Tag: Fiction
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Cloth Doll Daughter Story Discussion
A slender woman standing in front of the chalkboard points her chin toward a boy seated in the second row of desks. “Go ahead.” “That’s not the way I see it,” he says, pulling his right arm down and crossing it across his chest on top of his left. “So,” Miss Marcy begins, “what do…
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Willow Creek
I remember when Stacy and I would go down to Willow Creek to skip rocks. I’d get mine all the way across; hers would only travel about half the way before descending out of view. “No one’ll ever try to skip that one again,” I’d say as the stone tucked itself in to the muddy…
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Pinball Wizards
We all had it in the back of our heads that this wasn’t all that good for us, but we also knew that if we didn’t do this here and now, we’d wake up one day thirty some odd years down the road and see a void where there should have been late-adolescent excitement. So…
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You Better Run
When you go for long runs, moments become monumental. After a while, you finally hit that temperature when the pores on the crown of your head open like infants’ eyes, oozing the byproduct of your stamping feet’s toil. Their opening is the moment you desire from the time you take your first stride. Hammering the…
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Tall with Long Legs
Tall with long legs. Long and smooth, running on for miles. Elegant and shear. She was dressing in a tee shirt, worn transparent with years. Skin showed through the fabric. When the lady spoke, her head lifted swiftly and he chin cut into the space where her floating words lingered. Her speech was confident. The…
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Recognizing Strangers
Today, on the shuttle that serves as the ankle on the last leg of my morning commute, the one that goes from the subway to the office, I saw this girl I know. She wasn’t on the shuttle bus. She was driving a small SUV next to it. My window seat pulled up next to…
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A Cabinet of Coffee Mugs
My father was a quiet, weathered man. Ignoring conventional rules you find in writing manuals, it would be accurate to use the old cliché that he was akin to a closed book. He was reclusive, but pensive. He had been places. More accurately, as he used to tell me, places had visited him. He did…
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Quilt. Dousing campfire. Toy sailboat. Love letters.
The following passages represent four sequential moments from one of my weathered composition books. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. A patchwork quilt is spread upon the jagged, broken stalks of last summer’s crop of corn. The colors are dull, uninviting, like the content of our conversation. We’ve drifted here. Those pieces of fabric were selected with bleary eyes and…
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The Webber’s Sorrow
For the malice Nature thrusts upon us no remedy exists. Time, I have come to believe, is the closest aid in relieving the pain of those circumstances in life over which man has no control. Although time is a concept, an unseen hand in its own nature, it is a healer. What comes to mind…
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Doe Re Meandering
It’s still not clear to me exactly what I was doing driving around that night and when it comes down to hard facts, I could care less. I spent a number of purposeless hours behind the wheel during those months. Maybe it was the result of a living in a small town past my prime…
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Hibernation
Leaves freeze and fall from the limbs that spawned and fed their veins. They are blown by gusts of winter winds, the culprit who makes children’s cheeks turn from peach to apple. I sit by this hollow glass lamp filled with shark teeth combed off beaches of bygone summers. It’s 60 watt, disposable illuminance, must be…
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Romantically-Inclined Commuters
Public transportation, while physically wall-less and barrier-free, will agonize one’s sense of stability within their social world. To experience this sensation to the fullest extent, it is recommended for one to use public transportation at least twice a day and a minimum of five days a week. Travel alone for maximum observation time and tend…
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Trying to Read on the T
I’m outside of my apartment for about three minutes before the trolley stops and its doors bend open to let me in, but I’ve already begun to perspire. The wetness around the base of my neck quickly absorbs into my black shirt collar the same way it’s been feeding the cotton pillowcases on my bed…
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The Goddess Who Lives on the Dirt Road off Route 12
Every morning, on my drive to school, I see her waiting for the yellow bus to come and haul her off to St. Paul’s School for Girls. She wears a red and blue plaid skirt and a navy blue sweater vest because that’s what all the girls have to wear at that place. I drive…
Sophisticating the Rudimentary 