He held out a shiny silver ring to her with trembling hands.

“I know I don’t have much to give you. I can’t even give you a real ring. But I swear I will give you my undying love and devotion. I promise I will love you and care for you for the rest of our lives.”

It wasn’t actually a ring. It was just a piece of tinfoil twisted and pinched into ring form.

She looked into his eyes and knew she believed him, he would love her forever.

She held out her hand, and the ring slipped on.… Read the rest

‘Almost, I can almost reach it,” she thought, going for a big can on the highest shelf.

She wasn’t surprised when she tipped forward. First her breasts hit the mixed vegetables, then her arms brought down the green beans.

And then she was in someone’s safe arms.

“Are you okay?” asked the most handsome man she’d ever seen.

“Fine, just a klutz,” she said.

“A short klutz,” he joked.

And that was how they met: a meet cute at a grocery store, when her clumsiness landed her in her dream man’s arms.

Their first kiss is near the crushed tomatoes.… Read the rest

“Do you want to keep this?” I asked, holding the box of Christmas ornaments.

“No, no room.”

I decided to keep it.

“What about these family photos?”

“No, it’s not like I’m ever going to look at them again. I probably forgot half the people in there!”

I keep that box, too.

I’m the only one who wants to hold on to our family, keep some mementos from our lives, our history.

I weep as my parents fill the dumpster with my past.

Now we have no family home.

We just have the memories so sharp they cut like glass.… Read the rest

My home reeks of flowers, and not in a good way.

There are just too many. Bouquet after bouquet that arrived like clockwork at ten every morning with a new way to say “I love you.”

I do love flowers, and I love the diamonds he gives me; I love the trips we take on his private jet to glittering cities like Paris and Tokyo.

But the flowers, they’re suffocating me.

It’s too much.

It’s too much to feel like you’re the center of someone’s world, too much to feel like someone’s happiness depends on you.

I don’t want this.… Read the rest

It felt like my guts had been turned into churning lava, and I could feel things I knew I wasn’t supposed to be able to feel.

So this is what it feels like when the breeze hits your organs.

So this is what it feels like when you’re dying.

The loud clashes, clangs, shouts, and screams were my world in the darkness, because I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

I couldn’t keep watching my soldiers fall.

Then someone knelt beside me.

Lieutenant Robinson.

“Is it bad?” he asked.

“This will be the end of me.”

“But you fought so well.”… Read the rest