Push
Let us discuss the fly who drifted into the work fridge and landed on her leftovers – the Christmas Lunch sandwich with the “herby pork stuffing” – and vomited a mixture of spit and stomach acid right there. Let us think about her biting and swallowing the sandwich and – around 72 hours later – vomiting her own mixture of spit and stomach acid right there, near the work fridge. Let’s see her going home and next morning texting her boss: “Apologies – I’m sick” again and her boss texting back “Hope you feel OK soon” again. Let’s imagine her lying there, sick, as she starts to think and decides, firmly, that she will quit that boring job with the nice boss. Let us think about the fly, the same fly, gliding into her flat and resting on her pillow. Let us discuss what a difference it made. How small and huge that was.

Ritual
It's our Sunday tradition to drive into the Peak District, strap on our water packs, and start our GPS watches. The world brightens during the uphill slog. Ascent defeated, our reward is to share a pack of Jelly Babies as we soak in the view.
Today, fog shrouds the summit. Freezing rain drives into my face. I don't stop at the top, but push on, slipping and sliding down the muddy slope.
    You were always in better shape than me: racing to the top and then looping back, nimble as the sheep that skittered out of your path, to run the steepest sections a second time. I said you had the heart of a man twenty years younger, and you laughed and said you hoped he wouldn't want it back.
    Driving home alone is the hardest part.

Funny How the Colors Stick With You
I remember her color: black speckled with serpent's green. Today, when I should be slumping at my desk writing copy for a natural cleaning product made in Salinas, I'm daydreaming about my mother's toes and how my father used to kiss them. 
      I have a date tonight. One of those muscly Crossfit guys. We met near my house on open mic night – he sidled next to me, complimented my blouse (we both knew he liked what was in my blouse, cradled in my faithful pushup bra), and displayed a fair tenor later in the night when he sang his version of The Color of Love. I'm not sure why I mumbled, "Yes", when he asked me out, maybe I was bored. 
      Hours later, spiderwebs crowning me, I find it: a crystal bottle with striations of color, tumbled to the bottom of a crate of her things. 

Just a Moment

…he pulls, and this time papa raises a blind and bloody bundle, suckling into cold light, seeking hot skin and beating heart, and papa reveals tears, and fears, and godly thoughts and thank-you’s, and when from behind papa’s pillared legs the infant peeks round, grappling for papa’s clever hand, well… from under papa’s skin bursts a proud shield, bearing ironed-out dents, patched holes, and a new bullet-proof coating, and this life-time’s work shelters junior as he steps forward, reaching for coloured spools, stitch after stitch, he weaves seven sorrows and sins, ecstasies and wonders, until a young man, stands, still and tall, he understands, and spins his own creation, procreation, discovering tender-lust, and the twining and binding of love and lives, for life, a beating, systole-diastole, through the umbilical-thread to mama, till it’s time, and she pushes…

Hindsight Party Invite
To: 

Date: That summer night, katydids and the shimmering air, and when I came to the door, you a "plus one" in a red floral summer dress standing rosy cheeked from the sinking sun, gift in hand. 

Time: Minutes brought bodies, brought heat and all moved like molasses through the night, you a red blur in and out between dancing strangers, their hair sweat-stuck to glistening foreheads. Your date left the party late with the thinning crowd, drunk and mad that you did not follow.

Place: My fetid house chased the stragglers out to the pool where you sat, feet dangling. I handed you the whiskey, you pushed me in and followed. And when it began to rain we danced drenched on the lawn to the The Beach Boys and Glen Miller till the sun came up.

R.S.V.P: You were there. I wish I'd asked you your name.