I first heard these words in a rock & roll song by the Byrds back in the sixties, yes I am telling on myself here. The words that I am speaking of are:

There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven-

A time to give birth and a time to die;

A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.

A time to kill and a time to heal;

A time to tear down and a time to build up.

A time to weep and a time to laugh;

A time to mourn and a time to dance.

A time to throw stones and a time to gather stones;

A time to embrace and a time to shun embracing.

A time to search and a time to give up as lost;

A time to keep and a time to throw away.

A time to tear apart and a time to sew together;

A time to be silent and a time to speak.

A time to love and a time to hate;

A time for war and a time for peace. (Ecc. 3:1-8) NASV

When I first heard these words I sang them and had no idea that they came from the Bible. When you hear the truth you know it, and when you sing the truth it stays with you. These words are still with me to this day as I go through yet another season of my life.

I am realizing that before I can start a new season I must put the old season in the rear view mirror so to speak. That is a driver's interpretation anyway and that is what I have recently had to do. Has anyone else had to do this? I would love to hear how this happened in your life. As we look at the words above they fit to every season I have gone through in life. I think all of us can relate to these words in some way.

The point is that these words are true and there is no way of escaping that fact no matter what you do, because the truth is the truth! But today we are led to believe that everything is relative to us even the truth. If we hold onto to the truth we will see the untruth or lie in that statement. Just like in the words above once I was a kid and now I am a grown up, even more than that I am a grandpa and even a great grandpa now. When we live by the words of truth we begin to gain God's wisdom and not just the world's wisdom. We must then apply the truth we find in our lives or it is of no use to us to just have knowledge we must walk it out in this life we are given and we only live once.

In life there are the season's above and we must learn to put the old or the past in the rear view mirror and continue on our journey in this life into the plan or purpose that God has made for just us and no one else. I wish you well my friends and neighbors and keep up with the pursuit of truth.

Today is my 14th birthday. At 9:00 pm this evening I will smoke my last cigarette. Then I will do what my heart tells me I must.

It has been a month since the start of the invasion, and still the people resist.

Everything is ready. I am ready - or as ready as one can be. I will dress all in black. And I have boot polish for my face and hands. I will be like a shadow in the shadows. I will take my rifle and the three molotov cocktails already packed into my school satchel. If I am caught out after curfew I will be shot, but this is my city. I know every building, every alley-way and back street. All of the bridges are guarded, so I will cross the river by boat, and make my way to the old town square. There are soldiers there, with tanks. I will blow up the tanks. Kill as many of the soldiers as I can. I will shoot until I run out of bullets. All but one. One I will keep for myself.

Whatever happens, I will not let them take me alive.

I have no family. There will be no one to mourn me. But, I hope, there might be someone who remembers how I died - defending my country.

It is the 21st of September, 1968. For me there will be no tomorrow.

Time, too much of it, was a dangerous thing.

Megan mulled this over as she was beginning to notice a few things. Peripheral things. Things that she otherwise would have completely ignored back when she was too busy.

Megan scoffed at the thought of her previous life. It was a trap, she always reasoned, the golden handcuffs of the high-paying nine to five. Sure, she had a roof over her head, an expensive one at that, and she wasn’t starving, but for all those comforts, she paid with her precious time and sanity.

Now, though, she finally had the luxury of having time. Enough time to think, to make connections out of thin air, to remember things in a different light, a clearer light.

Yes, it was very possible Megan was suffering from some kind of post-retirement psychosis. Alternatively and infinitely preferably, she was the most sane she has ever been her whole life.

She understood now. Everything was clicking into place.

Today for example, she had nothing planned. It was a weekday, Tuesday to be exact, the least exciting day of the week. Most people were busy running on their hamster wheels making that dollar. Not Megan. Not anymore. She had no ladies to lunch with, no friends to visit, no classes to attend, no jobs to do. It probably would depress most people having such an empty calendar. For her, it was liberating.

How did she get here? Megan purposely retired from the workforce at the ripe old age of thirty-three. She didn’t have a trust fund, nor did she find a rich partner to provide for her. No, Megan was working class born and raised, complete with student loans and a mortgage.

