Comments on The Little Truths Writing Contest

• little truths contest
• Posted by Robert on February 25, 2008 at 10:35pm EST

• The baby continued to cry, retching up noises of such deep origin, laced with such absolute despair, that the other passengers’ looks of annoyance began to change to genuine worry. The man stared down at the writhing creature in his arms. “Jesus, would you give it some milk?” someone yelled from the back. “Where’s it mother?” The man didn’t look up. “I just gave her milk,” he said. “She doesn’t have a mother.”

• Little Truths
• Posted by Mike on February 29, 2008 at 12:20pm EST

• “So what time do you wake up?” I asked my tenth grade student. She’s got no dad and her mother is a drug addict. She says she stays with several different people, but I think she’s been living with her boyfriend. She says she sometimes does, but denies they sleep together. “Well,” she said, “Usually seven, but this morning Corey rolled over about six and pulled the sheets off me. I couldn’t sleep after that.”

• Posted by Greg on February 29, 2008 at 1:40pm EST

• It is early spring. Smells are exploding. Today I begin to connect the dots. I remember the scent that filled the air twenty-five years ago as my innocence was torn from me. The musty aroma engulfs me. It is the stench of old dank wood that never dries out, where moisture hides in dark corners – wood that needs to be ripped up and thrown away, replaced with the sharp smell of fresh, unblemished lumber.

• Denial
• Posted by Andrea W. Herrmann , Professor of Rhetoric and Writing at University of Arkansas at Little Rock on March 1, 2008 at 3:55pm EST

• The party ends, his hand up her sweater, his lips on her cheek. He's on the pedals coming home, weaving left while I'm coaxing us right. At home, we shout. I must defend MY flirtatiousness, as he throws back a whiskey neat. "It's over," he says, pointing the gun to his temple. "I can't trust you." I wrestle it away. Golly, looking back, I see what a danerous game we played those 25 years.

• Posted by Roy Vallis on March 1, 2008 at 5:00pm EST

• He thought he was commiserating, putting the abandonment of his three ex-wives on par with a girl who’d been malpracticed to death by a bunch of distracted backwater incompetents. Losing a child was somehow philosophically, existentially, the same as divorcing three times, the last from a woman who used to be a man. What do a diabetic coma and irreconcilable differences have in common? The connections escaped him entirely. The pain lingers. It’ll do that.

• Little Truths Entry
• Posted by Corina on March 2, 2008 at 5:50am EST

• When I was eleven, my family moved to a bigger house. While moving, I discovered a note from my mother to my oldest brother. The note was old and wrinkled and worn. It had gotten stuck behind a piece of furniture for years. It read: “Bring me a Hershey bar from the freezer. Don’t let the others see.” My brother was sneaking candy to her right under our noses! We still laugh at that note!

• Little Truths Entry
• Posted by Corina on March 2, 2008 at 5:50am EST

• I hadn’t believed it would ever happen until that call. She was dying. This was it. I was thrown into a panic, action, and thoughts. Taking care of the travel arrangements and notifying everyone, the momentum kept me going through the flights and driving my rental car to Grandma’s street. I hadn’t been there in many years. I was there. It was happening. Between flights, the call had come. Grandma let go. She was gone.

• Posted by Pamela on March 2, 2008 at 11:15am EST

• Incensed that she would let him back into her life and the home we had finally made away from him, I found the courage to stand face to face and look her in the eyes.

  "Ma, we need to talk about what happened to me. We've never talked about it," I said.

  "How would you like it if it was your own father and he let his friends do it to you too?"

  Papa?

• Little Truths
• Posted by Elizabeth Nieckoski , Sr DBA/System Analyst at Keene State College on March 4, 2008 at 9:05am EST

• Sweat slides down her back under the green polka-dotted dress. She cringes with every thump of dirt hitting wood. A tear slides down her cheek as she reaches for her brother’s larger hand. His hand is wet and hot. The voice drones on and on like a lone bee hovering close to wild rose brambles. Then there is silence as the small group walks through the pasture toward the road and waiting black cars.

