8/02/2013, a flash in August second, 2013, a friday, a flash day

write a flash about a babysitter.

"the meek shall inherit the earth"        

barbaric, fondness, corrupt       

purple, snail, hammer         

 taters, fog, hobby       

"He's lying." "Guess who just walked in?"         

vibration, crust, bloomed         

bite, blight, bright ---

Those are the flashs Collected by AmyG, I doin’t know who belongs to what except mine. Today is my sons birthday. I sure wish I were in PDX. I’m going to my attorneys office this morning to publish in a newspaper on the Columbia. I’m going to use a bit or two from the above list, write and run.

The bruise bloomed, purple and yellow, broad as bourganville.

“You should see the other guy,” he said, because that’s how the boys talk.

“I heard the other guy was the babysitter,” another guy said taking a bite of a burger taller than his mouth could open.

Another guy patted him on the shoulder and declared that the meek would inherit the earth. Everyone laughed, most with food in their mouths.

I was trying to remember if some matronly figure had ever told me it was rude to eavesdrop; a mom, an aunt, a nun. I don’t think so. My own morality on such things has more to do with getting caught and how intimate a conversation is. I will, for instance, stop listening to a boy-girl argument when the first of the last words start coming ‘round “You don’t ever ---“ “You always ---“

Listening to young men’s bravado is almost a kindness; that’s who it’s for, me. Puffing their chests out into the world against the darkness, the fear of death and love and all the other things that hide under the quilt of life.

“You doing ok hon?” the waitress asked.

I smiled and let her warm up my coffee “Oh, I think I will be, dear, thank you”

And I looked out the window past my own reflection, past the pick ups and SUV out to the cornfield where a yellow moon was rising, swollen with the lateness of her cycle. The boys were trying to figure out the bill.