There was a little lamb, lost in a meadow.

Treading behind it was another lamb, bigger than the first one. It gnaws those little buds of flowers and grasses. Crunching here and there while still following the first one. Not too far from them was another bigger lamb—a sheep, cause it looks bigger you know? It was accompanied by two more sheeps.

'So how many were there again?'

'There are five of them! right?'

'So now there are five, how many more can be added to make it called a herd?'

'I don't know mom! You didn't tell me anything about that!'

'Okay....If you add 45 more sheeps in it, how many are there now?'

'Ummm...45 sheeps and 5 sheeps!—wait a second! Isn't the lamb lost? Why is no one looking for it?'

'I don't know either honey, the textbook didn't say anything about it AHEM—okay next.'

The meadow spans wide in an open field of a mountain called sheepland, derived from the word sheep because sheeps are pastured there.

'That sounds stupid! Who named that??'

'I haven't even asked my question yet, let me ask first'

'Let me guess! The answer is shitland!'

'No it's not, so how many sheeps have you counted so far?'

'Ah!... Ummm five!'

'Where did the 45 sheeps go then?'

'I already finished counting it so I restarted counting to five'

'Uhuh so aren't you sleepy now then?'

'But she hadn't finished counting yet!'

'She? Who's she? Who are you talking to?'

'That lady over there!'—

—GASP—

"OH FUCK! THAT'S WHAT I GET WHEN I COUNT SHEEPS TO SLEEP!"

I struggled to catch my breath as I looked around the porch and on the grassland in front, heart still beating fast, looking for the sheeps that I didn't finish counting.

Original title: the logic behind the math for comfortable sleeping

Written by my drowsy self who haven't had any proper sleep lately.

"Where is that boy?"

The voice is gruff. Griffin knows immediately it is Father, back from work. It's not a good sign, because he shouldn't be home this early. Ten o'clock is early for his parents, and past Griffin's bedtime.

He tugs the blanket over his head, trying to even his breathing. He needs to make it look like he's sleeping, but Father can probably hear the beat of Griffin's heart through the thin walls of the house.

The door to his room opens, and a wave of panic sweeps over Griffin.

Father is not fooled.

"Stand!" Father demands, his hands clapping together. It sounds like a gunshot.

Mother stands in the doorway meekly, licking her lips in a nervous habit.

Griffin crawls out of bed and puts his feet on the cold floor. He stands, his nightshirt catching on a burr on the bedframe.

Father grabs him by the back of his shirt, and it takes everything in the boy not to whimper. Father is in his work coveralls still, smelling of oil and dirt and alcohol. His nostrils flare, and his bushy eyebrows hide the glint in his eyes.

"Have you taken money from me?" Father's tone is dangerously calm.

Griffin squeaks in alarm, his feet scrabbling for purchase as Father, with his great strength, lifts him into the air.

"Have you taken even a goddamn penny from me, boy?!" The room rattles as Father yells. Mother tugs at Father's arm.

"No," Griffin chokes out, clawing at the neck of his shirt.

Father tosses him to the ground, and Griffin skids across the floor, colliding loudly with a shelf. A book tumbles to the ground, and another one hits him painfully on the ear, and an hourglass shatters next to his foot.

Sand pours out, filling the cracks in the wooden floor.

Mother kneels next to him, tugging on his ear. "Griffin, you tell him the truth now," she says evenly. He breathes in the scent of her: firewood and earth and lavender lotion.

Griffin eyes his mother, and she nods at him. He remembers when he was nine, and he'd bought her a periwinkle from the flower girl on the street. She'd been angry, but he hadn't understood, because it was just one coin. And he'd earned it. Running a letter across town.

But money wasn't meant for him, it was meant for her. For Father.

"I--" Griffin started, but his throat closed up.

Father yanks him to his feet, takes a fistful of his hair, and pulls him from his room. When Father lets go, they are all three in the kitchen, the fire sparking in the corner still. Griffin shades his eyes from the flames, his eyes not adjusted for the light.

Father smacks the kitchen wall loud enough for the crack to echo in Griffin's head. "Don't you dare lie to me."

Mother presses her thumb sharply into Griffin's collarbone, which might afar look supportive, but from up close feels very uncomfortable. Griffin looks into her face, and she stares grimly back at him.

His body shudders as he realizes what he must do.

He did not take any money.

"I took the money."

Mother did.

