A gentle moon lit the cavernous crags of Chocolate Gorge. The little dwarves huddled together, afraid of what dangerous creatures lurked in the dark, waiting to leap upon them and devour them whole. The band of twelve strode forward without making a sound.

Then came a gushing torrent of chocolate. It filled the tight valley with a sugary surge of sweetmilk. The little dwarves screamed and yelled, scrambling for something, anything, to hold onto. When the liquid chocolate river finally died down, the little dwarves found themselves trapped, snared inside thin candy-coffin shells.

The bunnies hopped out from the darkness.

A little girl asked her father to make her a horse.

Her father became a scientist and built a mechanical horse with a silver saddle.

The little girl said no, she wanted a real horse.

Her father became a biologist and created a live horse from a petri dish of cells.

The little girl said no, she wanted a unicorn.

Her father became a sorcerer and conjured a mighty horn upon the horse's brow.

The little girl said no, she wanted a Pegasus unicorn.

Her father became a father and said she would have to do her chores first.

"You don't drink coffee."

He took a sip and swallowed. "Don't I?"

"No, you don't."

He took a loud slurp this time. "Looks like I am."

"Must taste awful."

He put the cup to his lips and took three quick sips. "It's delicious."

"Really."

He swallowed a big gulp and choked a little. "Really."

"You don't have to lie to me."

He took a tiny sip and wiped his lips. "You lied to me first."

"Don't justify your behavior with mine."

He finished off the cup. "That's tasty."

"The coffee?"

He laughed. "No."

My father started joking about the sun when his hairline disappeared over his forehead horizon. 

"More surface area for soaking up rays!" 

His job worked him to death, dragging him out of bed in the still-dark hours and etching the furrows of worry and exhaustion deeper into his face. 

Before the mortician made him up for show, I looked into my father’s sun-warmed face and noticed the paleness of every relaxed crease.  All those years of anxiety hid so much of him.   

I had to get those white lines outside – into the light.

His discontent was a river, wide and deep.
His life flowed like driftwood on the current; on the surface, gone in turbid whitewater. Habitually stuck in the reeds waiting for the next nudge of current to get him back into slipstream.
Mostly, mostly, his days meandered in the placid flow. He woke before his alarm, brushed, flossed, ate sensibly, commuted. On his return, he ate sensibly, read books, dusted. A decent bedtime.
There, in the darkness, he’d hit the rapids. Heart-pounding angst. Tears, snot-filled gasps. His wish from the swirl of his life?
The chance encounter, a touch, intimate.

I sat at the bar, drinking a watery mojito and watching the young girls out by the pool. It embarrassed me…made me feel dirty.

Back in the day, this place had real class. A place where a man knew his way around a machete, and women made mosquito nets out of bridal veils. Now, it’s just…

“Disney”

I threw back the last of my drink, and a rogue ice cube jumped up and caught me in the front tooth. I gripped it between two fingers and gave it a wiggle.

Maybe there was some action in the casino.

As a boy, he was often mistaken for a girl; long brown hair that turned auburn in the summer sun, eyelashes thick, lips full, creamy skin and a delicate nose that wrinkled when he smiled.
Heat would flush his face when the ladies at the bank fawned over him, misguided.
The gnarled hand shook, yellow-stained nicotine blossoms between the fingers. Nails ragged, chewed quick. The anger that never abates.
Buzzers sound and he swings his legs off the cot and stands before the bars. Tendrils of hand-drawn tattoos run like vines across his skin.
All that innocent beauty, vanished forever.

37 steps; left turn; 29 steps; catch the bus.

Outside my oversized window they are there again, sitting together, holding hands on a bench. Faces turned toward each other, smiling as they wait.

37 steps; left turn; 29 steps; catch the bus.

She's alone today, this is not uncommon. Unusual is her hands fluttering at her eyes even as she defiantly tries to restrain them in her lap. Down the block he's walking away, head down, long strides, with his fists shoved into his pockets.

37 steps; left turn; 29 steps; catch the bus.

The bench waits, empty.

“What is it, Alex?” Edith asked.
“It’s a calculator.”
Alex cradled it like a baby bird, gently blowing the sand from it.
“What do you do with it?”
“Nothing now, but before the war people used it for all kinds of thing, like counting money”
“Oh yeah…money.”
Edith remembered the stories. You needed money to buy things, but she never quite understood. Weren’t things just there for the taking?

Alex turned it over and over in his hands. There were tears in his eyes. Finally, he took a step back and pitched it into the sea.

The weight of the cold uncaring laptop pressed gently on his inner thighs while he struggled to remember a tidbit that had come and gone, leaving him sure he'd been inspired but feeling all the more useless for having lost it.

The idea skirted away from him like a little girl's laugh in the hazy playgrounds of memory.

All he could get a firm hold on was the feeling of dissatisfaction. He knew he was stupidly trying to escape thinking by writing, but everything kept cycling around to that rather-be-attending-to need.