• The New Yorker
• Posted by Aaron Baker at UALR on March 4, 2008 at 10:35am EST

• The picture was stark: Michael on the toilet, New Yorker sideways in one hand as if for a pin-up, the other hand at a provocative right angle. A commentary on literature, “Perfect!” I said, “I grew up with that magazine--and so did my mom!”

  “My family is pretty much illiterate,” he offered, “once my dad read me a story and kept getting stuck on this word. Finally my mom grabbed it and said ‘porcupine.’”

• Posted by Webwriter on March 4, 2008 at 11:40am EST

• Eyes locked, as they had been for hours and hours and hours, the words tumbled out in a flood of identity, comparison, connection and wonder.

  Dawn crept slowly across the sky unnoticed. The only reality in the room was a jumbled mix of excitement, eager questions and, yes even fear.

  Could it be? Is this it? Indeed, soul mates have been joined forever, on this, their first encounter.

• Posted by Hester on March 4, 2008 at 12:05pm EST

• For 13 years since my mother’s death I have struggled to make peace with her. On her birthday this year she kicks down my door with this one: all the qualities I have most despised about her – her brawling, boozing, indiscriminate fucking, total disregard for the future or others, assuming that only her own pleasure or pain mattered – these sentiments ARE my mother. Had she been a nicer woman, I would never have been born.

• Little Truths
• Posted by Paul Michael Dellostritto on March 4, 2008 at 3:20pm EST

• and i can't place it.
  curves, contours, tracing... all of this i can do.
  dips in between the ribs.
  the spine meeting at the lower back creeping through ever. so. slightly.
  the way hands just fit the sides of bodies amazes me...
  palm down.
  fingers out to dead air.
  the thumb going over raised ribs.
  the rib cage expanding and contracting with each breath taken...
  the stomach tightening.
  my palms still down extended to dead air, yours clenched.

• Posted by Webwriter on March 4, 2008 at 3:50pm EST

• The abandoned sea bag or the trail of clothing would tell the story if my dreams weren’t still at the corners of my mind. I sense it even before awareness dawns--there’s weight on the other side of my bed. It jolts me into wakefulness. Soft breathing. Light snores. Oh My God! He’s home! All the nightmareish stories and adjustments will come later. Right now, this instant, nothing matters in the world except, He’s Home!

• Little Truths and Possibilities
• Posted by Matt on March 4, 2008 at 3:50pm EST

• Despite the pills, I was able to still find meaning in the meaningless; hope in even the dumbest of details. My doctor would prefer me and my compulsions to be blind to the world of details. But at three in the morning, 20 mg of anxiety medicine pushing through my body, I realized:

  This world is so full of possibilities, and yet maybe nothing at all.

• Posted by Aniko on March 4, 2008 at 6:30pm EST

• I couldn’t figure out the woman next door. One day she would be smiling and chatting happily, asking me to watch her baby while she ran errands, or offering to watch mine. The next day she would pass me with an icy face, without a word.

  A few of these cycles later, I noticed something: she would often leave the side gate open at night. Bad days were those when no one had come.

• Posted by Aniko on March 4, 2008 at 7:10pm EST

• I knew the landlord. We’d grown up in the same building, but I moved abroad for a while and hadn’t seen him since. After his mother’s suicide, my folks rented his apartment for me.

  When he called to say he would visit, I felt weird. What was he going to say? Would he mention his mom, whose home-baked cookies we used to share after school?

  He didn’t. He complained about the weather and crooked politicians.

• Posted by Your Loving Daughter, Faith on March 4, 2008 at 7:10pm EST

• Dear Mom,

  I know it’s frustrating. I have, however, lived with the ramifications of your "Faith." I accept your adult choices. I’m glad you are happy. To me, God just cannot be personified in a man named John, no matter how many biblical passages he twists from his pulpit in order to drain your bank account, numb your mind and isolate you. No, I do not share your “Faith.” I never will. Stop asking.