All Griffin hears then is the ringing in his ear as his Father takes his first hit. He forgets everything else after that. The only things he can't forget is the soft padding of Mother's feet as she leaves the kitchen and climbs into bed, and the way the blood from his mouth drips onto the floor in a sticky, fire-reflecting puddle.

on the edge of water,

firefly buzzing.

sounds like a saltshaker in my ears,

all vibrations and maraca beats.

fine music ebbing like

underwater fanfare,

entry music for the king of the sea.

leaves catch the edge of my fingertips,

skimming like water striders,

soft as daisy petals but

they're not named after me.

parting the reeds

as a deer steps into the shallows,

all legs like a newborn learning to walk,

head pitched toward the sky

and deep black eyes that absorb the darkness above.

reflect back firefly blinks,

on off on off

eyelashes on double speed

and gentle as wind

spreading secrets on gooseflesh skin.

entangling in your hair and shimmering,

diamonds and lightbulbs and

ancient shipwreck secrets.

cold and tastes like lucid dreams

and butterfly flutters.

legs in the water

and cheeks radiating back moonlight,

god beams,

rooftop whistling like birdsong trees.

flesh and breeze and watertight wishes,

lakeside firefly,

directing the choirs.

I took a course that covered this during my studies in Education, as part of the teacher training program. It is very important for me to understand my kids (—my own students)- to provide them with doors that open to their different multicultural backgrounds. Yes, it is a challenge to find a plethora of stories that cater to the right match or situation of a student I have/get, but it is my duty\job to find various characters, books, even people, that will be a role model for all my children (learners). To give them a moment where they know that they are not going through something all by themself, and that they can look forward to being the next role model for the next generation of aspiring young leaders. There is power in passing down powerful stories to encourage students to never give up hope! We definitely need more stories that have characters from every background. The way to go about this could also be to ignite students with the interest of storytelling, that way they learn how to share their own stories with the rest of the world.

#DiversityinStorytelling.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zslGmkDnejQ

All he wanted was just to see her again. Was it really so much to ask? Every day he woke up in a luxurious white bed with the sun streaming through his window and pooling on the carpet, and the coffee was there on his table, white wisps rising from the surface, and he wondered how the butler managed to bring it hot right before he woke up. He stepped out of bed and went to the window and the fragrance of the garden greeted him kindly. He drank the coffee and read the paper like any ordinary man and they came and took his cup silently, bowed heads. He had tried to converse with them, but he just didn’t know how. He didn’t know how to talk to anyone except her.

He opened the wardrobe doors wide and looked at the endless row of coats and jackets and suits and ties and trousers, all white and black and grey with no colour to them at all, and he dressed in one outfit and felt small inside it, like a little imposter with no right to be there at all. All his life he’d been too short, his hands too big and clumsy and scratched, his smile too awkward and his face too unsure to fit into a man’s suit. He didn’t feel like a man anymore. They’d taken that away from him when they gave him soft pillows and smart leather shoes. When he was with her, that was when he felt strong, not like a little frightened boy. And he wanted that back. He wanted to know that he had a purpose, someone to protect, to love. The coffee didn’t taste good to him. The bed was too soft and the garden so big he got lost in it just the way he got lost in the rows of suits. He didn’t like the abstract paintings they’d hung up on his wall or the way they moved around the house silently as if they were mourning his death while he was very plainly alive. He didn’t want it. He didn’t want any of it.

He just wanted her.

There's a weatherbeaten cross standing in the middle of Old Joe's cornfield. It's been there since before his grandfather bought the land, and he leaves a space around it out of the little respect and superstition he has but continues to plough and sow in that field because the land belongs to him and he doesn't intend to let it go to waste. They buried her there. The little girl with black curls who heard a secret she wasn't supposed to. But he doesn't know that.

