Category: fiction
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Invisible Microphone
I lift her shirt carefully in the same way I did the night before, exposing this roundness new to us both. Leaning close, I speak loud in a playful accent not quite my own into some invisible microphone. “Hello baby, this is your father.” She giggles and the bump stays calm. “Dork,” she says. Neither…
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Mr. Snuggles
The first thing Ms. Edith Wormly did when she woke up was put on her slippers and lean over to pet her Persian cat, Mr. Snuggles, who, not wishing to rise yet, opened one eye, looked around, and shut it again. His eyes slanted downward toward his pushed-in nose and small mouth, as though he…
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Circular Dreaming
In bed, comfortably cocooned in wool against the winter solstice, I watch the night sky beyond my window. Half awake, I wonder at the myriad stars exploding into life, forming shifting shapes over endless eons as I drift off to sleep, to dream of past ages. Other lives are conjured, when sacred women reclined in…
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GEE MONEY!
Yesterday on a walk, I saw a dollar in the grass next to the soccer field. Typically, I pick up cash I see on the ground. I don’t know exactly how the universe operates in regards to this kind of thing, but walking past orphaned money without making the effort to collect it seems like…
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Six-Word Stories
Arachne’s web Weaved her terror’s image Midas rejoiced And hugged his daughter Pandora wept Over an empty box
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Saying Goodbye to Books
The writer stared intimately at their life’s works. They were the embodiments of effort and time. Calcified bones rolled out of the chair and removed the books from the shelves. Shuffling back to the desk, the writer fell, clutching their time, into the cushions. Hours passed as the yellowed pages turned. Words flowed through eyes…
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Writing for Justice
Cecilia hunched over her computer. No one told her being a lawyer would involve so much writing. Almost every day. Actually, every day. Working in family law was somehow more taxing. Every day, families splitting, yelling, crying. And a combination of writing briefs and their subject matter made her hunch more, cowering beneath the gravity…
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Witless Witness
Out in Colorado, I lived on a ranch that I won in a poker game (that’s a story for another time). A broad stretch of land sloped along a mountain pass up high where the air is thin. Where the air has a chill, something nostalgic. There it sat. Two dogs came with it—to tend to…
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Smell of Snow
The smell of snow is hypnotizing. That stony rush of air that freezes tiny nose hairs upon impact. The sensation of the outdoors and rolling in cold. Standing on the steps of her Dad’s rig shack, a lease site in the distance, strewn with men hard at work, well-worn machinery, lifeblood of the ’90s. Barbie…
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Under the Circumstances
The doorbell rang. I got up from my overstuffed chair, put King Lear down on the coffee table and peeked out the window. It was the mailman. “Well,” I thought, “service at last.” I opened the door. It was quite cool and raining slightly. To keep the chill out, I immediately invited the…
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That which is binding.
In these times we need something other than a stick, something that reaches beyond the range of mere weapons. The president paused and placed his hand upon a globe, fingers running across the continents. Such things need to be crafted to present the finest point of control without the blunt certainty of destruction…