• Little Truths Entry
• Posted by Randolph L. Peterson at University of the Ozarks on March 4, 2008 at 7:30pm EST

• Once, on my morning drive, a small dog fell under the wheel of my car. Before I felt or heard the hit, I saw in the mirror the motionless body behind and drove on. I was unwilling to retrace my path, so my evening route crossed the roadway a block north of the scene. I felt relieved that the dog was gone, but all day the next day, I sat at my desk uncertain.

• Posted by michael , Untitled (for K) on March 4, 2008 at 9:25pm EST

• Now I play the whole night in my head like it’s a super-8 film projected on the wall in a dark room somewhere filled with rows of metal chairs and Downtown Train by Tom Waits is playing. She was wearing this red pea coat with big black buttons and she took pulls off cigarettes, long drowsy drags, and on the ferris wheel when she laughed and grabbed my thigh i shook with something mean

• Posted by Webwriter on March 5, 2008 at 4:45am EST

• She’s incredibly bright. You just can’t BS your way out with her. Her inquisitive mind won’t accept trivial answers. I dreaded it, but expected it when it came. “Where’s Grannie?” The two-year-old petulance crept into her voice. “Gone home to Iowa,” I said, “remember?” She hung her head. Golden hair sank to cover huge, tearful blue eyes. “But, I wanted to kiss her.” Inspiration struck. “Let’s BLOW kisses to her!” Her smile lit my world.

• Posted by Webwriter on March 5, 2008 at 4:45am EST

• When I wrote to her, it was with the understanding that Alex, turning eighteen, might have questions. My intent was to provide answers in whatever manner he chose. It would be unfair of me to leave him wondering. It would also be unfair of me to place undue burden on him by pursuing more than he wished. Torn, I realized I just needed to know that my tiny son, suddenly grown, survived. Now, I wait.

• These Look Great!
• Posted by Oronte on March 5, 2008 at 9:25am EST

• Keep 'em coming, folks. And this isn't an entry, just a true-enough oddity:

  I dreamt last night I shoveled snow and woke up with a sore back.

• Cooled Down and Dead
• Posted by Rhonda Conner , Uof A Coop Ext Svc Web Submissions Editor/UALR Grad Student at UAEX / UALR on March 5, 2008 at 2:10pm EST

• Our healthy dog, Blacky, was “in heat,” one simmering summer evening, humping what he could—our legs, etc. L. decided to hose Blacky down. “That’ll cool you off,” L. said. Wet, still, and quiet, Blacky held his head down seemingly humiliated. Mysteriously, we found him dead the next cloudy morning. Shocked and sad, L. sat in the swing on our ranch house porch and mumbled, “I did not mean to cool him down that much.”

• Posted by Webwriter on March 5, 2008 at 3:30pm EST

• Thank you, Oronto. It's good to know you're enjoying the fruits of your inspiration!

• Posted by Webwriter on March 5, 2008 at 3:30pm EST

• How can she wear mini skirts and glittery toy heels even on frigid days? Why does she chase the boys for kisses? Where did she learn to do her hair like she’s twenty instead of five? When she asks my daughter to sleepovers, why does she include a bribe? I often asked these questions as I watched little Lulu on the playground. They were answered today. I met her mother. She’s learning from a Professional.

• Posted by Pequena on March 6, 2008 at 4:25am EST

• Years later, she could still hear the disapproving voice. “You were so cute when you were little!”

  She looked in the mirror--at her black and silver hair cropped short and feisty, at the adamant brows, the deep wrinkles that snapped into place by her eyes and mouth when she grinned. “You,” she assured the reflection, “are a cute girl.”

• Posted by MarcusBales on March 6, 2008 at 8:15am EST

• The silver jets align, above my head, and turn across that famous wild blue sky,
  then build a stem of white trails three miles high. I watch the highest jet, and when it goes on up alone the others, like a rose unfolding, or fountain breaking as it grows, peel away, drop down, and thunder by to shake me with how much he loved to fly, and scream and boom their sorrow that he’s dead.

