Tag Archive: bold women

Believing

Sunset blooms like a bruise in the wintry gray sky. Gentle night will bring snow flurries falling like stars. Kia waits on the porch to see.

A Beaut

The thwack of typewriter keys fills the repair shop. The owner is a beaut, like his vintage machines. Ann takes him and a Smith Corona home.

To Be Heard

Mia whistles, not a song, but a cry like the wind. Twilight mockingjays answer. Tidying her one plate, one cup, one fork, she calls to them.

Home

Paula grew up on a cul-de-sac. Now she lives on a dead end. She’s traversed many and many a roundabout in the interim, all leading her here.

Silver Hair

Maeve was 84, rode a ’59 Schwinn, and ran a printing press. She left it to her bike mechanic, Sam. In his comics, she became an enchantress.

Feeling Her Way

Even Mia’s bulldog learned to love the rain. They’d prowl the Oregon coast, faces upturned, whether spritz or splat. It healed Mia’s vision.

Raw

The gash in the wall exposes twelve layers of paint and wallpaper. Jill scrapes it down to raw pine boards. The past crackles to the floor.

Second Sight

Ann drew her God with crayons as a girl. Now an old woman, when she stills her mind to pray, she sees that same orange and red ball of fire.

Smith Corona

The pixie cut girl flashed a smile and a sign, ‘Typewriter Troubadour.’ The French twist woman gave $5 for one manually typed word, ‘Hello.’

Exuberance

Plucking a harp that isn’t there is not like air guitar. It looks strange. Jillian can’t speak, but she plays murmured concertos flawlessly.

Running Away

Leigh rode to the end of the line, walked the last mile, sailed to the edge of the sea, until she was off the map. And still, she was Leigh.

Being Art

She wanted the languid serenity of a Gauguin, but Tia knew she was a complex Picasso: when young, a sketch; by 60, a canvas bold with color.

Fingerpaint

Bette woke just as sunset blackened the desert sky. Then she dipped her hands in bright acrylics to fingerpaint red-gold truth by moonlight.

In the Dark

The streetlight often blinked when Lucy passed beneath it. She made wild kinetic energy. One night she stopped a switchblade with a stare.

Long Story

Vivian had an old oak cut down. The doves protested. She put up a feeder. It brought rats. She put out poison. That’s what killed the cat.

Electricity

Jamie leans on a power pole. Rusted staples twice her age prickle her aching back. She’s jolted by lingering love for hundreds of lost cats.

Sailor

Helen lived in a houseboat on a creek off a bay. A century-old drawbridge rose whenever Jack sailed in to see her. It made her boat shimmy.

Oz

Em packed pantyhose, pumps and lunch, but her snowy hour commute east became 2,000 miles west to a place where ruby camellias were blooming.

Beauty

Linda Rose became a rose. It happened in her sleep. She dreamed the scent of an American Beauty, but she woke to the tears of a Cherokee.

Seeds

At seven, Anna planted sunflower seeds to see them grow madly tall. At seventy, she starts marigolds in a windowbox to see golden God again.

Polka Dots

Her hair, red as Georgia clay, hung longer than her blue polka dot shorts. Ed stared and gave it thought, but damned if he didn’t turn away.