She was speaking with her ex-husband when he asked her a questions, about one of their kids, the teenager, who seemed to be having some behavioral problems.

The wife wanted to tell her her ex that he was wrong–there was nothing wrong with their teenage son. But she couldn’t because she felt a sneeze coming on, a strong one. This sent her into a sort of limbo: a place between motherhood and madness.

Her ex-husband pronounced more to disagree with. While the momentum built quickly, heading into the sneeze.But still she could not defend their son against his father’s sudden and unfair accusations.

Finally she sneezed. It was so loud that her ex-husband screamed out in terror.

“Hello?” she said, wiping her nose.

The line went dead. Or he’d hung up.

So while she did not have the chance to defend their son, she at least had retaliated, in some way.

Through the bushes, the shape appeared to disappear. It was a man, I was almost sure of it. I crashed through the branches, hot on the trail but found only a kitten in my path. As confused as I was, I picked it up, took him home, fed it,  loved it, and let it cuddle next to me until morning.
By then it began to rain and it seemed silly to return to the woods. I wondered if the man was still out there. Soaked? Without human warmth?

And no one else’s. No one else is allowed to call my baby, “Baby.”
If they do I will sock them in the face. Well, maybe not that. But I will give them a mean look which will act as loud as a shout through a crowded room, which will make everyone hold their breath.

My baby is crying now. Because I have been angry, jealous, possessive. I can’t comfort my baby because the memory of my outburst is too soon. Babies have short term memories. They stop crying.  If only I could stop too.

You sure can. You have my support. Go ahead. You are right, sure. Exactly. Yep. Do it. I know. Of course. I get it, totally. You got it. I see. Sure. I know, I know.

It’s so gratifying to see how creative men can be.

My name is Sara McNamara and several of my closest friends have pointed out the hypocrisy of my name.
“Sara,” they tell me. “You have stolen someone’s ‘h’ from their name.”

“My name never had an ‘h’,” I tell them. This is after we’ve gone to a movie, and now we are walking through the parking lot. It is night time. Street lamps shine down mistily on our confrontation.

“Well then, ” one of my friend says, “How do you explain this?” She shows me what appears to be my birth certificate. But it can’t be. The birth year is off by ten years and the names listed for my parents are not my parents.

“That isn’t me,” my voice rings through the parking lot.

My friends wonder now, as they pass the birth certificate among themselves, that, if this isn’t me on paper, then who am I, really?

I have no idea who I am. Except maybe, that my name does not have an ‘h’ in it.

Or maybe they should find a more accurate birth certificate.

Stemming from the view I was afforded during my illness, I witness grasshoppers flying across the plain, undulating through the grass. I press my nose against the window. The windows of the building are sealed. If only I could smell the grass or let me bare feet provide a fun obstacle for the insects. My nurse tells me that she is negotiating a short visit outside. My chances of this visit increase the more money I am willing to pay them. If only it were about money. It’s really about illness. Will they buy that?

The apples are never fair enough, the dough never flaky enough.

Why bother? Because the athlete married the politician and what happened was a pie was made that ended up using fair apples and flaky dough.  Drumming begins, at the dining room table, as this dessert is being served.

The drummer is a teenager who has won a bet from his parents, So he is allowed him to drum at the corner of the dining room, to announce the pie. Although the pie is not important, the announcement of it is. For the athlete has usurped the head of the table from the politician. And no one knows why. And the teenage drummer would like to add drama to this new development.

I have just moved into a small town called Croa in California.  It’s a place so far from any larger town that I forget that this is the same state houses Los Angeles and San Francisco in it.
Between my house and the woods is a meadow. Quite by accident, I’ve lived in this sort of arranged habitat before.  There was a meadow in Wyoming, then in Louisiana. Both with a forest, just beyond that meadow.
The difference here, in Croa, is that woods is really a forest and beyond this forest is as a small lake. There were no lakes at the other places I lived in.
But will this new arrangement really change anything? Probably not. I’ll probably do the same things I did when I was in those other houses in those other states.
But I will, I hope, find some things about this little lake that will perhaps get me to move to a place, in an real earnest way, not the way I’ve sort of ended up here. I want to go somewhere. Deliberately.
But I can’t right now. Because I just moved into this house. And I want to be sure that it isn’t like those other places before I move to another place.

Sometimes on Saturday night, I am so bored, nothing I want to watch on my computer, no one I want to call, no one who calls me, texts me, nothing I want to read or bake or snack on.
But then an elf shows up.
He peeks out from over the corner of my bed. Not as shocking as you might think.  I’ve expected him for years.

He’s an ugly bastard, as I’d always expected. But not so ugly that I wouldn’t let him on my bed. He’s an off-color, the color of mold, with fuzzy edges. He’s got bug eyes and I wonder if he might wear some coke bottle eyeglasses to make his eyes appear smaller. But when ask him if he’d consider wearing eyeglasses, he just rolls his eyes.

He’s quiet, although he does breath down on me in a way that goose pimples my flesh, his steady steamy exhalations, oddly comforting. But that’s all. There is no deep connection between us either. Which is good because I couldn’t imagine such a thing happening.

I don’t know what he does when he’s on top of me. I think about where he might live.  Does he have a job? Is he married? With Children? Before I know it, he’s leaving, sliding  backwards back toward the corner of the bed, until he falls over the edge with a loud thump and disappears, to his own world, I assume.

I am bored for the rest of the night.