• Mr. Skank
• Posted by Bob Schenck on March 6, 2008 at 8:25am EST

• Life? Too hard! He? Rightly pissed! In this reflection Mr. Skank had missed the tiny diamond lights by which the vast black night sky is so brilliantly starred and twice six thousand million miracle eye mirrors are nightly lightly kissed. Not out but in, not up but down, he stared. And in that well if he saw hell, who cared? So stank Mr. Skank, one fine blind big old fat tub of lard!

• Need
• Posted by Bob Schenck on March 6, 2008 at 8:40am EST

• My class was discussing the frustrations of our culture. Students deplored violence, materialism, divorce. The list went on. But my own pet peeve had not been mentioned. “One thing I’d love to be rid of,” I volunteered, “is advertising.” A young man’s hand shot into the air. He screwed his face into a caricature of intellectual pain. Too disgusted to wait for acknowledgment he exclaimed: “But without advertising, how would we know what we need?”

• History
• Posted by Bob Schenck on March 6, 2008 at 8:40am EST

• I was reviewing dates listed by Student Services. I asked my students why we celebrate a day in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. A woman raised her hand. “Yes?” “Because he stood up for equal rights for all people regardless of the color of their skin,” she said. “Yes,” I responded, “and I believe the way he stood up is important, too. Tell me, what was the main method he employed?” “Riots,” she said.

• Posted by Romie on March 6, 2008 at 8:45am EST

• The rug merchants shut me in a small Morrocan room.

  "You are a movie star," they said. "You are married to a wealthy man."

  "No," I replied.

  Disappointed, they fed me mint tea.

• Posted by Tooks on March 6, 2008 at 9:15am EST

• They tell me they count ants in the desert; one by one by one under an orange sun. War-induced sobriety, alcoholics rejoice. Survivors of one of the worst attacks in Mosul play playstation on Christmas Eve and speak through pictures. Digital images of gold souks in Bahrain, crescent smiles where the sand meets the Arabian Gulf, and – at last – crisp black shards of a melted convoy that once held their friends. They stopped taking pictures.

• Posted by Jeffrey on March 6, 2008 at 10:30am EST

• His whiskey drained, my father watched a satellite cross the night sky of Sun City and thought about his nephew in Iraq. “Those sons of bitches war mongerers,” he muttered. He’s ex-Marine, was in Korea, voted Republican all his life. “I never told you,” he said, his eyes soft, “but if your brother had been drafted in Vietnam, we’d have gone to Canada.” He clinked the ice in his glass, kept watching the sky.

  (75 words: how "creative" is allowable? This kind of happened.)

• B.C.
• Posted by Bob Schenck on March 6, 2008 at 11:40am EST

• Taxes? High. Rulers? Mean. Shelter? Sky. God? Unseen. Journey? Far. Willing? Able. Light? A star. Rest? A fable. Status? Poor. Winter? Night. Labor? Sure. Chances? Slight. Truth? A hurt. Love? A cry. Heaven? Dirt. Hope? A lie.

• Little Truth
• Posted by Joan Dahlen , Adjunct Instructor at local college on March 6, 2008 at 1:45pm EST

• A Little Truth
  Joan Dahlen
  joandahlen@optonline.net

  Walking down Court St. on a hot afternoon with my daughter and her 4 year old grandson Byron, we came to yet another store window filled with fans that he begged and cried to go in and see. "Megan," I said cautiously, "Do you ever worry that his fits and screams for fans and trains is a sign of--" "Of what?" said Megan angrily. "Autism," I whispered. Her face froze. "Don't be ridiculous. He just likes them a lot."

• Posted by Nels on March 6, 2008 at 1:45pm EST

• He opened the door to his truck and moved to sit inside. "One more thing," I said. He looked at me, head down, eyes up. "Maybe Ed's the man to give you everything you deserve. Maybe his entire heart can be yours." My voice cracked; his eyes didn't move. "But he's not the first man to fall in love with you. No matter what, that will always be me." He looked down. I turned away.

