The man nodded. His folded arms pushed his stomach forward; an outee bellybutton poked at his t-shirt like a fetus that wanted out. And like a man who knows his fire insurance policies, he said “well, I guess it’s all for the best.”
The man nodded. His folded arms pushed his stomach forward; an outee bellybutton poked at his t-shirt like a fetus that wanted out. And like a man who knows his fire insurance policies, he said “well, I guess it’s all for the best.”
It was the year before it all changed. We stayed late at the cafe during the long days of summer. Inside, there were bright lights and laughter, especially when a beer was spilled, and a conversational hum interrupted by the sharp demands of short-tempered waiters. Outside, police horses clipped over cobblestones corralling rioters, as roving gangs, sober or drunk, chased Jews or Germans into dark spaces.
I think things went south because I was a habitual liar, especially about the story of how we met. I have an active imagination. I considered it charming, and for a time – a long time – so did you.
He wanted to crawl into that grating and join the Red Ninjas. He wanted to hear their breathing, see their maraschino-red silks, bathe in their insistent, warm breeze. If he could, he would have those sensations, and no others, eternally. But the time with Dr. Donnelly always ended. They would return him to his room at the Home, where the Nibelungs played their clang-bang-clang opera inside the steam-heat radiator.
Buford Theodore Williams III sat behind the wheel of his old pickup truck, fighting with the screw top on his steel flask. Sharp arthritis pains coursed through his fingertips. In his youth, Buford had been the wildest of the shit-kicking hell-raisers of Itasca County, but now it was a chore just to clasp the metal snaps on the front of his jeans every morning.
Andrea imagined she received a Valentine card from Tommy: it showed a dimpled pink Cupid shooting an arrow at a shiny red heart. The inscription would’ve been “You’re the best.” She put her hand over her heart and smiled. She could feel it thumping and winging toward Tommy.
Doctor Singh, head of the Northern Punjab Clinic for Pregnant Girls and New Mothers wore her green taffeta sari with a saffron shawl draped around her eighty year old shoulders. She unlocked the clinic door, closed her dripping yellow umbrella and welcomed the first round- bellied patient of the day
And, Jill, what if I kissed you? Would our bodies have dissipated and we become sparkles on the lake’s surface, two specks leaping among everything horrible yet still so very beautiful?
I am approaching the god.
“God is five minutes away,” chimes my subliminal, an irony I programmed in yesterday for kicks.
1929, two twin children were drowned by their parents in Bar Harbor, Maine, attached to weights and sent to the ocean floor.
Years later, a seashell was discovered at the bottom of this harbor, in the same area where the children’s bodies were found…