10 Minute Prompt: side effects

I often use things for their side effect. Benadryl for sleep, cheese for comfort, drinks for camaraderie. Knowing that the thing itself does something I don't care about. Every now and then I drive to feel the steering wheel under my hand, the G-force of getting there, the rough road loud under the wheels. But those times are very rare. Usually I drive to get there, using the time to relax or to laugh, or to get into the mood with some music. Behind the wheel, driving to visit a friend, I get in the car before I have spoken a word to another person that day. My thoughts are crammed in my head, jostling for attention. They start to bicker. I can let them bicker, I can let their conflict set the tone of the day. Or I can listen to music, a throbbing beat with a weaving brook of gentle melody trickling over rocks of tympani, bringing the hum in my mind to a sine wave of harmony. Finally, we are all going to the same place, no one is pulling the other way.

10 Minute Prompt: Wishful Lie

Her green eyes look at me, blink, look, blink. Droplets of water in her hair glitter in the quintuplet bathroom light. Her skin, ripening with fine lines, shifting pores, and eroded chicken pox scars, glows after the scrubbing in the shower. Her clavicles are drifted between shoulder and breast. I look away. She looks away. A Q-tip smooths and coaxes the wax from her ears. Another Q-tip disappears down the lint trap belly button, deeper than any she’s encountered. She brushes her teeth, always, before applying and spreading a dollop of lotion to her face. With the clean and tidy of this wiping routine she steps out of biology for a few minutes. If she does it right she can go a half day without looking like a living, growing, aging, sloughing, flowing, excreting creature.