Little Girl

Little girl
Wearing a pink dress
Torn Hem
Blonde curls in pig tails
Tear streaked face
Sitting on the curb

Little girl
Mommy is sick
Daddy is dead
Uncle pays too much attention
Teacher doesn't notice
Grandparents on vacation

Little girl
Always made fun of
Never fits in
Doesn't want to
Doesn't need to
Blends in to the background

Little girl
Little voice
Screaming on the inside
Crying on the outside
Tears of hate
Cries of anguish

Little girl
Had enough
Grabbed a knife
Hidden in her skirt
Fought back
Blood on her hands

The Disease

Her words hang in the air like moisture sodden clouds. The weight of them, push his shoulders down so hard he practically doubles over. The silence stretches out between them for what feels like an eternity. The air practically pulled from his lungs blows the few strands of her hair off her face.

"The chemo stopped working. The cancer has spread." Her already frail fingers brush over his, years of working construction causing calluses to form on them. "He gives me 3 months... at the most." Her voice strains with the pain of telling her husband she's going to die.

His head drops onto the bed beside his wife, his body shaking with rage at first. 'This shouldn't be happening. Not to her. She's the strong one. I can't do this without her.' This had become his mantra over the past year. A lump was found in her right breast at a routine physical last spring. "Stage 3" they said. "With chemo and treatment, 80% survival rate" they said. "We'll get you through this" they said. They said nothing about the cancer spreading. They said nothing about her body having a reaction to the chemo. NOTHING about her dying. NOTHING about her never seeing her future children graduate high school. NOTHING about her not seeing her grandchildren born. NOTHING about living to a ripe old age and retiring to a home with her husband of only 2 years. NOTHING! If he wasn't holding her hand, he'd probably punch something or someone.

6 months ago the chemo was working, the tumors had shrunk by 55% and now it's spread to the remaining healthy parts of her body. It's infection carried through her blood, coursing through her veins, bringing death to everything it touched. She was now one of the living dead.

Heavy tears fall down his cheeks, leaving wet trails against his sun worn skin. His baby blue eyes raise to meet her forest green ones. She looks so much older, so worn and beaten. There are dark circles threatening to suck the color from her irises. She's a good 20 pounds underweight and she stopped eating almost altogether, living off a feeding tube just so she doesn't starve before the cancer kills her. Almost ironic.

The gold chain with a small cross he had given to her for her birthday this year, clung to her pasty chest. Her skin was so clammy lately, nothing like the lotion soft, pink skin he was used to. He could almost see her heart fluttering against her skin. She couldn't leave him, not like this, not NOW. Images of their first date all the way until last year flashed through his mind like rapid fire, each one burning its imprint on his mind. He could never, WOULD never forget her. She was his soul mate. She was forever his as he was forever hers. She just wouldn't be on this earth as long as he.

Her eyes had fluttered closed and her breathing was now labored as she slept. The setting sun casting colors and shadows across her angel like features. Her hair spread around her head like a halo and it was then that he knew he would be ok without her. Not that he wouldn't mourn. Not that he wouldn't miss her. Not that he wouldn't feel as if his heart was being ripped out of his chest. Just in the end, he would be ok. He was better because of having her in his life, if only for a short period of time.

He gave a small smile as that feeling held him, as her love for him wrapped around like a blanket and held him tight. He sent up a small prayer as his fingers closed the blinds. He slipped off his shoes before crawling into bed with his wife. As he drifted off to sleep, his hand pressed against her heart and he was again comforted. 3 months... better than nothing.

THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN by Garth Stein

Like Marley and Me, this is a story about a family and their dog. They have their ups and downs, gains and losses, laughter and tears. That's as far as the similarities go.

Enzo is a labrador mix, and this is his memoir.

Denny picked Enzo from a bunch of writhing, wrinkly puppies with a smile on his face and confidence in his choice. "This one." In an instant, the two are bonded and will only separate through death. Denny is a race car driver and Enzo falls in love with the "sport" as well, watching old racing tapes with Denny, listening to his critiques and praises and explanations. He talks to Enzo as if he's a human, something Enzo deeply appreciates.

