Something flashed beneath the surface of his hardened expression and I hurried to investigate the sudden shift. It was too late, the emotion disappeared before I could identify it, like reaching desperately for an escaped balloon; the string dangling so tantalizingly close but the wind pushed it away and it's lost forever.
The glory of the christmas pudding was not the taste to Sylvester. It was a fat pudding in a season that made a fat pudding of as many people as possible. Then it was set on fire, glorious! They might as well have burned their money as brandy, though the ashes could have been problematic, or perhaps more dramatic...
In the shadows knelt a person despite the rain-sodden sidewalk being perennially caked in filth. Tyler paused, this was his street and he was damned of some low-life scum was going to scare him. He inserted his hand into his pocket for his revolver; once his fingers closed around the steel he entered the darkness of the alleyway. He was about to tell them to scat when the person looked up, his craggy features now softly illuminated by the glow of the many lights of the high-street. Tyler would know that roman nose and puckered mouth anywhere, it was Sal- the cop who had busted him just last week. He took a step back to leave but the gravelly tones flowed to his ears like a cold tide, "Come here, son."
Our house was the result of years of hard labour on the back of swarthy Bengali-speaking workers. At the height of its sumptuousness, it was the jewel of the river; the house of an important government official. Even when we lived, nearly five decades later, its pertinence and grandeur endured. But the formality of the house was both frivolous and well receded, so our childish endeavours could be fulfilled and we were free to squander away what was left our childhood on the riches of the land.
Between the paving stones comes blooms so bold and tall, giving of their aroma to the summer-infused breeze. For these seeds of humble size and hue are the ninjas of the botanical world, born to shout loud of their graffiti-petaled beauty.
What was war?
A three lettered word that could obliterate everything. War tears people apart, even those who were once close as brothers. Victims of war are constantly drowned in tidal waves of guilt, regret, and pain. Pain isn't simple; it's physical, emotional, and mental; all victims of war feel all three types. In war, nowhere is safe. Nowhere.
Emotional indifference is the opposite of love, the opposite of what the core of every faith and secular humanitarians call for. Thus, since our daily choices build who we are as individuals and community members, the capitalistic system with necessary emotional indifference to the poorest on Earth, is incompatible with our ongoing social evolution. Everyone matters, quality of life matters, children everywhere matter more than an invented system that was born in barbaric times.
Capitalism is designed to reduce labour cost and maximise profit, thus it relies on poverty and desperation to function. This system born in the Victorian genocide of the aristocracy on the poor is still causing massive death and starvation globally - twenty one thousand child deaths from malnutrition related causes daily, hellish lives, early deaths. It's time for a new system, one that is built on love as the philosophical first principle, as a tree trunk from which all branches must grow. We need social evolution.
I had for so long been the only source of positivity, of warmth and emotional comfort. I had for so long taken the brunt of cruel outbursts designed to bring my self esteem to zero, to shatter my sense of self worth. After that I was expected to rebuild all the relationships from all sides, to make any sacrifices necessary and then recreate the positive atmosphere... still against that critical and cynical wall of sneering superiority that has become a woven part of who you are. So that I had a breakdown, that I shattered into a person barely capable of surviving is on you, and the credit for rebuilding myself belongs to me. And now I move onwards fully able to choose to be with positive and giving people, with those that are truly good for me.
This form as two hearts, my child and me. That's love, right, your everything belongs to their tiny form. So it is my joy to carry her, to be the feet we place upon the Earth as she wiggles and giggles, pointing out all the things that spark her brain to curiosity. Sometimes she is quiet, so absorbed in the world around us, yet always we are connected, bonded; that is the beauty of my existence and always will be.
