scoutfinch
I thought I was clever, avoiding a shower and just wiping off using a rag and the water faucet. But when I felt the sting on my foot, as the poison entered my blood stream, I knew my mistake. Fire ants swarmed over my foot, and as I scrambled to get them off they put more poison in my very sensitive-allergic-to-fire-ants foot.
I sit on the back porch, overlooking the lake with the quaint house and rocky mountains behind me. Grandma, grandpa, and mom and dad work in the kitchen on dinner. I sit with Uncle while he pollutes the fresh Colorado air with his cigarette.
I didn't mean it when I said you were pretty. I didn't mean it when I said you were smart. I didn't mean it when I said you were better than me. I was just too scared, and you were simply too mean.
Maroon spilled from his mouth, and mingled on the floor with the tears that came from his now unseeing eyes.
Sitting on the dock, with the sun burning my legs despite grotesque amounts of sunscreen, I was very happy. Aunt cast her line and started to reel furiously. Excited we stood up to see what she caught... nothing. The line was caught.. As she pulled and tugged fruitlessly, the wind picked up, grabbed her beach chair, and threw it right over the edge into the murky water. Guess who was given the honor of retrieving it.
"I believe what I believe, it's what makes me what I am..."
I always sang along to this rockin' Third Day song, but only recently did the true meaning hit me. A firm declaration of faith -- something a bit intimidating to casually sing about.
It crept in. I didn't mean to let it show. But it did. After months of long distance phone calls It crept in. Maybe it had been there in every smile and laugh but this time she saw it. I had meant to hold off till the perfect time, and apparently that was now. In a smile, "I love you" crept in and she saw it and smiled back.
It has been months -- almost a year and now our reunion is a mere week away. After surviving on lengthy phone conversations, sweet letters in the mail, and the occasional video chat for so long, I cannot begin to imagine what that long expected embrace will feel like.
Clawing, creeping, crawling, we will rise. We are not the things you see in the movies, or the things you shoot in the video games. We are not the lumbering stupid giants you wish we were. We are your worst nightmare -- the living dead.
He keeps forgetting. Every day I visit and say the same things, tell the same stories, and answer the same questions. Every day I show him the same garden and sit on the same bench, and every day he keeps forgetting. He forgets the stories, the questions, the garden, the bench, and me. He keeps forgetting me, his wife.
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