face a threat that puts both our clans in jeopardy.

Our truce and this pact for mutual support give us the best chance to survive the coming assault from the ...

He circled the track as he had for more than fifteen years.

In the beginning, he circled a dirt track in Paige, Texas driving a stock car held together by his own sweat.

She fell for him hard. It wasn’t that he was good - he was - it was his commitment to the craft.

He’d noticed her, at the Saturday night races with her friends, and asked her out after picking up his tiny winner’s check.

From ...

Selina walked this stretch of beach every day, so she knew right away something was different.

Approaching from hundreds of yards back, all she knew for sure was that something was on the beach that normally wasn’t. It could be a very stationary group of people, a large piece of driftwood, a pile of seaweed.

The closer she got, the more unsure of her eyesight she became. The something she was w...

“It’s where legends dwell” were her parting words to me as I hoisted my bag onto my shoulder and stepped out on to the front porch.

This was just the kind of strangely disquieting statement I’d come to expect from my aging and deteriorating mother. What could she possibly mean? I told her I was taking a bag of my old clothes to Goodwill and that was her comment.

Driving down King Blvd., I turned...

If I count the ways I love you it misses the point. Our love cannot be quantified like the miles we’ve run, or the places we’ve visited. Our love surrounds all of every moment of every day. It is the lens through which all our experience is refracted. Sometimes what appears is hard to see, even painful. But viewed through any other lens life would be less moving, less passionate, less alive....