1. Go outside and look at the clouds. What shapes do you see? Do not write them down.
2. Open your door and step outside, even if it’s raining, especially if it’s raining. Go ahead, keep
walking and do not have a goal. Is life happening?
3. Sometimes I close my eyes. This might help you, too.
4. Close your hand around an apple. How do you feel?
5. You might want to be a cloud.
6. aero, alae, alee, aloe, aria, ilea . . . If you say these words as slowly as you can, you might
lose the feel for them as words. That’s nice.
7. there is a stream somewhere as you read these words that is gliding over rocks, lapping onto
burly roots on the shore, and whispering to a lone sleeper on a blanket while he dreams of a field
in Delaware.
8. a bike gets you there.
9. are you still there?
10. You’re good.
Originally published by EcoTheo Review 2020
Cheryl Pappas is an American writer living outside Boston. Her work has appeared in Wigleaf, Hayden's Ferry Review, Juked, The Chattahoochee Review, HAD, and elsewhere. She is the author of the flash fiction collection, The Clarity of Hunger, published by word west press (2021). She is the recipient of a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council grant. She is currently at work on a novel and is represented by Alicia Brooks at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency.