The directions were as follows: Apply a one-inch strip of toothpaste onto a soft-bristle toothbrush. Brush teeth thoroughly for at least two minutes twice a day (morning and evening) or as recommended by a dentist. Do not swallow. Spit out after brushing.
He wasn’t sure whether his toothbrush was a soft-bristle toothbrush. It may have been a medium- or hard-bristle toothbrush toothbrush. The toothbrush was old. He’d thrown away the packaging on the day he’d opened the toothbrush. Or within a few days thereafter, anyway. He wasn’t a slob. He examined the toothbrush. It bore no indication of the type of bristle, unfortunately. As a matter of fact, the only word to be found on the toothbrush was the name of the manufacturer. For the purpose of corporate branding.…
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I brought dinner to Martin and Elouise as they sat in their usual spot in front of the window of the nursing home. It overlooked the snow-covered courtyard and although it wasn’t much it was definitely the best seat in the house. They were silent but offered me the same smile of gratitude that had become a part of our nightly routine. Their liver-spotted hands shook as they picked up their silverware, feebly cutting at the chicken pot pie, and spooning tepid bites into their dentured mouths.
I returned to the kitchen thinking of their love, a sixty-year marriage filled with children, a home, good jobs; the adjective of their life would be stability and I didn’t know if this was something to envy or to pity.…
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A first-year teacher met her second husband in the supply room on the first day of school. He handed her the Post-it notes from the top shelf. She liked his Southern accent and his forearms. The way he had folded his shirtsleeves caught her attention, cotton like magnolia petals collapsed on the lawn of a sprawling estate. She sensed he would be important to her.
At the end of her first day in the classroom, the woman felt defeated. She cried at her desk, wondering what she had gotten herself into when he appeared in the doorframe a 6’4” Virgin Mary apparition sporting a goatee.
The faculty offices were in a back building; they were tiny dorm-like rooms, honeycombed with built-in desks and modest closets. Long ago, this space had been the living quarters of nuns from St.…
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Today I walked around the city with a white noise machine. Not an app played through headphones but a box, both futuristic and antediluvian, used during nights too loud or too silent to sleep. It ran on electricity so I snuck into my dad’s garage and took his generator, zipping it into a duffle bag and slotting my arms through the straps.
Then, I carried it around the city looking for you.
It rumbled against my spine, and I felt touched for the first time since your impression faded from that side of my bed. The soft whir distracted me from your high-rising, staccato accent, the one you explained as particular to your side of the Port. Despite the distance you traveled to arrive, were it not for the machine, I’d have heard you everywhere.…
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Efforts to locate next of kin had failed. Only the gravediggers and I stood in the ancient cemetery among the mounds of exhumed plots encircled by high-rise apartment buildings blocking the morning sun.
Otis murmured something about a skeleton crew. The others laughed and leaned on their shovels. I checked my watch—already a quarter after. The media would not be coming. I nodded to Otis. He climbed aboard the gravedigger, started its engine, and steered it over to the sunken rectangle. The claw descended and scooped up its first load of dirt.
Ten years ago, the Cremation Initiative had provoked fierce controversy. Exhumations were slow in the beginning until media attention declined, and the citizenry moved on to other concerns. A few grieving families made feeble protests, but disinterments proceeded at an ever-swifter pace, creating a boom for the cremation business, columbaria, and real estate companies, which scooped up the properties for development.…
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Act 1. You and me
Filets of trout perfectly browned in warm butter beside a quartered lemon slice on two Wedgewood plates. A carrot-sculpted rosette. Two glasses of rosé. Brown, yellow, blue, orange, red passion. “I’ll have iced tea; she’ll have water.” The server left us alone to hold hands in the flickering light of a candle, the shape of light caressing your face like breezes rustling a redbird’s feathers.
Act 2. Her
I just want someone. Why can’t I find someone? They come in here every week, sit at the same table, hold hands, never see me, see only each other, like I’m a distant noise, a car crash in some other neighborhood, a solar flare whose eruption won’t affect their climate-controlled environment, a damned iceberg calving, dissolving into the sea, disappearing into atoms small enough to be carried on the waves of their love sighs.…
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Mason Hamilton Williams was four and a half years old and it was a big long name and he could spell it all himself, Officer Jane Park had just learned.
“I kin even read. I told myself how to read when I was three and a half years old. Grownups didn’t tell me. I told myself. My teacher didn’t tell me. She told me the ABC’s but I already knewn that since I was two and a corter years old. The problem with grownups is. That they don’t listen. To the words.”
Officer Jane Park’s gaze drifted to the child’s light-up Paw Patrol sneakers thumping rhythmically against the metal legs of the chair. Under the bouncing feet a large coffee stain reposed on the dismal carpet.…
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