Morning was the better time. She lit the match, touching the flame to the small candle’s wick, and it took, wriggling with new glow. Since Max’s death last year, Sarah kept a collection of his belongings gathered around the candle – his watch, wallet, phone, the pen found in the pocket of his jeans. She added his favorite Matchbox cars, Pokemon cards, an old school pencil whose eraser was worn down to its nub. Every morning, as the grim winter sky emerged from the night’s darkness, she went to her candle, sat with her son’s things. She did not pray. She sat in silence and attempted to quiet her mind.
She put on a yoga video, did a quick session, rising up in sun salutation, the highlight of her day.…
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The moon was pink.
Violet clouds engulfed its dim shadow and enveloped the castle around her, its karahafu scarlet and stacked above walls of mahogany stockades.
As she strolled down its hall, wooden planks crackling under her feet, she could feel her kimono flap in the wisps of breeze. Pink petals of the sakura trees beside her landed onto the silvery river around the castle, then coasted down the clouds into a world where they became rain.
At the end of the hallway, she stopped. Before her was a shoji, paper door, that would lead her into a room overlooking the city. The door slid open, and a silver-haired man peeked out and beckoned her in, his withered fingers trembling in the air.
“She has returned home,” he cried aloud, turning back to the swarming clusters of people in front of the castle, their heads canted up at the room.…
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You slip between my fingers, crumbling to dust on the way down. Your teeth sink into the wedding ring you paid too much for. Unkempt hair gets caught up in the air like how Christians imagine they’ll float up during the rapture.
You were fourteen years my senior, the one thing about us that never changed. We met at the Borders in my college town no more than a month before it closed forever. The building was bought by a televangelist and is now a megachurch. I hear you can make more money off salvation than books nowadays.
We spent the day we met wandering the bookstore, conversing about our favorite authors. During a tangent sandwiched between discussions about Chabon and Hosseini, you asked me out for drinks.…
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I
I was nervous: The overcast sky brought waves of showers, and I was unaccustomed to driving on city streets. Unsure I could find parking (though I had a map), I worried I would be late. But I arrived on time and began walking to my destination. As I waited at a stoplight, a car, rushing to beat it, splashed water on me. I panicked. Soaked from the waist down, I thought I’d have to go home and change, making me two hours late. I took a chance and marched on, deciding lateness was more embarrassing than wet pants. The pants dried within half an hour. But as I settled into the orientation for new students, the disquiet of being by myself emerged—no one to sit by and talk to, no one to affirm I’m not a cipher.…
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I got your letter the other day. Did you imagine my face when I realized it was your suicide note? The ungodly sound struggling between my lips? The dog running in circles, whining until I started breathing right again?
It’s been more than ten years since you left. I probably don’t have the right to go to pieces like that anymore. But if that were really true, you wouldn’t have written to me at all. Did you do it just to have the last word, like always? Well, I won’t let you this time.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to lecture you. I’ve wasted enough hours trying. I won’t bore you with how I felt when you vanished like a ghost.
The robbery was the second story on the evening news.…
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Catching the tall cylinders of wood on the
back of the chair, a skein of thin wool was
held in place so I could wind it into a ball
suitable for knitting a sweater, or socks,
hat, or mittens. Why didn’t any stores
have knitting-ready spheres rather than
coils of yarn? What if my chair’s back
didn’t have tall projections above the seat?
Round and round the fibers changed from
long strands to what resembled a child’s
plaything. Ready. I can begin. Begin.
This long-sentenced piece is what
pleases a literary editor who sees words
in run-on, and it’s designed to extend
as a skein. For me? I usually write
with a period placed
after a short line
as if I were
typing
dot.com.
– Lois Greene Stone
Note: This piece was originally published in June 2016 by The Lake and reprinted in the Nov/Dec 2021 issue of Scarlet Leaf Review.…
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She wasn’t afraid of the painting, at least not in the visceral heart-pounding way in which she feared the lurking darkness in her closet at night or the alien scuttle of centipedes. Rather, the discord between the painted hands and the rest of the figure haunted her, an unphysical conjunction that she felt rather than understood. Fear would have driven her away; she was not a brave girl. Instead, the unpleasant power the painting had over Helen drew her to it repeatedly. To her family, this was a relief, as they would not have understood her fear. Infatuation they could expect; the painting was the lens through which the family saw their history, the assembly of wood, paint, canvas, and varnish as much a family member as the person it depicted.…
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