He stayed up all night excited to be sleeping under his own roof for the first time. After years of working overtime, living in cheap rentals with noisy roommates, driving a rusty car that limped from repair to repair and taking no vacations, he saved enough to put a down payment on a house. He got out of bed before sunrise and could not wait to start working on the yard. Unfamiliar with the rules of American suburbia, he did not want to awaken his neighbors and waited until he saw the first signs of activity on his quiet street. Emboldened, he went outside in the summer morning and was greeted by the rising din of neighborhood lawnmowers, leaf blowers and weed whackers. His neighbors waved from across the street and he felt for the first time that he had finally arrived.…
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Limp leaves shudder
In cluttered puddles
Dead and brightly colored birds.
L. Noelle McLaughlin…
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He sat perched in his old place, where he had sat a thousand times before. From that lofty height he turned and gazed upon the green patched floor. He saw all that there was to see; there the smoking chimneys and there the willow trees. Nothing could escape his gaze, there was nothing there he did not know. He knew the lanes, their bends and straights. He knew the hedges, farms and loam. He knew each cheerful homestead and each happy family. He knew the little streams and brooks, he knew each bird and tree.
This is my home he thought to himself, quite contentedly. Why is this not my native land, where all my life I’ve been? I could not leave, I never could, for other pastures green.…
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After I killed my boyfriend, I hid his body in the basement, where he was swallowed by the stone, becoming nothing more than a shadow. Even in death, he finds ways to surprise me. Many nights, I wake to find him staring down at me, and I know he wants to kill me. But apparitions can do nothing but bloom on the walls like flowers, pleading to be noticed.
It’s never enough, but it’s all they have—and all he ever deserved. “At least you’re never alone,” I whisper to his silhouette. “Isn’t that something?” I’m not alone, either. Finally, completely, he belongs to me.
Killing him was an act of mercy; some might even call it fate. I did what was necessary to save him. I love him, and now, he finally understands how much.…
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I was eight years old when Esperanza fell off the swing. In the backyard, she stood on a flimsy piece of wood, rotted from many rains and held together by two strings, rocking her body back and forth. While she reveled in her weightlessness, I sensed impending catastrophe. From my spot safely in the grass, I pleaded with her to stop. Barely hearing my pleas, she rose higher, closer to the sun with each swing. I turned away from her. Bracing myself, I squeezed my eyes shut and covered my ears. She called out to me, determined to show me that if she swung high enough, she could see above the hedges separating our yard from the neighbors, above all the rooftops neatly lining around the cul-de-sac, to somewhere even more distant.…
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I was running in Central Park at midnight, so fast that if anyone saw me, they would think someone was chasing me. But I was alone. There wasn’t any other person in the park. Not even a car. My chest hurt and my ankles throbbed, but I ran and ran, past Belvedere fountain, past The Bandshell. My father, who was away on a business trip, would have a heart attack if he knew what his fifteen-year-old daughter was doing that cold November night. Someone could murder me. Just a few years ago Son of Sam was shooting girls with long brown hair like me. “Fifteen-year-old girl found dismembered in park bushes” could be the headline in The New York Post. Maybe my father would blame himself.…
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Remote, in this sparsely appointed corner,
We project our way upon the sky,
a firm plateau of gray beneath us
and a bicycle turned upon its side.
The lead-wheel upturned,
it splits the air
and raises piles of ice cream high above.
Greater and richer,
the pillar grows,
stacked by the wheel’s uplifting power,
until sparkling bits of chocolate
like unimaginable raindrops
fall before us there,
the exquisite tower toppled over
by a silken contingent of clouds.
– William Mullins…
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