We were so bored in high school in 1978 that we very nearly threw a kid in the bonfire at Homecoming. We had nothing in particular against him; he was just tall and gangly like the rest of us but unlike the rest of us, he hung out with girls: homely girls, girls from our neighborhood, ones we called dogs. This made him an easy target. I didn’t like pursuing him, didn’t like calling him pussy and sissy and such but it couldn’t be helped, I thought, because I certainly didn’t want the rest of the pack chasing after me.
The rest of the pack: a gang of virginal boys dreaming of becoming otherwise, dreaming of dates with magnificent girls who would quietly disrobe and ruin us.…
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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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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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I. Ken
I could never tell old Mrs. Lindstom why I was in such a rush. But then, I was used to that – hiding my urges and desires, covering the excitable boy in me with the respectable exterior of a normal forty-year-old man. She waddled between the dahlias and the roses; I tapped my finger against the “CLOSED” sign on my lap. For ten years she’d been coming in, and not once had she bought a thing. Shouldn’t that be illegal in a capitalist country like this?
Unable to bear it any longer, I placed the sign on the counter where she could see it.
“Oh, I’m sorry, dear,” she said. “Are you trying to close?”
“Actually, yeah,” I said. “But there’s no rush.”
“Oh, no, but I should really be off now, anyway.…
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‘There used to be a house here,’ Mama said, pointing at the small shop that now sells vegetables and fruit.
‘When?’ Arjuna scoffed. ‘When you were a child?’
‘Yes,’ said Mama, glaring at him. ‘Which was only about thirty years ago!’
‘Only!’ Arjuna said, clutching at his forehead and staggering into the path of an oncoming trishaw.
I shoved him out of the way and the trishaw man glared at him, blaring his horn at the same time for dramatic effect.
‘I need to buy some veggies. Come on.’ Mama crossed the road in front of yet another trishaw and went inside the small shop. We followed reluctantly. Coming out of the hot December sun into the darkness of the shop, I felt claustrophobic. The fruits all smelled extremely sweet and I could see flies buzzing around a papaw that looked ever so slightly off.…
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