When did it start?

Perhaps when we kept walking past the tacky gold chandelier, mumbling: we must replace. But never getting around to it.

Tacky life and tacky relationship always in the way.

Distaste breeding chasm like a pair of pliers prying apart the fixture.

By then it can’t be fixed of course.

Take away the tacky chandelier but you can’t take away the tacky everything-else. Which is now tattered in addition to being tacky.

And so, we stage another Regal Walk-away.

The solution to all problems. Just walk away. Look back, memorize, breathe, leave. The code to emotional untangling.

…

The river moves. And you move, just like the river.

Indomitable. Undeterred. Resolute.

You are challenged, time and time again. And you rise to it, each time.

There, on that mountain bypass, you find a route around the big boulders.

Sometimes you gush greedily, hopping over pebbles and rounding the edges of even those most stubborn barriers.

Your presence is stronger than the rocks, whose corners you erode over millennia past.

Where are you going? I ask, hoping to stop you short on your stride.

But you throw a merry twinkling glance at me over your shoulder, letting me know…

I can’t see you yet.

But I can detect your presence.

The hint of your smell in the air, a cursory blend of oceany saltwater, freshly turned earth, early morning dew.

Your smell, it laces the valleys and deserts alike.

On those steep mountainsides, when I stop to rest my weary soul, your smell guides me toward fresh streaks of red loam and black soil.

I smell pine and eucalyptus, and know you are close.

I smell you in the gurgling of the flirtatious brook, and the provocation of the dusk campfire.

You are there everywhere.

I smell the journeys…

The only one I’ll ever surrender to, my lord, my liege, my nemesis, is Shiva’s Cat.

But Shiva didn’t have a cat, he had a snake! — do I hear you say?

Ah, my friend, I do beg to differ. I postulate that my cat is none other than the avatar of Shiva’s snake.

And may I present the evidence toward my postulation.

- This crafty being hisses when enormously annoyed, much like a snake would.

- She has fangs of steel and will employ them without hesitation. A bug, a mouse (real or imaginary under-the-blanket ones) or even a…

What do you see when a car approaches?

The eye unpeels it all, slowly.

Time of day, check. Number of people around, check.

Always programmed to look under the rug for hidden danger.

And then the glass. Is it tinted black?

Worse if the car is occupied. Four men, windows down, eyes hungrily prowling the streets. That’s the worst combination of all.

Nothing else spells danger in neon lights, colors flashing.

Make and model of car, check.

If high end: the occupants have money. Hence connections. Hence the capacity to bury crime.

If low end: the occupants have nothing to…

Hello there! My name is Sizzy, and I am a pair of scissors.

I came into the world ten years ago, and my first home was with a sweet family. Their little girl, Maya, was the one who named me. When her mother was trying to teach her the word ‘scissors’, pointing at me, she threw up her hands with a shout. “Sizzy,” she exclaimed, and Sizzy I remained.

Maya was everything to me. She was not just my owner, but someone I doted on. My favorite time of the day was afternoon craft time. I played a starring role…