December 2025
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Fifty words hardly seems a story. At 57 I’m over by seven,trying to write an endingappropriate to the characters. This life made moviewhere happily ever afteris six feet below dirt— fodder for red roses to bloomwith thorns that cut deep enoughto match.
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Hey Dad!Her tiny voice—a small, blue birdat the nest’s edge.She’d remembered her way home,but her mom wasn’t there,and I hadn’t set footthere in years. Hey sweet pea, great to hear your voice.How’s work, your new place, your husband?It sounded strange—my own words,a slow fall from grace. Chirp, chirp, she went on,a new song I’d never
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I don’t trust white feet. If they haven’t seen the sun,how could they ever walk in my shoes?Or pretend to. Feet in robes?Think flip-flops—hardly up to the task,if you ask me. Blindfolded,they go where they’re told,peeking only at day’s end,no longer pretendingthey don’t smell,or that they’re a size smaller, larger,girl, boy. Brown, cracked,leather stretched over
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The 26 was Friday. Nothing stirred, not a mouse. Discarded paper piled around rum cake crumbs he’d eaten. New year celebration come early. Drunk, he wasn’t sure on what but it helped. Alone, he swallowed truth; there was always next year. Too far away, an April fool.
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“Heather died.” Those were the first words out of his mouth. I’d picked up Don’s call on the fourth ring with a cheerful, “Hey Don, what’s up?” His voice collapsed on her name. I remembered how it felt when my old man passed—how I’d scrolled through a Rolodex of forty names, hoping maybe some of
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…Texas. Miles came on smooth,took the wrinkle outof speakers too tinnyfor his magic. The skyline could have been Tokyo,Manhattan, Paris,but it wasn’t—it was Pasadena. I settled for a Pasadena somewhere in Texas,not even California,sandwiched at Jake’s Baron a Taco Tuesday,35 floors of heat abovea mixed-use zoning fiasco,where business sucks bad enoughthey serve two-dollar fish tacos.
BB Grey--musings 