fictional memoir
getting there
“We don’t have any room for you at our Chinatown facility. You’ll have to go to Alhambra,” the social worker in the nice crisp suit told me. “I don’t want to go there. A friend of mine has been to the Chinatown facility. She recommended it. She said I’d get better there. That’s why I [...]
finding Cece
[...] Cece’s been missing for 72 hours until they finally find her. Not dead, but not quite herself either. She is disheveled. Tired. Collapsed in on herself. It’s as if someone had crumpled her into a ball and they were just now trying to smooth her all out again. Michael lifts her chin and gazes [...]
a party and an attractive stranger
Wrote this today as part of a timed writing activity during the writer’s workshop sponsored by Tayo Literary Mag. The prompt was to write in a point of view you don’t usually write in and to include a party, food and an attractive stranger. I didn’t get to the food part, but enjoy! — Michael [...]
prompts
I attended a writer’s retreat/workshop at the amazing Esalen Institute in Big Sur this past weekend, hosted by the Sun Magazine, thanks to a generous scholarship provided by the magazine. What an amazing gift they gave to me and my writing. I wanted to share some of my writing pieces done during the workshops and [...]
heartache
Chris looks at me and brushes some hair away from my face and behind my ears. Just one of the many ways I know he loves me. I am his first and only love. There was no one else before me and I hope I will remain his only love for as long as God [...]
made of glass
“I didn’t want to confront you because I was afraid your fragile and emotional state couldn’t take it,” Fred tells Samah. “We’re not made of glass, you and I. We’re not gonna break,” Samah responds. She looks Fred straight in the eyes. Fred gets nervous and looks down before he speaks. “I didn’t want you to [...]
footprints
When I was younger, maybe a third grader in the Catholic school I attended, I told my mother baby Jesus had walked all over our baby blue station wagon. She thought it was some sort of miracle. Our car was blanketed by a thick layer of dust, so dirty someone could write “Wash me” on [...]
first days and last days
Today, she wakes up on the first day of Ramadan thinking about him. Funny how you can train your conscious mind to turn your back on a memory, but your unconscious mind, your higher self some may say, has a way of letting the remnants of him linger in again. He was with her in [...]
the happiest place on earth (con’t)
I wake up ok at first. Sun shining through the bedroom blinds. Birds chirping. And then, slowly, I remember I cried myself to sleep last night. Oh yeah. He’s getting married today, I thought. No tears, though. Just the leftover feeling that someone had socked me through the heart. I hadn’t felt like this about [...]
the happiest place on earth
Christian had gone off to buy two pieces of Tilipia from Tambuli, the Filipino fish market half five blocks from their apartment. You could walk there and Christian probably would have had he lived in Berkeley or New York, somewhere where people actually walked to places. In Long Beach,especially this part of Long Beach almost [...]
