Ignorance Is Bliss

AE — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 21:03:59 +0000

The little girl looked out the window of the airplane. It was the second leg of what seemed to her like a very long journey. She’d begged for a window seat for both of the flights, but the first one had been in darkness and she’d seen very little but lights far below. They had been pretty, in a way… a lot like stars, in fact. She’d thought they were stars, actually, until she asked her mother, who had disabused her of that notion swiftly and in a very no-nonsense way.

“No, honey,” her mother had said in a very tired voice. “Those are just lights. Street lights, cars, lights in buildings. Nothing special.”

“Oh,” the girl had said, disappointed, and she’d turned her attention away from the window for the rest of the flight.

On this flight, though, she had been able to see the green and brown of fields and the gray strips that were roads and the tiny-looking buildings, at least for the beginning of it… but as the plane had climbed higher and higher, eventually it had broken through the ceiling of clouds hanging over the city and now when she looked out, clouds were all she could see… a vast and snowy expanse of them.

At least, she thought they were clouds. She was enjoying looking at them, and wasn’t about to ask her mother, just in case they weren’t.

Truth In Poetry

AE — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:41:41 +0000

The last star hung in the darkened sky for what seemed like ages. We watched it together, sitting hand-in-hand atop the pile of rubble left from a crumbled mountain. It flickered once, then started to wobble, and then finally, at long last, it fell… tumbling down into the dry bed where a river once ran to the sea.

I looked at him. He looked at me.

“Well,” I said. “It was nice while it lasted.”

“I could keep loving you a little longer, you know,” he said. “I don’t have to stop.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “A deal is a deal.”

Fantasy In Miniature » stars

Ignorance Is Bliss

Truth In Poetry