Category: prose

  • Waiting for the interurban

    city street with cars during night time
    Photo by Josh Hild on Pexels.com

    The bus was running late, as usual. The only sensible thing to do in such conditions is to smoke a cigarette, as far as Paul was concerned. So he did.

    “I’ve run out of fucks to give,” he said, dropping a pinch of tobacco into the cigarette paper. He shifted the distribution of the tan, shredded leaf, pushing it to the edges of the paper. The amount was still unsatisfactory by whatever criteria he had, so another pinch was added shifted about until he was satisfied and his fingers started their practiced rolling to transform the package into a serviceable cigarette.

    (more…)

  • Drip drop

    Photo by Roger Starnes Sr on Unsplash

    Drip drop, water in the well. She peers down between the moss stones and half-shadows to the water’s tenebrious surface casing ripples with each drop of dew gathering in the chill of the dark before it casts itself downward, a suicide plunge to rejoin the well of spirits gathered below.

    (more…)

  • Fracture

    close up of thick ice
    Photo by Евгения Егорова on Pexels.com

    It began as a fracture, the kind that forms on the thin ice when the breaking point is reached from much too much weight put upon it from above.

    Though it was our memory and not ice, there was still the audible crack that could be heard over the firestorm as it raged over us, consuming with words meant to puncture our flesh like arrows full drawn on a great bow. Name calling like thrown stones and razor spite in a cutting rain that fell upon our heads. It was not that long ago that we embraced Mr. Wendell, but the rains came (as they eventually will) and he was given over to the middens for the sake of survival. So much for cohabitation and burning the white sheets…

    And so, our memory cracked in spiderweb, the baby screamed, and we saw the cascade of a dream crumble to the dirt in the name of filthy lucre and the pale. You get what you give, they said, and you gave hate.

    Perhaps, but we were loving in how we hated.

    I wrapped my blind eyes in linen, hung my head, feeling the fracture claw at my own brittle past begin to sunder. I walked away and grew old, unable to hold onto the younger days.

  • Horses

    Photo by Raychel Sanner on Unsplash

    “Can you hear it? The wind is calling to carry.”

    She stood away from me, turned away from the buildings, the trees and me, her black hair blowing on the gathering breeze as the skies grew flint to match the color of her eyes she wore before the turning away. I did not doubt her eyes could change colors to match her mood, I had seen it happen many time before. Her mood was that of the coming storms, unsettled, roiling and only barely constrained — and so she now wore flint and heather where most people wore mere eyes.

    (more…)

  • The floor’s gone out

    Photo by Kelly Ziesenis Carter on Unsplash

    The floor’s gone out.

    I just thought you should know.

    (more…)