Life takes its course. Denny falls in love with Eve, gets married and soon they are expecting a little one; Zoe. Enzo swears to Denny that he will protect Zoe from anything and everything that might look like its going to harm her. Nothing shall harm her, as long as he can help it.

Life continues on its crazy journey and Eve is sick, Enzo can smell it. Denny and Eve don't know why she's not feeling well, she won't go see anyone about it, she's scared she won't leave. But Enzo knows, he can smell the cancer that's eating away at her brain. Family drama soon follows and things are different. Eve and Zoe are gone. They see them almost every day, but they're at Eve's parents'.

Enzo doesn't understand certain things and this frustrates him. Gestures are all he has. The wag of his tail, the flick of his ear, the lapping of a tongue on your face... the droop of his head as he urinates on the floor because he can't get up. Life has passed him by and it has been good. Enzo is ready to move on from this life and be reborn into a man... for this is his belief. He is ready. Are you?

Monkeys have thumbs.
Practically the dumbest species on the planet, next to the duck-billed platypus, who make their dens underwater even through they breathe the air. The platypus is horribly stupid, but is only slightly dumber than a monkey. Yet monkeys have thumbs. Those monkey-thumgs were meant for dogs. Give me my thumbs, you f*&%ing monkeys!

BONEMAN'S DAUGHTERS by Ted Dekker

All he wants is a daughter, the perfect daughter. In his search, 7 young girls have been put in the running. Those same 7 young girls have also been brutally murdered, practically every bone in their body has been broken. They didn't live up to his expectations. He had to do it, he had to break their bones, they HAD to be punished.

The Boneman has since been caught, put on trial and is serving his sentence. Or has he?

Ryan Evans has been serving his country in Iraq for the past 2 years. Providing his methodical thinking and cool under pressure skills to high pressure situations. On a routine mission, his convoy is taken out and he has become a prisoner of war. Subjected to the torture of small children, something snaps inside of Ryan. He manages to escape and is brought home for questioning.

A technicality has been brought to the light of day in the case of the Boneman. The DNA sample that was found on the last body almost 2 years ago was planted and he has been released from prison.

Ryan's already rocky marriage is headed for divorce and the stranger he calls his daughter has now been taken by the Boneman. All evidence is pointing to Ryan himself. He's been having episodes ever since his abduction and he's not acting like himself.

Is Ryan really the Boneman? If he is, will he break his own daughter's bones because she's not good enough? If he isn't, will he overcome this Hell and save his daughter?

They're just words

Words; when put together, they create sentences. Those then turn into paragraphs which make pages; pages then turn into books. They can grab your attention from the get go, lull you in slow or turn you off completely with just one. They put you on a roller coaster of emotion. The rise of enjoyment, laughter and happiness; the fall of sorrow, pain and anguish, throwing loops in there to see if you get confused or forgetful.

They can lash out and cut deep, deeper than a knife or a sword. They can heal, heal better than any surgery or kiss from a loved one. They can make everything disappear or bring everything bubbling to the surface. They can make your blood run cold with fear or boil with rage. They can make you feel the sadness that consumes the lead or utter joy that overwhelms a backup. Anything and everything under the sun can be felt with the right choices of words.

She might wound him, she might lie to him, and still he would do anything to hear one word of kindness from her lips, to feel his flesh touch her flesh without humiliation. He was willing to take the chance. And all this because she had stepped from the train with a small scarlet bird in a cage, and she was coming home to him, bringing a fluttering life. He was at last waiting for someone whose name was known to him. People saw her come home to him, people in his town. She smiled at him, and he knew then that he would die for her. From the New York Times Bestselling Book A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick.

Willow remembers the last time that she saw him cry, how shocked she had been, frightened almost, to see him reduced to such a state. She is not so much scared now as awed. Impressed, as she had not been that other time, by how strong he must be in order to withstand such misery. She knows better than anyone what kind of inner fortitude it must take to let oneself be so overcome.
it is something that she will never be able to do. Even to watch it without allowing herself the luxury of cutting is almost more than she can bear.
His sobs wound her far more than anything she can inflict on herself, but it is not only pain that she feels as she watches him. She takes a bittersweet comfort in the fact that her brother is capable of feeling such grief. That he will never have to resort to the kind of remedy that she does, that he has an endless reservoir of strength that allows him to weep in such a fashion. From the book Willow by Julia Hoban.