• No prizes for Inside Higher Ed employees, but it's a good story
• Posted by Kathlene , Publisher at Inside Higher Ed on March 6, 2008 at 2:15pm EST

• He was only seven so didn’t call it existential angst. A school assignment involved interviewing a parent and I was handy. Predictable questions – favorite food, childhood pet’s name. Then the kicker. He was to ask me a question to which he really wanted the answer. “Well,” I asked “what do you want to know about me?” He looked up from the careful printing of my middle name (Marie) and asked “How do you ALWAYS know?”

• little truths
• Posted by Peggy La Fleur on March 6, 2008 at 2:35pm EST

• Today at noon Mass at the Cathedral, Monsignor reminded the faithful that “as the parched earth longs for water, the broken heart longs for love.” And I wondered where the geologist is who will close the fault line across my heart? Where is the surgeon who will heal my stress-fractured heart? And, where did I put that tube of glue that I need to seal the crack myself?

• Night Action
• Posted by Val Martinez , Director Language & Literacy at Baptist University of the Americas on March 6, 2008 at 3:45pm EST

• When we were on a night jump with the 82nd Airborne, through the darkness an unceasing cry of “AAAAAAAGH!” preceded one jumper from the aircraft to the ground. He had accidentally crisscrossed the left and right leg straps right over his private parts. Although the soldier was not hurt, his ego was badly bruised because he had just learned the hard way not to skip the jumpmaster’s inspection even though you are in a hurry.

• Everything Is So Much Less Than It Could Have Been
• Posted by Jim Reische on March 6, 2008 at 4:05pm EST

• My heart sank as I looked in through the window from my perch among the bushes. The twilight peered in over my shoulder, too, carelessly daubing my father's parched hand in shadow as he sealed the battered envelope. He swung around and presented it to her, halfheartedly, his shoulders sagging.

  It was over. I felt myself pitching forward into cold, limitless space.

• A Family Story
• Posted by Christopher Dean , Lecturer at UCSB on March 6, 2008 at 4:30pm EST

• Dad is a tall man who refuses to speak with his hands. Tonight his low voice moves slowly, every word traveling from the Utah canyonlands of his birth to this moment.

  Eyes avoiding me, he tells me this story. “Last week I heard the doorbell ring . . . around midnight. She was outside our house in her pink robe. She looked at me and said . . .’I’m lost. Can you help me?’”

• How Does It feel?
• Posted by Pat at Bates College on March 6, 2008 at 5:45pm EST

• Like a Rolling Stone didn’t belong in a cardiologist’s waiting room. The clientele was too old. But when I looked closely, I realized they weren’t much different than me. Old boomers with bad tickers. You used to be so amused…No one was swaying in their seats thinking how Dylan had set them free. They were reading AARP Magazine and high cholesterol brochures. These are my peers. I felt all the Dylan drain out of me.

• The Big Sister
• Posted by Lil Sib on March 6, 2008 at 5:45pm EST

• I sat there in the middle of the campus quad looking up at the stars dotting the night sky pondering the question of how I became the Big Sister. Was it the moment She told me, "I think I'm pregnant?" or the day She made me accompany her to the doctor's office to get the official word. No, I think it was afterwards in her bedroom when I watched her feverishly dig through her closet and find her old prom dress so that She could tear it apart and sew it back into a makeshift wedding dress. Wasn't She supposed to be the responsible one, the one I looked up to? From that day forward I became the Big Sister instead.

• Posted by upright citizens on March 7, 2008 at 5:10am EST

• I asked her why. She said smoking was control. I was naïve then. Yet there she was: tubes strangling arm, dripping unknown chemicals, machines counting down.
  Daddy left the room, I never saw him cry. So I stood bravely, while Mama coughed my name.
  “Light me a cig.”
  She inhales as her grip goes limp to white-coat men who enter. I pick it up, smoldering, coughing clouds of smoke.

