Steven stepped out of his house onto the porch into the cool morning air. The sun was just coming up and the darkness was receding, giving the neighborhood a blue hue. He put his hands on his hips and stretched back slightly, easing sleep from his muscles. He was a little sore from pickleball the other night, but that’s how he and his buddies stayed in shape at their advanced age.
He took a few casual glances down the street and saw a woman rounding the corner, likely on her morning walk. She didn’t look familiar to him.
As he shuffled down the drive to pick up his newspaper, Steven pulled his phone out of his sweatpants pocket. The woman was slowly making her way closer.…
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The man who was probably hitting on her was more handsome than Lexie first thought, though wildly age-inappropriate. He had a combination of features striking on males of any age, but especially agreeable on the seasoned – prominent brow, deep-set, lively eyes, sharp jaw that shot straight back like the steel bow of a battleship, and a smile both boyish and sophisticated. If twenty, he could be shirtless in a jeans ad but the lines cut by experience and the abrasions of weather edged him toward iconic. He was nicely dressed too, but it was his cool that made Lexie think. He pulsed it like someone called a cool guy all his life, who is used to things coalescing around him as the magnetic center, but doesn’t work hard at it or give it much thought. …
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I’m going faster than the signs limit, but slower than the other cars barreling through the toll plaza. Before I even see it, a car is right up behind me, that’s how fast they’re going.
As soon as they’re past the concrete divider after the tollbooth, the car darts over to the right to pass me. But the lane to their right merges into their lane and that lane is occupied by a semitruck. The car is caught unaware and has to slam on their brakes. Then the lane now occupied by both the semi and too-fast car pours into my lane. I use this lane every day because the other lanes merge into it. My lane is the safest course through this bonkers toll plaza where everyone is in too much of a hurry.…
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Wild as myth, silent as fate
He is not king, nor knave,
Yet wild in hate,
Sances between them like smoke—
a riddle in the deck,
Keeps the enemies close and friends richer
Smiles with bare allegiance, raising the stakes
Painted in motley,
He wears chaos as if a crown,
a wildcard whispering:
Holding and beholding his own assertion
His miniature face on the marotte hails itself
Rules made in jest, it says, are threads to be cut.
Motions and stress of a fracturing surface.
Pretend solidarity and imitate love, he’s a solitary notion.…
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Now that they were gone he felt a little lost. Moving away had been an exciting adventure; but after that, then what?
It was wonderful, of course. They had the same things at home – pastries, coffee, cocktails, small plates – but they were so much better here. The flat white was available everywhere, but nowhere else had invented it.
Yet their being here had made it feel like home, and better than ever before. He had been content in a way he had not realised was missing. So now that they were gone he missed them, and felt worse than he did before.
The rain came from the sea over which they left. It illuminated the grey that the sun had obscured. It would have been better had they not come at all.…
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“Yes, you are in fact, dead. I know this can be hard to hear.” Death said with a compassionate smile “I can’t “help” you, but I like to offer one thing. Your last. I will show you your last. What would you like to see? Your last kiss? Your last talk with your mom? The last hug from your son?”
I looked into Death’s cold unmoving eyes with tears in mine. His eyes reflected what was in his heart, absolutely nothing. I suppose he wasn’t always this way, for his brain still knew what compassion means, which was evident by his offer, but millennia doing this job means a heart of stone.
My children had died many years prior, the first passed while fighting Chekhov’s war, the second dying from the nuclear fallout that soon followed.…
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Beneath the stark glare of a harsh bathroom bulb, he had no problem locating crow’s feet and frown lines and the three horizontals etched in his forehead. Red blotches and brown skin discolorations stood out like warning signs on a road under construction. But this was no work in progress. This was the canvas he was left with after sixty-three years of struggle, success and whatever it was that had come after that.
The feature that wasn’t as obvious visually, the thing that was more difficult to find, was that elusive element called dignity. Surely it was still there. It must be, he reasoned. Hidden behind the time and the mileage and the unrelenting belief that a man shouldn’t be judged by what he did, but rather by how well he did it. …
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