Punishment:
The self-inflicted punishment was not worth the mental (and sometimes physical) toll taken by the extraneous actions. I would have played better if I could have kept an even keel – taken the bad with the good – brushed it off.
Thread:
A single thread of string dangled from the hem of her skirt as she sat, legs crossed, in a green metal chair eating lunch on the porch of her favorite local diner, “Dalmatian’s.”
Repeat:
The show was a repeat. What a letdown for the over-stimulated group of teens that had planned their night around the show. Snacks had been purchased. Drinks poured. Couch seating reserved – tentatively, of course.
Succeed:
“In order to succeed in this little world,” he said before pausing to take a drag on the cigarette he found on the edge of the fountain, “you have to . . . ”
Deed:
The deer dashed from the dense shrubbery along the right side of Highway 2 in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The night was dark and rainy, and the deer was but a brief silhouette of life frozen in my dim Ford Explorer headlights. Then, we were both gone as quickly as we had crossed. My heart thumped with the weight of what felt like the iron-ore-mine-explosions I have felt while sitting on the living room floor of my grandparents single-story ranch house in Ishpeming, Michigan.
Missed:*
The baseball skidded on the pavement and then continued along a trajectory that would eventually lead it directly into the side of Chris’ head, which was only slightly higher than the level of the road because he was standing in a ditch. Todd had thrown the ball hard, just as Chris’ attention was drawn elsewhere – by a bird chirping? a garage door opening? an itch calling? After the fact, when Todd looked closely at the skin on the left edge of Chris’ forehead, he could see that it had left a mark in the shape of baseball stitching. ‘All in a summer day’s work,’ the two muttered as they eventually went back to playing catch – Chris then more attuned to what the baseball was doing and less so about anything else around him. Perhaps this could be taken as a hard-earned lesson to focus on the task at hand.
*I neglected to actually use the word, “Missed” while writing this entry. That is the first time it happened. However, one can gather that the baseball missed Chris’ glove, which may have been where I initially was going with my story.
NOTE: Although the OneWord.com website provides a one-minute time limit for writing these entries, I do not always adhere to the time limit – especially if I like what I am writing, which is happening more frequently, as I get back into the flow of writing in general. Thanks.