• Posted by Ginger on March 7, 2008 at 7:00am EST

• She was wearing her favorite skirt – navy with polka dots – and her backpack was slung over her shoulder just so. She felt cute, confident. Suddenly, a bicyclist came up fast behind her. Anxious, she thought the woman on the bike might proposition her. “Your skirt is up in the back,” the cyclist said quietly. Head down now, she raced inside, too embarrassed to even say thank you.

• Posted by doone on March 7, 2008 at 11:00am EST

• I read the obit today in the Times. Famous musician died. Late middle age, played with the most outrageous, groundbreaking musicians of his time. Many of them already gone. Died too young. Good grief, I smile, the memory refresh of a wild youthful night. Good concert, better party after where he held court with a four hose hookah beckoning the willing. We were all so willing in our youth.

• Little Truths Writing Contest
• Posted by caroline miranda on March 7, 2008 at 2:50pm EST

• Well-dressed people teemed in corridors, waiting for their courtroom, their judge, their opposition, in controlled agitation. Hundreds of them stood about, but no one was there. That was the strangeness of it all. They obsessed about the kaleidoscope of possible outcomes, the fear of not prevailing, the hope of winning, their justifications, what to argue in these unnatural circumstances, in this airtight world. Mostly they wondered what would happen. But no one was there.

• Little Truths entry
• Posted by Denize Springer , Publicist at San Francisco State University on March 7, 2008 at 4:00pm EST

• Whatever had hold of my grandmother slammed her back against the kitchen wall. Vomit rushed from her mouth with such force, I ran to the bedroom for the box of Kleenex. When I returned she was sitting in pools of her breakfast with her legs spread, revealing the tops of her stockings. "Gramma?" Her head resting on one shoulder she studied me without blinking. I got a little closer and the light left her eyes.

• little truths contest
• Posted by LITTLE TRUTH WRITER , IT'S IN THE GENES... on March 8, 2008 at 6:30am EST

• After my mother died, my uncle visited our house. During dinner, he just happened to stopping eating to mention, “Did you know that your mother was in a convent.” My surprised look urged him to go on. “Yes, she was in the convent for about two years and left before taking her final vows to have a family.” I suddenly realized that DNA was the reason why I had been celibate for over twenty years.

• On behalf of Victoria Audley
• Posted by Oronte on March 8, 2008 at 10:05am EST

• Thinking back on my life’s little accomplishments led me to recall my feat of best turkey caller in Piqua, Kansas. I gleaned this particular talent watching Joe turkey rule the hen house ferociously. Getting into the squatting position with my arms as wings ruffled and wide I dip my neck up and down and reach from the bowels to erupt a warbling cry—-GobbbbbbbleGobbbbbblee, which not only startles but tickles the most stoic of students.

• You people are full of it
• Posted by Oronte on March 8, 2008 at 10:05am EST

• Truth, that is, and I couldn't be more pleased. About three more days of contest remaining, so put your relationship on hold, dump the kids with a neighbor, let your hygiene slide a little, and get those entries in!

• Ultimate Truth
• Posted by Bob Schenck on March 8, 2008 at 10:45am EST

• My wife and I had stopped at my Aunt Rosalie’s in Littleton for a visit before we drove on up to the mountains. Rosalie just listened as my wife described her Roman Catholic upbringing and I explained my recent infatuation with Zen Buddhism. Finally my wife and I were spent. We sat in silence for several seconds before Aunt Rosalie spoke. “My religion is be kind," she said, "and my church is whoever I’m with.”

• Epiphany
• Posted by Pamela on March 8, 2008 at 12:30pm EST

• It was as if a flash of sheet lightning had illuminated the darkest recesses of my subconscious, casting in silhouette the skeletal remains of those things that had been too painful to face before now. Fragments of times and places. Moments of terror and fear. Images that had been seared into my brain all came flooding back.
  My only conscious thought as the replay faded to black – My God, what had I really been through?

