Once upon a time, the angels in heaven were on a break from their divine duties. The angels have their break during the last extra six hours of a year, before the earth makes a full circle around the sun. The six hours fall on November 1 earth time, from…

Life is not a noun, goes a saying, it is a verb. Another goes so far as to proclaim that God, too, is not a noun, but a verb. While these statements are meant to be motivational, in the spirit of Invictus, which means unconquerable or uncontrollable in Latin, that…

Forgive the cliché ( but then can anyone ever say anything of substance, meaning in today’s world without coming off as cliché, corny, or even parochial?) —but what if this thing we call life, existence, is, in truth, painting, that we are really painters, seated before our respective canvas, in…

I do not sign on with the Black Lives Matter movement although my skin is black as the moonless, starless sky. This is a decision I have made after visiting the tombs of and consulting with all my negro ancestors — the slaves abducted from their homes, shackled with heavy…

Yes, you! — It is 6:21 pm, Saturday, June 5, 2021. I sit here, on this spot, 35.6 latitude, 140.1 longitude, a Starbucks inside a mall, bent over my notebook. I come here to write. I am a wannabe creative writer. The coffee shop provides me with the right dose of distraction —…

the desecration of the English language — A tall, drunken teenage boy staggers into the study room and walks up to two girls engrossed in their group work. “And how are my sainted sisters doing this evening?” he slurs. The girls merely raise their eyes and give him agitated look. “D-don’t give me the martyred look na…

I was on one of my frequent excursions into the imaginary world. This time I wandered much farther than usual. The long, aimless amble brought me onto the curious, ominous sight of a group of thirteen evil spirits convening around a round table. A spirit in red mantle over the…

A passage in the Gospel that I often pass upon as insignificant intrigues me: [Jesus] sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it…

I am disconcerted to find, kneeling over the grave of my wife of twenty-three years, a man I have never seen before. My wife has been resting for a year and four months and nineteen days now. The stranger starts to his feet at my sight. He is elder, about…