Nope. No luck, Gus - still not in my email box, and it isn't in my spam filter folder, either. It just isn't here, period.

Missionaries

"Good morning."

They stand on my doorstep, brimming with what some people would call enthusiasm. But I'm seeing zeal, which isn't so nice. Zeal has a habit of hardening into something uglier.

"...here to spread the Word...."

Guys, diseases are spread. Words are shared.

"...tell you about God."

Their combined ages don't add up to mine. Do they realise how thoughtless they're being, how insulting? No: they're from a mission. They're on a mission.

I tell them no thanks, and send them on their way. Communication is so far away from us, they might as well be speaking in tongues.

I blame Homeland Security.

Guys, diseases are spread. Words are shared.

Bang on, DG!

Makes me want to re-wire my doorbell so that whoever pushes it gets a message from God.

My God sounds like Andre Braugher, mostly. I wouldn't mind if He talked to me, but so far? Not directly.

OK, apropos for all writers (I'm betting Robin, if she reads this, either already knows the quote or will cackle loudly enough for me to hear at the other end of the state). Sent by my husband:

"I handed in a script last year and the studio didn't change one word. The word they didn't change was on page 87."-- Steve Martin

Wordless

Be quiet.

Do you think you can comfort me?

Do you think you can offer speech
phrases carefully crafted over five thousand years
words, no more than shorthand for
I don't know what to say?

Be quiet.

Today it seems all the world is drowning
in tears, in blood, in loss
Loved ones, enemies, strangers, toppling
front to back
like dominos subjected to a series of small passionate shocks.

Spirits gone, hearts cracking along internal bubbles of emptiness
today, tomorrow, riding the wake of a wind
that is darkness and loneliness.

Comfort lies in falling into memory, and into hope.

So keep your shorthand; I don't understand it anyway.

I have one, too, but I thought this was kind of funny rather than the painful or touching ones that haven't jelled yet. “Excuse me?” The bureaucrat in the short-sleeved Sipowicz dress shirt looks over at me. It takes me a minute to realize what I’ve said because being back on a transit commission has apparently reactivated some Rosalind Russell thing in me so the sentence “Stadiums are sexier than public transit,” doesn’t make me pause in the least. He looks as drained of color as if I showed up there wearing pom-poms and a firm handshake. Journalism-sexy has only a little to do with bodies; it’s more about hearts, minds, and imaginations, and trains(or buses) running on time can’t compete with the quest for a championship ring. I speak a different language since college.

Very nice, the both of you. It's interesting the way most of these drabbles seem to address how even when speaking the same language, we don't necessarily.

God, that guy was so horrified, I still wonder what he expected me to say...that I was Adaptive Annie Savoy and had done it in every West Coast ballpark?!

Foreign language

The llama started losing his stuffing in Prague. This was undoubtedly due to the rigors of riding in an 8-year-old's backpack, watching castles and subways with equal beady-eyed intensity. We made needle-and-thread hand signals to people on the street. In a shop with yarn in the window, we made swooping sewing motions in the air. We tried to point at needles on the crowded shelves behind the counter. Then a tattooed heavily pierced teenager said a few words to the clerk and picked out the correct amount from our proffered bills. She left the store, our thanks trailing behind her.