• On behalf of Frank, who left this on a different post
• Posted by Oronte on March 8, 2008 at 2:55pm EST

• The Great Lakes crisis created a need for French-speaking volunteers. Raised in Ohio, I thought they meant Lake Erie, so raised my hand. Next thing I knew I was southbound on a long-haul flight to the heart of darkness. Based in the Rwandan capital of Kigali, I made my way across the Congo border to Goma where an annual Miss Tutsi competition sought to break the monotony. The Great Lakes crisis resulted in the horrifying deaths of more than 800,000 persons, most killed with knives, machetes, clubs and bats. The absence of technology apparently was no hindrance to the impulse for carnage.

• Posted by Mrm on March 9, 2008 at 2:55pm EDT

• How could I talk of it? The words, those faithless whores, have left me. They could entice, they could seduce, and now they float away, weightless. The desire stirs but doesn’t rise. My love to you is just spastic fear. It would be a relief to eject my shame, articulating would cover it and hide it tenderly. But it is beyond hope now. I only long for the glint of razor, my ultimate lover.

• A Hard Truth
• Posted by Pamela on March 9, 2008 at 6:25pm EDT

• It was all an illusion. Wishful thinking in its truest form. A contradiction between the person I wanted to be and the person I am, between understanding what should be and what is. Perpetuated by a belief that if I kept the facade up long enough, it would become the reality. Hoping that in the end, if I got it right, I could make a difference.

• Posted by Jonathan Reinsdorf on March 10, 2008 at 4:25am EDT

• I'm tired from playing ball with dad and just finished a big dinner. Time to relax on the couch. Wait! There’s an intruder in the street. I start yelling my loudest, but dad tells me to hush. No gratitude even when the intruder hears me and runs away. Okay, back to the couch. Better yet, I will show everyone whose house this is and pee on the leg of the dining room table.

• Little Truths
• Posted by karla on March 10, 2008 at 4:25am EDT

• “We’re epoxy,” our very own Man of the Year—-whose thirty years of reckless uniqueness now qualify him as extraordinary rather than obtuse—-offered at the post-party. His champagne-induced theory claims lifetime friendships concoct variable chemistries: some glued with impenetrable epoxies, some with unreliable sticky-note adhesive. “Not neon-flashy,” he slurred, “but sturdy.” I glanced toward some flashy sticky-note friends who once promised epoxy. Parties and thirty years tell all.

• Same Old
• Posted by Bob Schenck on March 10, 2008 at 4:30am EDT

• The eternal tornadoes of war roar around the planet, one day here, the next day there, the next day here. Even places spared the whirlwind suffer collateral storms, the criminal rain of hot bullets, the random bolts of homicidal and suicidal lightning, the dread. Today this season's monster has been found guilty and will be hanged: hooray. Thousands celebrate. For the trillionth time we're told the best solution authority has to offer: Kill somebody.

• Zen
• Posted by Bob Again on March 10, 2008 at 4:30am EDT

• The emerald graygreen sign on the bank was very beautiful in the dark this morning on my drive to work. There'd been two deer car collisions already, my radio warned. I drove only the posted speed, resisting the ego urge to race, to get ahead, to win, coasting down the black concrete ribbon of road. How hard to be prudent! Yet if speeding I were to strike a child—a human fawn—how could I bear to live?

• Little Truths
• Posted by las on March 10, 2008 at 4:30am EDT

• They all interpreted the chaos of papers, butterflied books, and empty coffee cups as a monument to the misery of her existence. But alone in front of that disarray on one of those recklessly overheated winter nights in her apartment, the reality of her transgressive contentment came clear. She wiped her hands on her jeans to dry the crevices between her fingers, returned them to the keyboard, and wondered how exactly to break the news.

• Final Day!
• Posted by Oronte on March 10, 2008 at 9:00am EDT

• Our friend Winston Churchill said, "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. It is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Bring me my brandy, haw haw haw."

