Category: Very Short Story

The Tea House

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The words of Rumi take shape and play a scene with sounds as I sit thinking of the desert, exotic lands, and being another person in another land with another life.

In a far off land different from my own, I am alone, and I walk within your nation, yet I walk apart. The half-hidden faces and the glances show me that I do not belong here.

I have never worn so much cloth around my head, had so much material cover my body, and I have never felt unseen; yet the heat and the clothing cool my skin, and I feel free of fear.

Arabic on the wind and the vision of a mosque so beautiful you know the artists and architects loved their god, yet I’m a hypocrite for I do not believe in anything anymore.

Safely wrapped, a kind man ushered me towards the tea house to have something to drink. The smell of mint, rose water, and orange blossoms put my mind in a philosophical mood.

Surrounded by noise, I feel calm as I cannot understand a word, yet I know I don’t belong here; I am not part of this country. I am a hypocrite hiding behind a cloth I don’t believe I should wear.

Yet, I cannot bring myself to admit that the pull of this place feels like a longing that I have felt since I tried to play that broken instrument that looked like a Qanum many, many years ago.

I sit in the tea house surrounded, yet alone with my thoughts. Then I hear the bombing begin. It is a shock: a booming calamity and a whooshing sound mixed with many other sounds. It is a shock to my ears and my heart, for we do not know of this life in Australia.

Blood mixed with dust, concrete and debris strewn across the streets, bodies broken and mangled, and there, so close to me, the kindly man who ushered me in: bloody and dead. In those cloudy eyes, I once saw courage.

I walk from the tea house to stand and look towards the sky. You have gone from me through some cruel twist of fate, yet I know we will find each other again one day.

I feel like an important person in that instant. It is as if my feelings are the only feelings I can feel exist. Individualism has taught me to think my feelings might change the rivers of time.

The next bomb destroys my daydream, the images and the sounds of Rumi end, and I am sitting at my desk reading about your country: saddened by so many dead.

Wild Rain

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I wrote this one yesterday.
We have experienced Winter in Spring.
It’s lovely, as the rain is everywhere at the moment, yet the thought of Summer makes me wish for more rain and cold weather.

A rain cloud kind of wild day
Petrichor blew away by the wind

The wild rain calling outside
Placing my empty porcelain cup

The inside smells cannot win
Walking outside to feel the wild rain

Sick Day

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Grey clouds,
fog in the morning,
feeling the weight bearing down.

A hidden disease cripples your body
and leaves you broken yet whole.

An obtuse workplace,
work-life balance is only a theory.

Afraid to tell anyone,
you battle on with your demons.

A glimpse of clarity,
sleeping the sick workday away.

Grey clouds,
no fog as the day passes,
feeling the relaxing rain falling.

Mr No Name

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Mr No Name sits in his usual spot beside Adelaide Rose Davies. Tonight is quiet, dark, and it smells of half-dead roses from so many fresh graves.
A man who used to have a name is now known as Mr No Name. A man not even worthy of having a first name.
This evening he thinks about the smell of the half-dead roses on the breeze and what he lost. Tired, he lays his head down to sleep with his only friends, the dead in the cemetery.
Homeless and alone, this is the only place he finds peace and quiet to sleep and dream of his painful memories. His memories of a loving wife, two loving daughters, a house full of light, and the day she walked away because he lost his business to a cruel recession.
He dreams about his daughters in colour. Any money he has he spends on his mobile phone to see their faces from time to time.
Sometimes, when he is lucky, he sees his wife holding the arm of that famous person. He sees her, and he falls in love every time.
Laying there, he writes a message to both of his daughters on Messenger. Perhaps they will see it, or they won’t. He writes a forgiveness message of kindness and love to the mother of his children.
There are no pillows anymore, no kisses from his girls, and no feelings of warmth and happiness to mend his broken heart.
He rests his head on Adelaide’s grave, then asks a question he never thought he would ask, “Adelaide, can I please come down there with you? I always feel calm beside you.”
The cemetery remains serene as the night moves along; there is no snoring anymore, for the broken heart stopped beating at 3:15 am. Ten minutes after his girls and the love of his life deleted his messages.

The Riverside Willow

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The two of us stood in this place on countless occasions,
as you talked to me about so many unimportant topics.

I listened to your words, not because I cared for them;
I listened to your talk because I knew the hunger
for your flesh and blood would be satisfied soon enough.

The way you looked at, “the big old elegant green one
with unkempt hair like mine” was a woman’s talk to me,
yet it never moved me.

I think of you, and I play your mannerisms, your face,
your voice, your speech; I play them over and over in my
mind so that I will never forget.

The riverside willow of you. The unkempt hair that hung
around your beautiful face, like the weeping willow
branches hang down into the river, is all I have left of you.

I realised too late that your time with me here in this
place was more important than only the hunger, which
is all I knew, for your flesh and your blood.

Your flesh and your blood was my desire for you, yet
your words, your actions, your love, and you,
the unkempt hair you, was the reason for my hunger.