20-Minute Writing

The heft of my axe always made me feel like far more of a man than my small-framed, lean body would suggest. I never really fit in like a typical Bulgarian boy, much less a typical Bulgarian man. I didn’t look like a mafia guy, or a lumberjack. But when I went out to chop […]

He felt exuberant, waking up at dawn. He couldn’t remember ever having woken up early, feeling excited for the day – maybe since he was a child. This must be it, he thought. This must be the key to a better life. In the kitchen, he pushed the window open, hoping to feel some fresh, […]

He wasn’t blind – yet. But he felt as though he should be. Seventy years, but felt much older, somehow. He squinted out across the lawn – vibrantly green in mid-summer – to the lake, where his little five year-old granddaughter splashed around just offshore, while her mother tried to coax her to practice swimming […]

Her softest blanket was wrapped tightly around her entire body and as she gradually woke up, she focused on that physical sensation… the blanket, its texture against her skin. Its warmth. She considered opening her eyes to check the time… all she knew was that it was still dark, but it could be almost any […]

He again closed his eyes and imagine himself in that hammock on the beach, having just run away from it all. It was all perhaps a little dark – abandoning your partner, your job, your colleagues, all in one go – or was it? If everyone was replaceable, then maybe he would be doing them […]

Climbing up on the mountain, he had the blues. He looked at the blues of the lake against the blues of the sky. He had the blues, too, he thought, and shook his head at his own stupid joke – that was the sort of joke she would have laughed at just to make him […]

This turbulence in her mind felt endless, despite having read all of the mindfulness books. She had gone to the yoga retreat in Thailand. She had gone to the meditation retreat in Bali. She had even paid to speak to a suspiciously well-compensated monk, asking him what she could do to rid herself of this […]

I couldn’t describe the precise feeling hovering in the air; I never could. The desert compound was so artificial that it had taken on a little bit of each of its inhabitants. Hardly any joy, save the occasional children’s laughter – thank god for the children, she thought. Lots of desperation – so many people […]

She sat on the deserted beach, alone, arms grasped around her legs, a little ball, small. Sunrise was coming. In a few hours there would be tourists coming – those early-morning tourists who crawl over from the resorts in a hung-over haze to claim their spots on the sand. And the juice-sellers. Pineapple juice, guava […]

His eyes flicked away from the screen and he pushed his chair away from the desk. Raising his arms and bending his elbows, he placed his hands on the back of his head and interlocked his fingers, leaning back in the chair a bit. He had read somewhere that this was a kind of ‘power […]