unintentional haiku by krystyn

believe. I just got
here. I've been here for ages.
You know how it goes.

His 'n' Hers

She wraps her pain up in little packages and takes them out from time to time to peruse in private.
He wears his pain like a badge of honor, feeling superior to others who can never understand.
She holds her pain inside soap bubbles, and she cries out as each one pops.
He keeps his pain in his pocket with his keys and change, and walks around jiggling it.
She cracks her pain open, like an egg, throws out the albumen and yolk, and keeps the shell.
He puts his pain in a paper airplane and soars it over everyone's head, not seeing where it lands.
She lays her pain on a very high shelf where it gathers dust and is nearly forgotten.
He balances his pain on a wire, spreading it thinner and thinner so that it does not fall.

unintentional haiku by angelo

I was just kidding.
I'm super cool. So are you.
No more envying.

Happy Anniversary. *toot*

Fourteen years ago, St. Patrick's Day changed for me. This erstwhile nondescript potential party day became one of the saddest days of my life. Now it is the anniversary of one of the saddest days of my life.

It is Sunday morning. I am sitting at home. Around ten, the phone rings. It is my sister. She is clearly upset and says, "You're not gonna like this."

"What?" I say, but I know. I am already scared and starting to cry.

"Mom died."

My knees buckle and I crumple to the floor and grab at my glasses, yank them off my face, and throw them, saying "No, no, no."

I make my body as small as possible. I keep the receiver pressed tightly between my shoulder and my ear. I keep hoping for some good news, but it doesn't arrive. My sister and I bawl into the phone to each other.

An hour later I am at the house I grew up in. Dad and my two sisters and two of my brothers are in the living room. Mom is in the bedroom. I go in to see her.

My dad tells the story again. He had checked on her in the morning and she was sleeping. Then he went out to the living room, turned on the TV, and started to watch "Finian's Fucking Rainbow" (as he put it and as it will forever be called by me). The next time he checked on her, she was dead.

Five years later, on Presidents' Day, my dad died.

~

I miss my mom and dad.

No Expectation

Look at all the people who wander through my life.
Some smile, some talk, some listen, some laugh, some make me laugh.
Most don't notice me.
Even many I have smiled at, talked and listened to, laughed with.
I do not matter to them.
There is nothing wrong with that.
It just is.
And I can always find the very few who do notice me, for whom I do matter.
Even when I am not looking.

What is small, yellow, and obsolete?

Because we use the intarwebs when we need to look up a phone number or address, we always recycle our yellow pages telephone books. We recently got a new phone book, but this time it was not recycled pronto as usual. This is because (I assume in an effort to cut down the cost of production) it is much smaller (not thinner) than it ever has been before. Being small means being "cute" and because of this designation, its life span in our household has increased considerably. Instead of going immediately from our foyer to the recycling bin, it is now sitting on the table in the hallway for an indefinite period of time. The person who placed it there said, "small phone books are like kittens and puppies--their cuteness ensures their survival."

unintentional haiku by mrs. mullane

i googled myself
to see what would happen if
neil finn googled me