Rolling My Eyes

Outside the sky looks hazy. I notice my windows need cleaning. Sara runs around in her short skirt and pink shirt. She must be cold. My daughter wears her jeans, at least. The three boys ride their bike lazily, circle after circle in the driveway. The Bratz are everywhere. Even coming off of the stereo. And then they are off to Jamie-Lynn's, my daughter pops her head in the door and is gone again. The work is piled up on the desk. A deadline Wednesday. Two deadlines Thursday. One extension until Sunday. At the dreaded midnight. Kittens are everywhere. One stupid one always caught under the couch. And the house is so messy, I wish the city would find a reason to just bulldoze it. And Charlie is gone. A polite fuck you and the blocked door. For three days, I have secretly wanted to strangle any person who smiles, as I smile back at them, but I don't. Because smiling. That's what friends are for. I do my dishes first. Placing the glasses along the outerside of the dra...

The boys were playing Flamenco Sketches , in the background and she was looking up at me from underneath that red hat of hers. Her eyes were the same colour as the smoke coming off my cigarette. We were sitting near the back, at one of the tables and not in the office. She never wanted to go back in there. "I don't know what you want from me, Ellie," I shook my head at her. "More than this, Addley, more than this." Her gloved hand waved in the air, stopping on the boys. "My Daddy says I cannot come here anymore. He says niggers are good for nothing, except drinking and smoking their lives away...and that is all I see when i am here." "This is all I have ever wanted," I swept my hand around to show her what she had shown me. I stopped on the boys too and we both watched them play for a minute, before I spoke again. "You're a big girl now, Ellie. You're 18. You don't got to listen to your Daddy any more." "I thoug...

The sun was just starting to set and the world took on a hazy orange that he could see in the corners of his eyes. He turned off the radio. The silent air that did not come in, through the open windows of his car, made him wonder if the day's heat would linger on through the night, despite all the weather reports calling for rain. The highway was an almost empty one. He was figuring he was tired of hocking toothpicks and napkins and cheap ketchup packets. He was tired of explaining the refinement of salt and the brittleness of the plastic cutlery sold by the other guys. The thing he did most in his life was drive the highways; the endless highways. But he wanted to walk. He wanted to run. He wished he were Wade Boggs. Or at least Don Mattingly . But instead, he'd been up and down those damn roads so many times, in the past twenty-three years that his mind seldom thought of the road always in front of him. He left that work up to his eyes. Just like he had back when he had ...