The Book

I read it for the first time when I was 12. It changed everything. It opened my eyes and made me realize that the world was not the place I had thought. She kept it hidden in a secret comparmtent in the bottom drawrer of her dresser. When I found it, I knew that I should not read it, but I could not resist. It shattered me into a million pieces. Over the years I would sneak it out and read it over and over. I am sure she never knew for if she had she would have seen that I looked at her differently. She would have seen it in my eyes. She would have seen that I no longer looked at her as just "Mom". On that day when I was 12 and read all her secrets, she became more to me, she became flesh and blood, an actual woman. It changed everything.

The Fluency of Corn

When I was a teen-ager I dreamed of getting out of there. The dreams were filled with big cities, exciting jobs and fascinating people. I saw myself there in the gleaming city, dancing, working, loving and living the life I knew I was destined for. I did not see myself staying there in that town surrounded by corn, stifled by it, drowned among it, wasted by the corn. So it shocks me each time I pull off the express way to visit my parents, how it draws me in that corn; the smell of it, the sound of it, the look of it as the moonlight bounces off the glistening ears. It sometimes creeps into my dreams the way the city did before I lived in it, luring me back to that town I swore I would leave forever.