Author: HTorres

Play and Deliver

There I found myself early in the am pacing up and down the court. 
Cheering, teaching and encouraging. I was giving the young men playing baskethoops my best strategies and they sometimes strained to understand them and/or enact them. Little by little though and I followed up with excitement when they did well. I told them to hustle, to play with heart, to push on, to play smart. I wanted them to know that you got to have guts to play the game. You have to have

Building a Memory

My wife and son left the table. 
They went to tend to our new baby-chicks and left my youngest and I sitting behind. My littlest-tyke always eats slowly and I was in no rush to get up from the still steaming cup of Tanzanian coffee before me and her company. I watched her picking at her hash browns. Picking up bits of potato and gleefully popping them into her mouth. In the background Marley

Chirps of Anarchy

There is a gang issue in Monrovia that many of us just put up with. This throng makes it a habit of dashing and flying about the city from morning to night. They wake up neighbours with their loudness and sit confidently perched knowing they own the town. Easily identifiable hey sit there with their green vests mocking on lookers. Their catcalls are birdlike. Their numbers stay steady.
Flyin

Sudden Death

Sometime after 2 am Friday night a most troubled shriek broke my sleep. In the time it took to situate my senses in the dark, to rush outside towards the back yard the deeds were done. By the thin light of my phone I fumbled but eventually found two slain bodies who earlier in the day had brought me a laugh. There on the ground rested in blood my hens. About them feathers strewn everywhere. Evidence of the violence they faced in their final seconds. 
The flood of all emotions hit me right there…in the near dark as my wife came to join me in silence. The body of one of our hens we never found. The agile animal that hopped over six-foot fences surely dragged it off and made a meal of her. 
Last night…another attack and another death. One more body I

Tune In

Back in 2010 I worked a cubicle at a building in Culver City. Working the late Customer Service shift I infrequently tuned to KSPN and listened to the game broadcast of whatever local sports team was playing. After a while I recognized a pattern. Whenever I listened the home team lost that game…since then I’ve stopped watching all sports. 
Maybe it

12:17 am

The wind coming from the west rakes the few leaves on the ground toward our rickety-sunbeat fence. Their rustle comes in waves and amplifies the creaking of bent nails, old wood and rusty hinges. The posts and beams of the homes 1950s design are starting to shed the heat they collected from a hot California October day and they moan occasionally with a start. There are no street lights so the night is engulfing our lot in all out darkness and pupils struggle to dilate enough to make sense of usually familiar surroundings. There is sound. The low hum of the refrigerator whose coil occasional twangs when the cooling cycle ends. Coos and sighs from the bedrooms. The leaves, the twigs and the branches cause the loudest cacophony and they are conspiring with one another. The home is reveling in its welcome of the shifting winds for those who are willing to listen to her.