Author Archives

MissMelisshttp://www.missmeliss.com

Lingonberry

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He loves to go out for crepes on Saturday mornings.

It has, in fact, become their weekend ritual: morning sex, slow showers, and then out to breakfast, to the comic book store, and back home for cozy, puttery afternoons.

On rainy Saturdays she spends the afternoon writing and backing, moving between her laptop on the kitchen table, and the actual kitchen.

Most of the time she bakes batter breads – banana, pumpkin, zucchini – or cookies (his favorite: chocolate chip with walnuts), but sometimes she’ll surprise him with lingonberry tarts or strawberry rhubarb pie.

Every Saturday morning. This scene from their marriage.

Baby Grand

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The piano came with the house.

They found it discarded in the basement, the soundboard cracked.

She’d always wanted a piano, so they hoisted it up, and put it back together, had it tuned and timed.

She didn’t know how to read music, but she could play by ear, her elegant fingers coaxing beautiful sounds from the cast-off instrument.

If anyone else had bought the house…
If they didn’t live in reasonably humid New Jersey…
If music wasn’t as much a part of his soul as it was hers…

But that did, and they do, and it is.
Baby grand.

Diminished

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At some point she began talking to the walls.

Really, she said, she was speaking to the former residents of her house, whose shadow-selves had been imprinted thereupon almost like a mural only she could see.

An animated, techni-color mural.

We’re never sure if we should humor her, or try to coax her awareness back to the here and now. The truth is, it’s harder for us than it is for her, because she doesn’t register the devastation on our faces when she fails to recognize us.

“Why aren’t you in school, sweetie?” she asks.
“I’m thirty,” I remind her.

Sunday Brunch: Random

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Random things about today:
Leftover birthday cake for breakfast, a mug of steaming coffee to cut the sweetness and wake my brain cells.
When you’re a freelancer weekends are arbitrary, anyway.

I read and write and nap and watch bad television and cuddle dogs.

“Are you hungry?” my husband asks.

What he really means is, “I’m hungry, but I don’t want to make anything so I’ll just sit and starve until you can be coaxed into the kitchen.”

“I’ll make an omelet if you let me watch the end of this movie.”

“What channel?”

“Hallmark.”

“Use lots of cheese.”

“Okay.”

Fear

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Vintage Typewriter

Vintage Typewriter | Credit: MorgueFile.com | Click to embiggen

I’m working on a piece of writing – it’s only fanfic, but I have readers who are demanding new chapters, and it’s good for playing with structure and dialogue – that is going to a very dark place.

I realized I’m afraid of it on two levels.

I’m afraid of letting my brain dwell in that darkness for the time it will take to finish the piece.

I’m also afraid I’m not skilled enough to pull off what I keep envisioning.
I only know I have to try.

Writing is so much harder than improv.

I remember when the opposite was true.

Only 94

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autumn coffee Today’s projected high is only 94, which is cool for early September in Texas. Break out the parkas. At least it’s not terribly humid.

Still, the softer light of waning summer makes 94 feel less intense at this time of year than it did a month or two ago. Autumn here isn’t the cool, crisp experience it is in New Jersey or Colorado, or even northern California. It’s more of a gentle glide from brutally hot, through comfortably warm, to kinda-sorta sweater weather.
The leaves still fall. The light still changes.

But until November we’ll be wrapped in golden warmth.

Shivery

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sailboat The collective noun for a group of sharks is not a school, but a shiver.

A shiver of sharks.

Take a moment to appreciate that awesome alliteration.

It’s like the lingual love-child of Edgar Allan Poe and Jacques Cousteau.

(=A=)

They had anchored their sailboat early that afternoon, planning to stay offshore overnight – just the two of them cradled by bent wood and the sea.

She was swimming off the port side when she felt, rather than saw, something approaching beneath the surface of the water.

Stay calm, she thought, swimming for the ladder.

Safely aboard, they watched the fins circling.

Image Copyright: cameris / 123RF Stock Photo

It’s PEER not PI-ERRE

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Pencil Case

I learned the state capitals from a pencil case. It was deep cherry red, with the map of the United States outlined in raised white lines, two windows on the sides, and wheels to adjust the text appearing within. Change the capital, and the state would flip, and vice versa.

I remember reading the combinations: Albany, New York; Dover, Delaware.

(My mother used to sing the song “What Did Della Ware?”)

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Nashville, Tennessee; Pierre, South Dakota.

I found it very jarring when I moved to South Dakota to be with Fuzzy, and learned the locals pronounce it “Peer.”

Prompt: Pencil Case / Source @SSMindSchool

It’s that time…

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Mermaid Lounge It’s that time again. That time of year when I join the insanity known as The Dog Days of Podcasting, and commit to doing a podcast a day for thirty consecutive days.

This year’s project began on Tuesday (which, coincidentally, was my last day of The 100 Day Project), and continues through September 4th, and you can find my stuff at The Bathtub Mermaid, but I’m also in iTunes. (There should be an itunes link in the collection of social media icons in my sidebar.)

In previous years I’ve had oodles of essays and flash fiction to share, but I’ve been busy on other projects this year, so I’m mixing it up with interviews, creative non-fiction pieces written earlier this summer, and pieces inspired by the 100 notecards currently adorning the front and sides of my refrigerator.

The things is, my creativity always wanes in July, but my birthday is in August, and as soon as the calendar page flipped, I was inspired again.

So watch out – and listen to my Tales from the Tub – you might be pleasantly surprised.