The cellist opens his eyes. The sadness she saw in his face is gone. She doesn't know where it went. His arms rise, and his left hand grips the neck of the cello, his right guides the bow to its throat. It is the ost beautiful thing she has ever seen. When the first notes sound they are, to her, inaudible. Sound has vanished from the world.
She leans back into the wall. She's no longer there. Her mother is lifting her up, spinning her around and laughing. The warm tongue of a dog licks her arm. There's a rush of air as a snowball flies past her face. She slips on someone else's blood and lands on her side, a severed arm almost touching her nose. In a movie theater, a boy she likes kisses her and puts his hand on her stomach. She exhales, and pulls the trigger.
Then sound returns to the world. From The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway.

Words that drew me in, made me almost forget the unimportant day to day things, helped me focus on anything other than my internal pain. This is why I read. They help me forget...

Charolette and Wilbur

I ran away once. I wasn't very old, but I knew I didn't want to be around anymore. There was just too much stuff for anyone to handle. Too much hatred, anger, resentment, abuse... you know, the stuff that breeds psychopaths and serial whatevers. I felt old, broken and tired; more worn than my not even double digits should have felt.

The sky was clear, no clouds clung to the baby blue horizon. Birds were singing as they scoured for food or clippings for the new nests to prepare for the upcoming hatchlings. My Grandmother had just finished berating me for something I didn't do right. What better way to start the day? I was sent to my room to "think about what I had done", or not done in this case. I threw myself onto my bed as I cried, although I'm surprised I had any tears left and, just to spite her, I didn't think about what I had done, hadn't done or wouldn't do.

Leave. Throw everything you have in a bag and leave. You have money. You don't need HER. You can survive out there in the big open world. If you can survive this, you can survive anything. I looked up, expecting to see my guardian angel or someone standing in the doorway, but there was no one there. Just my large duffel bag in the corner, beckoning me to fill it full of my belongings.

To this day, I don't know exactly what drove me to do it. I grabbed blindly around my room at whatever touched my fingertips, no planning went into what was thrown into the bag. Except for one thing. I had to have my copy of Charolette's Web. I wouldn't go anywhere without it. I ran down the stairs while SHE was gone; she had left the house shortly after sending me to my room, grabbed the cash I had saved from my $20/week allowance and ran. I ran so hard that my lungs felt as if they were on fire. I didn't even know where I was going, I just had to leave. Me and Charolette and Wilbur.

I stopped at the park 2 miles away and sat on the hard bench, the breeze from the river drying the beads of sweat on my face, pushing the hair out of my tear filled eyes. It was early summer, but there were no kids at the park. Laughter and screams of joy didn't flow from the monkey bars and slide. Parents urging their children along didn't fill my heart. I felt alone and small, insignificant, as if it wouldn't matter if I got kidnapped and killed.

Wind rustled the pages of my thoroughly read book and the smell of the pages filled my nose. I love the smell of books. There's something nostalgic about it, I can't put my finger on it. My fingers moved along the edge of the pages, feeling every bend and break. Wilbur smiled up at me as I turned my gaze from the free flowing water down to the heavy bag sitting next to me. I held the open book to my face and took a deep breath, the almost mildew smell filled my lungs and I could have died a happy little girl.

"What do you mean less than nothing? I don't think there is any such thing as less than nothing. Nothing is absolutely the limit of nothingness. It's the lowest you can go. It's the end of the line. How can something be less than nothing? If there were something that was less than nothing, then nothing would not be nothing, it would be something - even though it's just a very little bit of something. But if nothing is nothing, then nothing has nothing that is less than it is."

I dried the tears from my sticky face and swallowed hard. I was something, and nothing anyone said or did would make me think otherwise. I held the book to my chest as I stood up, full of renewed hope. I knew that life would throw curveballs and I would inevitably get hit with them, there would be ups and downs and I will fall. Falling isn't important, falling isn't what makes the journey A journey; getting up and trudging on, that's what makes a journey, that's what makes you who you are. I walked home to face the music, I didn't like that station anyways.

Thank you Charolette and Wilbur.