Waving Not Drowning

Old ghosts rise from their graves at the most unexpected of times. Wendy upgrades her phone, from her old beloved 3Gs to the newest, soon to be obselete model. Upload, download, backup, and there they are. Pictures. Videos. Their life together, encoded in bits of data. Files locked away, buried on her hard drive, disguised, encrypted, almost forgotten. With a single stroke of her finger every iota of her being is overcome with the physical sense memory of him, palpable on the screen in front of her, crystalline sharp, tangible. Them. Together. Candid, intimate moments, for their eyes only, painful and raw, full of the best intentions, the most generous of expectations. Pure desire and lust, burgeoning, all consuming love. And texts, reams and reams of text messages, with more pictures and films, none of which will survive the transfer. Sadly ironic how the most communicative part of their relationship will disappear forever, dissipate into the ether. It is untransferable now; like the ...

She's allowed one more cookie. One more, not two or three, god forbid four- that would be the end of the world as Sharron knows it. It's a very big deal with her mom, controlling Sharron's cookie intake. Some call her big boned but really she is heavy, overweight for a young girl, what in the old days they would call husky. Sharron is completely obsessed with cookies. Peanut butter chocolate chip oatmeal raisin cookies to be exact, fresh from the oven, when they're almost too hot to eat without scorching off the roof of your mouth. Sharron peels one off the parchment and juggles it back and forth between her fingertips hand to hand, blowing on it until it's just the right temperature then she closes her eyes, inhales the nutty sweet chocolatey smell, and busts out in a grin from ear to ear. She tries to measure her bites- four is ideal but sometimes she gets greedy and inhales an entire cookie in two, or on a rare occasion, one and a half. She can't help it: the...

Fifty five minutes for a 5 minute errand. He just would not shut up. Heather was leaning out the door, bracing it open with her foot, about as subtle as a truck, trying to leave the store. He would not stop talking- about himself, his career, his pure potential. Heather's mentally calculating how late she's running for her 1 oclock appointment, trying to manifest a way to transmogrify herself via an imaginary telelporter to get to Chelsea in time.  Just Shut Up. An hour ago she was mildly smitten. He was a doppleganger of her ex, same ginger hair, dimpled chin, light blue eyes, perfect bow shaped lips, rare on a man. After twenty minutes of monologue all resemblance evaporated. His hands were small, nail beds torn and ragged, his neck showed premature signs of aging and a distinct lack of physical activity in his life. What was she expecting from a computer IT guy, not like he rips himself away from his motherboard to bust out a quick ten miler or 5 hour ride. All she needed wa...