Some short things I wrote and read at the library

SUPERPOWER

The ability that I want (that I don't think I'll be able to acquire in this lifetime)

would be the power to find anything that was lost; the power to know where to find everything--

lost keys, missing socks, or children, forgotten land mines.

Sketchbooks! Your stolen bike! The cat that ran away.

FULGURITE

When lightning strikes sands it creates something known as a fulgurite.

A fulgurite is a hollow glass branch;

sand that was instantaneously melted

and fused into the shape of lightning itself!

Morning

I walked in the park again. The tide was low and smelled like it. The water was busy with Canada geese and the applause of flocks launching off the surface was like a new type of quiet firework. The wind made the reeds buzz like hornets, and I liked the fake danger in the noise.

Lovebird

A lovebird is a size such that

if you let it perch on your thumb and gently curl four fingers over its back

and swivel your wrist

it will think it's on a swing.

Future

The unpredictability of life reminds me of:

when Ivy and I lived next door to a fortune teller who always bugged us to come in for a reading. One day Ivy said to her, "You know what I do when I want to know the future?

I wait."