I have nine-hundred twenty-nine of the five thousand words allowed for my submission. Due in just six weeks, I wonder when I'll win the time to finish.

The novel, the first draft of my heartbreaking debut, also seeks attention. Nearly ten percent complete if we use a fifty thousand word goal, it's been shelved three times already. But now the plot is almost entirely engineered, the “magic happens here” trickery filled with why didn't I think of that before excitement.

But the baby is up, so it's back to singing the itsy bitsy spider. The magic will happen later.

Some are delicate tropical blossoms, ready for the rain they know will come with the thundering of afternoon. The catastrophe of a dry spell turns their soft, colorful petals inward, bereft beyond any hope of rescue.

Still others are succulents, roots dug deep into soil it knows will not see frequent rainfall. They wait, and they wait, never asking the desert why it remains a desert. Instead, they thrive on the mere suggestion of morning dew.

The blossom asks sadly, “Why do you not give me more?”
And the succulent replies, “Why is what I have not enough?”

When we met, I thought that relationshipping meant shaping and sculpting the puzzle of my life around the pieces of someone else's. And if it didn't feel quite right, well, on with the artwork of harmony and compromise.

But instead of reshaping myself around you, each piece you gave clicked into place as effortlessly as if it had been there all along. Icy who am I questions found themselves warmed by I love you answers. A lifetime of confusion gave way to a lifetime of purpose.

Looking at our puzzle, I realize that the world does make sense after all.

from One Word

Slight hands, light hands, hands that grasp my hand as she plods across the living room floor. Confidence growing, she falls down less and less. But her hands still hold on to mine. And I will always let them.

They do come marching, but not one by one.

Down the wall behind the sink, through the gap beneath the door. They come in droves, unrelentingly small and dark and stinking of acetone when you crush them. The cat licks them off the living room floor, shaking his head as they burst on his tongue.

They've lived here longer than we have, their colony stretched across the entire neighborhood. I watch a scout scurry black against black of the dining room table. I am almost charmed by his solitary fortitude, but spot another. I wash their reek from my fingertips.