Posts Tagged ‘storms’

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Cast of Wonders 681: Little Wonders 48 – Coping Mechanisms

Show Notes

Episode art adapted from an image by Hello Cdd20 from Pixabay


A Chest Full of Storm Clouds

by Elisabeth Ring

It’s Philip’s text that finally does it.

“Happy birthday!” it says. Just those two words. Not, “Happy birthday! I miss you!” Not, “Happy birthday! I’m sorry!” Not, “I was wrong. I love you. Please take me back.”

Happy. Birthday. Exclamation mark.

As if the long, emotionally fraught blocks of text above it, mostly from me, and un-responded to by him, don’t exist. As if he hadn’t broken my heart in a million pieces even before he left. As if we’re the kind of friends you remember to text on their birthday but not well enough to come up with anything more creative than just “Happy birthday!”

Reading that text, I feel something break loose deep inside. I maybe haven’t been handling the breakup well to begin with, plus work has been extra tough lately and I’m going to have to juggle credit cards to pay for everything this month. This text just unleashes everything I’ve been keeping locked up and I know I need to get to a storm chamber or I might actually explode. (Continue Reading…)

CoW 497

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Cast of Wonders 497: Hurricane Season


Hurricane Season

by Avi Burton

Amaya smelled like the ocean. Most Florida girls did, when they returned from the beach with new tan lines and salt-crusted hair, but Amaya was different. The ocean-brine was under her skin, a part of her that was ever-present, unignorable. She wore jasmine perfume to cover it, overpoweringly sweet, but I could always smell the salt underneath.

We met at the beach— she always seemed to be there, sitting silently and watching the tides. I was crouched over a tide pool when I heard the slip-slap of her lavender sandals approaching.

“You’re new, right?”

I looked up and saw her silhouetted in the sun, smiling down at me, and nearly fell into the tide pool. Her swimsuit had a spotted pattern that made her look like the selkies I’d read about in mythology books— lean-boned girls with dripping hair and fur coats, who belonged to the ocean and only haunted the land. (Continue Reading…)