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His voice still haunts me: "i will show you tonight, my fire phoenix!" Nervously, i paced around the entrance of the carnival. The "lantern festival" had already began. Where was he? I glanced one more around and went back looking at my feet, they were rather small for a seven year old girl, i thought.

I never did get the chance to tell him. To this day he might not even realize what my motives were, I continue to let him believe what he wants. Everyone said that I would just make things worse. So i wrote out my offical apology, maybe one day he'll see it.

The kisses were birds, thought Cal. Hummingbirds, probably. The caresses were the pre-game, the main event yet to come. He sighed to himself. He didn't feel sexy, or cute, or attractive in any way. He felt natural, and at ease; which was, in itself, a mirage. He was only fully at easy in the bird house, the curse of the passionate zoologist. Any erotica was related to birds. He didn't accept this to be inaccurate, or disturbed. Humanity, through all its elusive and brilliant history, had depicted sexual organs as animals. Women became birds: chicks, birds - even hen nights. They weren't really birds, of course. They were hot-blooded, intelligent mammals who gave birth to live young - and Cal was immune to them. The bird beside him now - what was her name, again? - was trying her best. Cal was comfortable, and his mind, lethargic in its comfortability, resumed to thinking about birds...

T H E M A P P E O P L E I see the neatly lettered names before me on a map affixed to the wall. They are a rota of communities, formed by those who came before us. The enclaves are well ordered and spacious in their two-dimensional, mercator projection. The boundary lines are linear and perpendicular and none give a hint to the complicated array of lives that reside within these neatly proportioned hereditary fiefdoms. One can imagine them to be what they are, tiny baronies with well defended borders and armed check points, with gates manned by stern looking para-military personnel.

...so my face looked worse than a Halloween jack-o-lantern! In other words, swollen. But let me tell you, I certainly remember being upset for having to miss such a delightful occasion.

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a poem about happiness

God, I'm good. Bl'm'n brilliant, I am! I mean, at everything, y'know?

I tried to feel his arse and found a spinal column. He has ginger skin. He wears contacts in daylight, but at night the glasses come out ' like two of grandma's glass coasters stuck in front of his eyes.