Buttons

Still working on the Lemon Meringue Pie Lie, but I took a little break and wrote this instead...

**Any likenesses to persons living or dead is unintentional… this is a work of fiction.

Shiny Buttons

...I am grateful for the lesson in unconditional love.  I hope that one day Judas will realize that the only thing missing was his own understanding of himself.  We cannot be transparent with others if we do not first tell ourselves the truth.   I love me enough to go from here and only put myself where I am cherished, respected, and protected... unconditionally.  I leave Tinytown holding a new me.  I may have walked through fire, but I picked myself up out of the ruins.  Some days I use my fingers to cut through the soot on my face and some days I just blow like you would when teaching a baby to swim. The grime doesn’t stay long.  Once the dusting off is done, I am a shiny new button attached to a universe of abundance.

2011  Julie Fowler


p.s.  If you would like to read the full story(7 pages that came before this), drop me a line and I will send you a pdf copy.

Frozen Lie

     Rather than admit the truth, she panics as a frozen lie creeps past her lips.

      She chirps, "No sir, I don't know who ate your pie, but let me go down to the Rio Vermelho to Aninha's house and I will ask her if she did."

     Recklessly, she runs down the alley to her best friend’s house.  She trips over her vira lata dog, Chiquinha, who lopes ahead, left ear flopping.   Phoebe’s bare toes sift copper-rich street dust.   Aninha, is sitting on the front steps of her house.  She calls inside to her Dad who invites them in for midday feijoada.  Phoebe plops onto a chair at the table with An-inha’s family.  They offer her a plate, she accepts, but only picks at the pork foot, snout and linguiça bobbing in the drowning bowl of rice.  After ten minutes, she excuses herself.  She must figure out what to do.

     Phoebe chooses to detour atop the banks of the muddy Rio Vermelho.  She searches for a magic escape via the frothy ripples in the red, red waves, but still she finds no courage to tell the truth. The lump in her throat is suffocating. She secretly wishes a favela rat would jump from the water, bite her, give her rabies, and send her to the hospital so that she won’t have to tell.  Phew!  Instead, she whispers a prayer to São João and swats at a lazy fly with the back of her sweaty hand.