boys – Amanda Salisbury

Fat lips should most definitely be celebrated.

-AS

Fat Lip

Originally posted on a 6s community, August 6, 2010 at 12:09pm

His face turned crimson and tears edged out of their prison as he ran around the corner of the house. Five-year-old humiliation is a supremely malignant condition, and he knew this even as he ran. Sure, it hurt when the over-sized plastic ball kissed his angel lips, sent fluid, warm metal across his teeth, and shunned the upheld over-sized plastic bat.

But the disgrace – well, that was more than any manling could suffer. His mother blithely gathered the instruments of his undoing, clutched as many hands as she dared, and guided the entire consort indoors, out of the view of sympathetic adult eyes that laugh without malice at memory rather than the present.

Once the door was latched, he hugged her, thanking her for rescuing him – though he will admit no such thing.

A God Unto Himself

My life has been charmed, surely.

-AS

A God Unto Himself

Originally posted on a 6s community, August 23, 2010 at 10:30am

The sailboats tossed about, careening dangerously as little men tumbled into a vast sea. The god of it all was laughing and watching without a trace of horror or a semblance of remorse. As one ship righted itself, the god grew angry at its effort and shook the thing to its core.

Then a voice, gentle and suggestive like a mother, sang in the god’s ears: “You can save the men; you can save them all, and make things right again.” The air quieted as the god considered the words, then he picked up the men with the slightest pinch of thumb to forefinger and replaced them in their vessels, and the sea was calm at last.

As the boy jumped off the child’s desk and ran off to play, his mother smiled wryly to no one and wondered that she had saved the sailboat mobile for another day.