Amongst the items on his desk are a glass jar filled with the wrappers from every cigar he has ever smoked and a barometer that no longer works; the latter once belonged to his grandfather. These items and various others on the desk look like they have been there forever; they are dusty and quite settled in their places. The most recent addition to the desk has been there for just over a month. It’s a greeting card in the shape of a black corset. Inside it says, "Take me. I’m yours.". It seems to have found a home there.

I seem to have jumpstarted a last minute run on the topic. This is a good thing; it's a very good thing.

I love all three of those. Mine, for the record and yes the bitter pun was intended, happened this afternoon and hurt like hell.

I have one more to do.

Inventory of a Universe, Ending

Sky, blue, wheeling clouds.

The raucous cry of gulls, off toward Stinson Beach.

The smoking hull of the Caddy, its rear windscreen shattered, its erstwhile occupants scattered.

Soft patches of flowers amongst the scrub that streaks the hillside.

A few smears of blood.

Ruts from the tires, now shredded rubber.

A million pieces of broken glass, pebbled, catching sunlight like diamonds misted with last breath.

All the fallen eucalyptus buttons that ever were.

A girl with a child in her arms.

The child's broken teeth, scattered, someday to become dust, like the child, or dragons in the girl's memory.

dragons in the girl's memory

I love that phrase.

I love that phrase.

Which mythical creature was it whose teeth, if sown in a fertile field, grew into monsters?

Kind of like that.

FYI -- I'm buried under a pile of work, but I'll have the new challenge up shortly.

Which mythical creature was it whose teeth, if sown in a fertile field, grew into monsters?

Cadmus slew a dragon, and sowed its teeth in the ground, on orders from the gods. The teeth sprang up into warriors, who attacked each other; when only the toughest five were left alive, Cadmus nursed them back to health and led them in founding Greece.

That's the only teeth = seeds = something other than a plant story in my repertoire, but I'm sure there are others. (Actually, there's Momotaro, where a baby is born from a peach pit, but there aren't any teeth to start that story.)

That's the one I was thinking of Nutty. I haven't read any mythology in such a long time, I'd forgotten the particulars.

Yep, Cadmus. I mentally pegged the metaphor as a negative, possibly because I first heard it as a kid, and it struck me as horrific: something that couldn't be killed, that if you planted dead bits of it, things grew.

Isn't it weird, how things transpose in our heads, and stay that way?

Just so, deb, just so.