#microfiction

Serious is as serious does

Serious is as serious goes

Serious is as serious means

Serious is as serious cleans

Serious is as serious chants

Serious is as serious eats

Serious is as serious dreams

Serious is as serious believes

Serious is as serious encounters

Serious is as serious writes

Serious is as serious haunts

Serious is as serious kills

Serious is as serious screams

Serious is as serious drills

Serious is as serious prays

Serious is as serious slays

Serious is as serious days

Serious is as serious pays

Serious is as serious toys

Serious is as serious joys

Serious is as serious ploys

Serious is as serious dunes

Serious is as serious means

Serious is as serious gains

Serious is as serious jeans

Serious is as serious deems

Serious is as serious leans

Serious is as serious drinks

Serious is as serious clinks

Serious is as serious thinks

Serious is as serious hops

Serious is as serious elopes

Serious is as serious ropes

Serious is as serious clogs

Serious is as serious clogs

Serious is as serious vlogs

Serious is as serious lanes

Serious is as serious manes

Serious is as serious vanes

Serious is as serious veins

Serious is as serious vines

Serious is as serious vikings

Serious is as serious stockings

Serious is as serious hunts

Serious is as serious punts

Serious is as serious pints

Serious is as serious mints

Serious is as serious minks

Serious is as serious tinks

Serious is as serious blinks

Serious is as serious bins

Serious is as serious tins

Serious is as serious pins

Serious is as serious kits

Serious is as serious fins

Serious is as serious gins

Serious is as serious coins

Serious is as serious soils

Serious is as serious oils

Serious is as serious toils

Serious is as serious broils

Serious is as serious yodels

Serious is as serious towels

Serious is as serious foils

Serious is as serious gravels

Serious is as serious travels

Serious is as serious waterfalls

https://theprose.com/challenge/2626

?¿ (c) 7.7.2022 Jeudi

louder.

faster.

we were born to be born to be born

to be

sinking our teeth into the sky

and digging our nails into each other's flesh

like

faster.

louder.

alarms reminding us that there's things

things.

to do

feeling

without feeling

we tumble round and round and round

and loosing our

eyes, like

misplaced buttons

tear my flesh.

we were more to be more to be more to be

screaming.

underneath your fingernails

is the

pain passion whiplash dirtstains

torn.

forgotten.

more.

faster.

we're spinning and here and spinning and

louder.

shouting.

void.

alarm.

again.

faster.

There used to be a young man who would sit in the pew ahead of me in the church. He didn't say much. I think he just smiled a lot. I can't remember ever speaking a word to him, but I'd see him most Sundays, dark black hair, a handsome suit, quiet and focused and different, different because he was good, and not many young men are good anymore. Sometimes he'd serve at Mass even when he lost his arm to the cancer that was rapidly destroying his body. I thought that after the amputation he would get better just like that.

He died seven years ago today. I don't suppose many people remember him. He was just so quiet. Humble men keep to themselves because they don't need validation or awards. I would like to have the copy of the letter he wrote, addressed to every member of the church; I was nine years old last I read it. But every year I remember the day he died. I remember the pride I felt to sit in the pew behind him. And I hope that I will have some of that goodness one day, the goodness that strikes a little girl, even from a distance, so that she can never forget the beauty of being different.

I think part of you wanted to be forgotten.

Not completely, not forever, but there was something about the way that you held yourself: like you could disappear instead of being present. Like you would prefer no one see you at all.

And not in a shy way. You were never shy. In a way that meant you didn't give a damn. About class, about teachers, about what was 'in' and what wasn't.

It surprised me when I heard you were so good at debating. At first. But you're good at arguing, which is why we got along. Because I'm not.

You always had your head bent over your notebook, entirely and completely absorbed. The world didn't exist, and for that I was jealous. That you could block it all out.

My favorite part, often my absolute favorite part of my entire day, was to tell you something cheery. In a class that would've otherwise been unbearable, wasn't it beautiful to share some sarcastic joy with you?

And you would scoff and groan and complain, and I knew you hated that class, and you pretended to hate me too sometimes, but that only made me like you more. Your pessimism only made me more optimistic, because it was endlessly amusing to annoy you.

But I knew you liked it.

One time Mrs. A caught you eating in class, right there in the seat next to me. And I laughed at you, behind her back, while I continued eating goldfish out of my pencil pouch. You pretended to be angry, of course. But it was hilarious, we have to admit, that I could never get in trouble and you always could.

Sometimes being around you hurt, which isn't surprising, from the way we talked to each other. In jousts and opposites and barbed wire. You called me Rudolph, once, when I had a pimple on my nose. And then I was self-conscious about it the rest of the day.

Sometimes being around you hurt for other reasons, silly things that seemed more important back then. You know your old best friend, the one that became mine, wanted to go to prom with you? But you didn't take her, and you didn't take me either.

Did you know I sometimes almost forget all this? It was all so long ago. But the memory of your face, and your teasing, and your laugh: those remain. Forever, most likely.

I'm not sure I'd have thought of you again, for quite some time, if I hadn't stumbled across an old note of mine. It was meaningless, on one hand, and on the other, I remembered again why I miss you.

A memory, simple, of the two of us pretending to pray, kneeling next to each other in that suffocating little chapel. We must've been handed rosaries to pray, because Lord knows neither of us would've willingly decided to pray one. Or pray at all.

"I dropped Jesus," you'd whispered. The plastic crucifix-Jesus stared up at us from the floor, and the beads in your hands ended with a loose thread. And I know I had laughed, and you had too, as silently as we could so we didn't get in trouble. And what a welcome relief. In a place like that.

There are words that I never said, and some that I'm glad I didn't. Maybe parts of you wanted to be forgotten, but parts of me did too. We didn't know then, but I think that's what made us fit.