Love.

2008-05-29T17:03:44Z

"Buckley," my father called from the adjoining room, "come play Monopoly with me."
My brother had never been invited to play Monopoly. Everyone said he was too young, but this was the magic of Christmas. He rushed into the family room, and my father picked him up and sat him on his lap.
"See this shoe?" my father said.
Buckley nodded his head.
"I want you to listen to everything I say about it, okay?"
"Susie?" my brother asked, somehow connecting the two.
"Yes I'm going to tell you where susie is."
I began to cry up in my heaven. What else was there for me to do?
"This shoe was the piece Susie played Monopoly with," he said. "I play with the car or sometimes the wheelbarrow. Lindsey plays with the iron, and when your mother plays, she likes the cannon"
"Is that a dog?"
"Yes that's a scottie."
"Mine!"
"Okay," my father said. He was patient. He had found a way to explain it. He held his son in his lap, and as he spoke, he felt Buckley's small body on his knee -- the very human, very warm, the very alive wight of it. It comforted him. "The Scottie will be your piece from now on. Which piece is Susie's again?"
"The shoe," Buckley said.
"Right, and I'm the car, your sister's the iron, and your mother is the cannon."
My brother concentrated very hard.
"Now let's put all the pieces on the board, okay? You go ahead and do it for me"
Buckely grabbed a fist of pieces and then another, untill all the piece lay between the Chance and Community Card Chest cards.
"Let's say the other piece are our friends."
"Like Nate?"
"Right, we'll make your friend Nate the hat. And the board is the world. Now if I were to tell you that when I rolled the dice, one of the pieces would be taken away, what would that mean?"
"They can't play anymore?"
"Right."
"Why?" my brother asked again.
My father did not want to say "because life is unfair" or "becuaser that's how it is." He wanted something neat, something that could explain death to a four-year-old. He placed his hand on the small of Buckley's back.
"Susie is dead," he said now, unable to make it fit in the rules of any game. "Do you know what that means?"
Buckley reached over with his hand and covered the shoe. He looked up to see if his answer was right.
My father nodded. "You won't see Susie anymore, honey. None of us will." My father cried. Buckely looked up into the eyes of our father and did not fully understand.
Buckley kept the shoe on his dresser, until one day it wasn't there anymore and no amount of looking could turn it up.

"Friends."

2008-05-09T03:00:50Z

You know what I just realized. Some people left my life and those select few that remain are there for a reason. Like Amanda, who even though we didn't talk to much for a few years [not out of hate or anger but just lack of contact and seeing each other at school] is still one of my best friends in the world.

Those of you who have come and gone so many times, fuck off. I was better off without you. You say you've 'changed' and I'm in the best place I've ever been in so I said 'okay' but nothing has changed and you are still the same ugly person you were before to me.

New.

2007-07-26T04:17:20Z

Friends Only.

Cherith Cutestory

Love.

"Friends."

New.