The Necessity of Hope

An Excerpt From Fools & Naked People

Sometimes, I roll around in my childhood enjoying the pleasant company of two parents who spent their days creating beauty and laughing at the male doves fighting for the attention of a disinterested woman dove searching for worms beneath the earth’s surface. I miss my mother’s pretty face and the absent way she had of staring into the distance, as though another world existed there, which could only be found in her imagination. Even their sounds of love spilled into my childhood and taught me to give love freely.

Unfortunately, I never found anyone with the sweet disposition that put harmony in my childhood home. No, I stumbled across needy men, full of desire for other women, no loyalty and a nearly felonious lack of creativity. They hampered the essence of my natural way of being. I became bereft and full of disappointment.

When glancing at my garden, I see an attempt at recreating the beauty of my childhood. The flowers grow in abundance and even the fish are happy, and my parents can be seen in their absence. My thoughts turn to my neighbor Calvin, my last hope at love. He’s a beautiful man, expansive enough to appreciate the rambling roses spilling from my fence over to his, draping at the corner of our property lines. The rekindling of hope lifts my spirits and brings a smile to my face. My dog Mavis also smiles where she sits sweetly by my side on the back-porch swing.

Bonnie's novels are available in both paperback and on Kindle. Her Amazon author page can be found here.