“The Making of a Muse: Part Six” After Rasheem turned off the lights, Cheyenne contemplated what to do. He had taken a long time about it, staying with the stone even after Mr. Thomas left and promising to close the door behind him. She heard him speaking to the marble for a moment. … Read more
Writing
“Yeah?” The instructor stood by the tool room Leila could not get into, unlocking it for the class to use as they arrived. “What’s this piece down here?” Rasheem asked with his hand still on the stone. For a moment, Cheyenne thought she saw a shadow of the woman from last night again. Mr. Thomas… Read more
In the darkness of the shop, Cheyenne began to dream of Gloria’s happiness at seeing her own completed image. She stared at where it sat in the back of the shop, near doors and to the left. The place where, every night before this, she would have begun drilling holes into it with the concrete… Read more
Since she didn’t need to sleep, Cheyenne had all day to consider how to keep the stone away from Leila. Hours after Vladimir had scanned the shop with his giant black flashlight and paced the perimeter before moving his bulk back into his car, the instructor opened the shop door and the students began to… Read more
Cheyenne had a feeling that she knew the pixie-sized woman with close-cropped purple and grey hair who strode across the concrete toward her stone. She had learned when feeling sorrow for students who made critical mistakes that emotions had the power to affect her like physical pain. The feeling of seeing this woman now wasn’t… Read more
I’m playing with the blog this month and putting up a short story I wrote a while back. I submitted this piece to one place last year–a place that rejected it. I don’t have the umph to keep reworking and submitting and am ready to let it go but not willing to let it only… Read more
This year the blog has languished. The submissions have sputtered out. I have a variety of excellent reasons that are so painful I don’t want to get into them. Some of them happened to me like life does. More of them came from inside like the no-good-who-do-you-think-you-are goblins who growl inside all of us. In… Read more
This week I listened to Kristen Bell talk about her beliefs and how she has grown and changed in a podcast I’m still enjoying. Even as I admired her wisdom, I couldn’t help but think about how I missed my chance to meet her over an overflowing toilet. It all started when my mother and… Read more