Eccentric Tea Woman

  When Olivia woke up on a rainy Saturday, she realized that everything had changed. She looked at the raging storm that lay outside her old windows then smiled and slid out of bed. She walked down the narrow hall to her kitchen to prepare a cup of tea then stopped as she reached her living room. There were beer bottles lying all over the floor along with issues of The New Yorker, several poetry books bent on certain pages and an ashtray overflowing with butts, some lipstick stained, and others just stained. She glanced at the sight and then plodded towards her kitchen. She really wanted a cup of tea. A rainy Saturday means that I can stay in and watch movies , she thought as she prepared her kettle. Olivia lowered her bag of Earl Grey tea into the mug and said aloud, “I don’t care anymore. All of it. None of it.” Her words barely came out in a whisper, yet she felt as though the Universe heard her finalizations. Once everything was ready and the kettle slowly boiled the water, Oliv

  . . . and it wasn't a joke.  A black woman, dressed in a simple look of black wide-leg exercise pants and a shirt with the name of some bookstore logo, walks into a local coffeehouse. She looks around, instantly feeling the hipster vibes of the place, then places an order for a matcha latte at the counter. Music by some indie band she doesn't recognize pumps through the speakers set up on the wall, giving just enough laid-backness to the patrons without disturbing them. She receives her drink and locates a small table where she can read for a little while. Ten minutes later, a white woman dressed in khaki pants and a purple long-sleeved shirt with her long black hair pulled into a messy bun, enters the coffeehouse. She too looks around, sees the black woman reading, and then places an order for a large hazelnut latte. She receives her order and then approaches the black woman. The seated woman looks up and smiles, then gestures for the standing woman to sit opposite her. The

  I remembered her quite well, even after all these years. Her name was Maggie LaFleur, honest to god that was her name, and she was the rebel of St. Severus of Avranches Preparatory School. I always thought it was funny that our beloved school was named after the patron saint of silk makers but then again, I always found such strange and unusual facts to be quite hilarious. Maggie was a year older than me, yet we lived in the same dorm building due to the fact that we were both products of upper-middle-class families. While I was strictly a bookworm who loved the violin, playing chess, and reading The New Yorker , Maggie's passions ran in the form of the theatre. She declared one evening in the Common Room that she was going to become a famous actress. None of that Hollywood bullshit, she would sneer to us as we listened in various forms of enrapture; she wanted to dominate Broadway. I merely smiled behind my cup of hot jasmine green tea and wished her luck. Throughout our years a

Joan called me on a Friday to let me know that she was finally going to art school. After years and years of allowing people to talk her out of it for a myriad of reasons, she finally bit the bullet, told everyone to f*** off, and applied. I sat on my couch in my apartment, listening to her sounds of joy as she described her classes and spoke of her hopeful attempts to make friends with her fellow students. I sighed a little too loudly, causing Joan to pause in mid-speech. What, she asked me. Huh, I replied, knowing damn well what I did. You just sighed , she added with a little force in her voice. I’m sorry . . . am I boring you or something? Joan, I wheedled, I’m fine, just go on with what you were talking about. No, she yelled, I wanna know right now what’s making you sigh like that, Paul. She fell silent and I held my breath. Is this . . . because of last week, she asked in a whisper. I felt my heart beat a little too fast; thank god she couldn’t hear it. Suddenly, she began

  Quiet Gaiwan Blue Buddha

  I have met many angry men. The ones who constantly lash out because they feel they no longer have a place in the world, or so they think. The ones who, once upon a time, looked at me with such desire mingled with confusion, that I thought they were the ONE for me. The ones who took delight in stomping all over my heart until it turned to dust and was no longer worth saving. Yeah, those angry men. I would spend many a night crying over them, those angry men, all the while wondering why they always came to me, ready to destroy me yet again. I wondered what it was about me that they liked/hated. Before going to sleep, I would always say a prayer - dear whoever is listening to me, make me understand why. I closed my eyes, only to open them again and see a new day with no answer in sight. Then, I remembered that it was a Thursday, I prayed the same prayer and went to sleep. When I woke up the next day, I found that I couldn’t move my body. I pulled down the sheet and screamed, or actually