The man stood at the window. The sun was melting crimson onto the tree line, but instead he pecked at his phone with furrowed brow.
The woman sat in a chair, overaggressive springs prodding upward beneath the vinyl. Her soles fused to the floor, tacky and gleaming with disinfectant. She rested her arm on the bedrail and stroked the girl, who was upright and looking far away.
“Mommy?” the girl said.
“Yes, honey,” Sueanne said, paging through the magazine in her lap. ‘Nine tips to a shapelier bottom.’
“What did the doctor say?”
“When?”
“Before. Just before, when he was in the hallway with you and Daddy.”
“Haley honey, I’ve told you, you need to rest and let the grownups worry about doctor things. It’ll only make you feel worse to worry.” …
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Every year in the small town of Jatinga, India, birds fly in from all over the world to kill themselves and tourists come to watch. It’s been going on for a hundred years, scientists say, in the months of September and October when the ground is still moist with little brown puddles from monsoon season. High above the sinking leaves of the jujube trees and damp wooden huts of the village, people line the street like they’re waiting for a parade in the dark. They watch their wrists as time ticks forward, glancing upward until the first bird appears against gray and heavy clouds like a black dot on a dirty canvas. The bird plummets like the first rain drop of a storm before splashing on the ground in a flurry of feathers.…
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Sylvie was barely six when her mother’s hand purposely blocked her face from seeing the horrendous sight of papa being taken away by the police. Through a narrow chink between her mother’s pinky and the ring finger, Sylvie’s questions poured out silently: Where was Papa going? Will he be back to take her for a swim? Mama spoke about it again and again in later years but nothing brought comfort to the question of why Papa was victimized by Stalin. Woolen gloves and eat-treats to Siberia brought no acknowledgement. Could they no longer communicate with Papa? Had he turned into a ghost?
If Sylvie had broken loose towards him would the police have allowed a last hug? Would Papa have said, “Little princess, I will be back for you.”…
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Right now, you’re in India teaching English.
Later, you won’t be.
Last week, he was just another student who didn’t know the difference between us and them and going and gone, until yesterday, when after everyone else left the room, he wrote a Telugu word on the blackboard and looked at you. He had never looked at you that way before. Like a still life with chalk dust in afternoon light. Like a blue flame. As if a swell of water could blush and bite its lip. You asked him what it meant. He said darling and stared past everything that wasn’t you.
Today he’s wearing a pink t-shirt that says, “Enjoy Pussy” in the Coca Cola font and black slacks with no shoes. He’s playing cricket on the hot dust of the school grounds.…
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In a morbid way he wished it were raining. It only seemed right that if he was mourning someone so beautiful, everything else breathing should too. The air, the earth, the sky, everything alive should be mourning with him. The sunshine that lightly warmed his perfectly black suit itched and angered him. Head bowed, the back of his neck was getting close to burning and the sunlight was mocking him. Mocking his pain. It’s a beautiful day to everyone else in the world, a day that people would never believe was full of loss. And sorrow.
Watching her rosewood coffin being lowered into the ground he contemplated sorrow. The lack of tears at such somber events was finally evident to his dry eyes. Simple loss flowed from widow’s eyes, but sorrow, true pain at losing this fallen person, couldn’t even be recognized here.…
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