When Miles arrived at work, the office staff greeted him with funny looks, some were either giggling or bent over in laughter. He checked the fly of his pants, rubbed his mouth thinking that a part of the donut was stuck to his beard.
Excerpt from Imported from Spain on Friday Flash Fiction (Longer Stories).
I was an innocent baby, but I wasn’t very cute.
A slightly different version published inVirtual Library.
I walk down the street
looking at my reflection
in each car window.
I see a wrinkled face,
a bent-over body
and wonder if that’s
really me.
It was just a few short years ago
I walked on the same block,
looked in similar car windows
and saw a young girl in shorts
with long flowing hair
and a bounce in her gait.
At your graduation,
I clapped
when your name
was called.
I remembered
how proud I was to
receive that rolled-up
diploma written in Gothic font.
I collected
a family of sheepskins,
thought it would bring happiness,
all it got me were
luxury cars,
tacky designer clothes
and a bigger and bigger house
to store all my vanity in.
It was all a vicious delusion,
society’s definition of success,
a hamster’s spinning wheel.
I was tired of the endless grind,
the need to impress, to sell myself,
so I stopped appeasing it.
I began a journey of humility
and simplified my life.
I re-evaluated adulthood
and where I wanted to go.
I found it without searching,
without the need to acquire more.
©️mft