Her retirement plan really was quite simple. She was lucky enough to work in tech, around the time when being in tech was absurdly lucrative. She landed an unreasonably high salary right out of college, and her benefits included a good chunk of company stocks. The timing was right. It was a bull market for tech and her investments grew exponentially in an unprecedented short amount of time. Of course, all that comes up must come down. She saw the writing on the wall and moved all her assets before it all went to shit. After everything calmed down, she moved on to the next company, asked for double her old salary, and continued diligently squirreling away her money.

Simple.

Yes, the pay in tech was good, but man, did she hate every single minute of it. It was soul sucking work. The only thing that kept her going was that it allowed her a way out of the rat race. She always knew the woking life wasn’t for her, growing up watching her parents slave away every day, living paycheck to paycheck, coming home exhausted to their bones, working to their graves. They didn’t even know themselves anymore outside of their careers. How could they? It consumed most of their lives.

They had that look in their eyes after they finally got to retire. Empty.

Megan swore she would never be like that.

Her mother had rolled her eyes when Megan made the mistake of verbalizing her concerns in the midst of learning her fifth coding language. “That’s just life, Meg. We work and we work. Nothing comes free. You better get used to it.”

Megan always resented her for that. She did not want to get used to it. She thought it was an unnecessarily depressing concept to instill in a child: life sucked and will always suck. Still, thanks to her mother, it started Megan on her path. For thirteen years she worked the grind, lived criminally below her means, and invested most of her inflated salary. As soon as she hit her magic number, three million dollars to be exact, she said fuck all you guys, I’m out of here before anybody knew what was happening.

That was probably the single most satisfying moment of her life.

No, she didn’t feel guilty about it. God knows, she paid the better quarter of her life for it. Her time, from here on out, was hers and hers alone. It was the principle of it, really.

Anyway, now that her days were not filled with mind numbing work and self-important bosses, she had come to realize a few things.

One, that reality was not as it seemed.

It all started when Megan watched her neighbor, Trina, coming in and out of her house in the morning.

Now, normally, Megan wouldn’t even notice her neighbors. She barely spoke to them the past ten years, save for the occasional perfunctory nod when she bumped into them walking their dog or watering their plants, and only when eye contact was unavoidable.

But now… now that she had time, she noticed that Trina would get up every morning, have coffee on her porch, then, at 7:45am on the dot, she would get into her dark green Subaru and drive away, presumably to work. She would return later that day at 5:30pm, with her honey hair in a bun and purse over her shoulder, apparently exhausted from a long workday. It went exactly like this, like clockwork, Monday to Friday.

Well, except on Tuesdays.

On Tuesdays, Megan would watch her leave in her car in the morning, but she wouldn’t see her come home. Of course, at first, Megan assumed Trina just stayed over at a friend’s, or a lover’s, or volunteered at the local homeless shelter, or some other painfully boring, logical, benign thing, and she would come home late that night when Megan was already asleep. Really, it was probably none of her business. In the morning, like clockwork, at 7:45am, Trina’s garage door would open and her dark green mini SUV would come out with her in it.

Made sense. Except one Tuesday night, Megan stayed up late - all night, in fact - and watched Trina’s garage door the entire time. Trina never came home. No car. No Uber. No lights flickering on and off inside the house. Not a peep of sound from her neighbor.

Just as Megan was getting ready to call the police the next morning, her jaw dropped when, at 7:45am on the dot, her garage door opened and her dark green Subaru pulled out.

Now, Megan was not one to jump to conclusions. Obviously, she had to test her theories. The first possibility was that she somehow missed Trina coming home. She doubted it, she had never once fallen asleep without noticing, thirteen years of pulling all nighters programming had trained her well. Still, she had to rule it out. So for the next three Tuesdays, Megan stayed up all night, watching Trina’s house, and every single time, she wouldn’t see her come home. But every Wednesday morning, Trina would magically appear on her porch, having her cup of coffee, right before leaving through her garage in her dark green Subaru.

How could a car appear in a garage that it never physically returned to?

There was no doubt in her mind. Megan had seen this before, in her days in software development. She felt it in her bones.

It was… a coding glitch.

I wonder how she breathes when my light

isn’t gliding over hers

as if fingertips over a sensitive skin

counting heartbeats

within a moving chest,

and how she smile

when there’s no one there

that lip curling into a slow half grin

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He greets the dawn each morning

Smiles, behind a fresh bouquet

Sweet songs, hummed,

serenading

’Side the bed where she long lay

Devotion, spanning many years,

Waxing a century,

Shedding youth and countless

tears

Entwined, their destiny

Early on in married life,

They struggled — poor as dirt

So young, they, looking eye to

eye

Exchanging vows, rehearsed

Surviving war and hardship

True love, enduring time

Even when to sleep she drifts

He’s right there by her side

Caretakers expect him

For he’s never missed a day

And, Sunday’s with the Lord’s

hymn

Sharing scriptures as she lay

Some wonder, as they watch him

Seated there, in his lawn chair

His lasting, strong devotion

Beyond weather, fierce or fair

“She’s never died, my bride,

You see, forever, we are married”

Soft spoken, tearful eyes

Fixed on the grave where she lay,

buried

A careful watch he’ll keep

With endless love for his dear bride

Until he finds her in his sleep

Beyond the other side

Inspired by the True Love Story of John and Vivian McFalls

https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/opinion/columns/story/2018/dec/13/kennedy-god-put-us-together/484783/

Originally posted as “Love in a Lawn Chair” last year on Prose.

I have a hard time being sweet sometimes; it’s gotten harder over the years to always be vulnerable. To always be stripped down; raw and on show for the world but I love you. I find that sweet sticks to your skin; I can’t help but smile at the sound of your voice even when I’m crying. I don’t like to express my happiness too loudly because I think it pushes people away, they find it to be such a sour taste but you make my heart glow and I think even if I said nothing at all they would see it from a mile away.

ReBecca DeFazio

More Than A Flower

We are two broken bottles from families who loved to smash pretty things. Our edges jagged; sharp in some places and dull in others. We shine brightest when lined up together on window sills where the windows

actually open; freedom gracing our figures creating watercolor ballets on the bedroom wall. We are opposite colors. You are red- anger and shame fill up more of you than you’d like to admit but warmth lies inside of you too. I am deep ocean blue-full of more sadness and self hatred than you like to think but my love for you runs to those ocean depths and even further than that. When we dance together we mix so beautifully (even when we don’t.) We can’t fill the empty spaces, fix the cracks, or rewind the time back to when we were whole and new but we sit together, watch the sun rise and fall, create memories that make the old ones a little less vivid; we love through it all.

ReBecca DeFazio

More Than A Flower

It is nap time in kindergarten and I am supposed to be asleep and so are all the other kids. We all lay on blankets brought from home, kid size; mine is blue and yellow plaid with tiny tassels that look like worms. One eye open, one eye half closed, all I want to do is lay there and relax while I pick pick pick at a pretend tassel worm I imagine has just sprouted up from the earth, but I can't because the boy next to me, David, keeps saying "psst, psst, psst" over and over, annoying me. I know it is me he is pssting because that is not the only thing he does to annoy me and if he could, I know he would be saying my name out loud and poking me on my shoulder instead of pssting, but he knows he would get in trouble for talking during nap time, so he doesn't.

When our teacher says, "Okay kids, nap time is over, put your blankets back in your cubby," I jump up fast, faster than David, and walk very fast across the room over to my cubby which is on the girls side, no boys allowed, and then right away teacher says, "Okay. Listen up kids. Line up for recess," and I make it to the front of the line first, next to Miss Rose where I know David will not bother me.

As soon as we are outside, all the girls and I run for the jump ropes, but before I get there, David stops me. Not with a grab, but with his whole body, blocking me, and I struggle to get around him when he says, "I really like you Bonnie. Why do you always run away from me? If I give you my lunch quarter will you like me back?" And I have no idea what to say because I don't think it's possible for someone so annoying to like me, so I am very glad to see Virginia right next to me and she speaks first instead of me.

"David," she says, "You don't like Bonnie, you like me! Only me!"

And he does not look at her, he is only looking at me, holding out his quarter, so I take it and Virginia starts crying real hard like a big fat baby and I don't laugh or call her a name, I just reach towards her holding out the quarter, and say, "David is just being silly. He really meant to give this to you," and I keep looking only at her while David stands beside us. Real quick, she stops crying, which I didn't know was possible, and she puts the quarter in her pocket and we go jump rope and then recess is over and we all line up to go back into class. In front of me on the line, I can see David poking Virginia on the shoulder and she smiles and I do too.