  And so today is the end of the beginning of our Little Truths contest. Get those entries in before midnight tonight! Now where are my cigars? Haw haw haw....

• Posted by Greg on March 10, 2008 at 9:55am EDT

• It was as if every chewin out that son-of-a-bitch had laid on me throughout our 17 years together was gathered up into one violent shove against my back – and “Fuck you!” finally burst forth like a seedling pushing through the soil into the light of day. I dropped the tool in my hand, turned my back on my father, and walked away. In more ways than one, I never returned.

• Arouse, O sleeping heart!
• Posted by Greg on March 10, 2008 at 10:45am EDT

• The sound of digital nothing humming in the background, he stares into the dullness of the day. The shit that is his life piles up on him, like so many other mornings. He tastes the shit in his coffee and cereal, sees it in the newspaper. Like a sudden breeze on a suffocating day, a mourning dove’s song breaks in. Unhurried. Timeless… He swallows. Breathes. His head lifts slightly. His sleeping heart begins to rouse.

• Posted by Aniko on March 10, 2008 at 12:40pm EDT

• I love how he asks me everything, literally everything, and expects me to know the answer—but it does get tiring at times. Occasionally, I think I deserve a break.

  “How does the TV work?” I echo his question. “Oh, you’re not old enough for that one yet. It’s too complicated.” He’s only three, after all.

  His eyes turn bright blue when he’s upset. “No, it’s not!” he snaps. It’s too compilgated for you, Mommy!”

• The girls
• Posted by S. Tyler on March 10, 2008 at 3:05pm EDT

• Six sisters, my cousins, perched around a small coffee table, books cluttered the cramped family room. Jaime, second oldest, turned as I entered and stormed, red-faced and teary, “This sucks! You have no idea!” She’s right, my mom’s in the next room with my dad and his brother. To my surprise, they divide her jewelry with tender remembrances, each asking another in turn if it’s something the other would like to keep, dysfunction subsiding.

• September 1997
• Posted by Christopher Dean , Lecturer at UCSB on March 10, 2008 at 3:40pm EDT

• From day one, the kid in the hat pissed me off. Every class his arms were a bored “x” across his chest, daring me to make him care about anything.

  Two weeks in, he sat in my office. After ten minutes of my droning to fill the space between us, the kid in the hat finally spoke. He sputtered out something that changed me forever: “I’m shy . . . but I wrote you this.”

• Posted by Tom , Abstraction on March 10, 2008 at 3:40pm EDT

• His verbal description of the facility's location wasn't sufficient; the names of the Mexican cities and states weren't familiar to me. So he drew a map, one that was impressive for its accuracy in terms of scale and detail, especially considering it was drawn with a pencil on a cocktail napkin. As he finished, I pointed to a triangle and asked if it was the facility. "No,” he said, “This is just a map."

• epiphany
• Posted by Don Foran at Centralia College on March 10, 2008 at 4:55pm EDT

• Having mentioned James Joyce, who knew well the Christian feast, used epiphanies in his stories, I wrote epiphanein on the board in Greek. After class, a young blonde who failed the last test ran up excited. She begged me to write "that like Greek word for her. Pleased, I asked, "Why does this interest you?" "For like my next tattoo." I knew not where. She left, light playing on her hair.

• On Behalf of Ms. S Tyler
• Posted by Oronte on March 11, 2008 at 6:45am EDT

• What’s this

  His finger brushed her palm. Through their fleet greeting, no eye contact, but a jolt through her body, cascading into her groin. Twelve months later they sit wordlessly in the darkness, will their elbows touch? The high school musical drones on, but they are together. He’s divorced, she’s married; yet happily? Lately, most thoughts crowded out by his clear blue eyes, the salt and pepper in his hair, as she glanced sidelong at him, warm, in the dark.

• Contest Has Closed
• Posted by Oronte on March 11, 2008 at 9:00am EDT

• That's it, folks! The contest is officially closed. Check back this week for the announcement of winning entries....