My older sister Nan makes promises. Promises to visit, promises to talk soon. Drops “luv yas” in, hasty afterthoughts. Texts that she’s proud of me too, even if they’re in sentence fragments.
But the promises keep rising and rising. Talk tomorrow, visit next month, two months. Promises are splayed across my consciousness.
Continue reading “Promise by Yash Seyedbagheri”
He was seeing another woman, a woman who was not his wife, which admittedly was a little disorienting. What was he gaining that wasn’t already given to him by me or the wife (the wife never called him daddy). He hadn’t replied to my texts in three days, and I was about to announce a fake pregnancy. Then she called.
Continue reading “Quarters by Meg Croley”
Not long after Mike and Katherine moved into their spacious St. Louis county house with pillars and brick facade, its value plummeted. But it was a nice house, woods in the back, nice deck.
“What will we do when they’re gone?” Katherine asked, brushing a tangle of brown thinning hair.
“Who?” he responded. She was talking about their kids. Two more years and both would be in college.
“All this space,” she said. “Empty.”
Continue reading “The Scary Lady by Jeffrey Penn May”
He told me he was Special Forces. I thought it was a lie; sounds so sexy, I’m Special Forces. I imagined legions of girls in soaked underwear.
Me, I didn’t care. My daughter was one year old, I moved to Manhattan to a 5th Avenue apartment believing in a Cinderella story, only to find Lelle’s car seat in front of my door one morning with a “Sorry!” note. The prince paid the $12,000 monthly rent to fulfill the lease and told me to keep the 3 carat Harry Winston engagement ring.
He promised to keep me safe.
A promise that turned out to be total and complete bullshit. Brent also vowed to be faithful, stick around in sickness and health and a bunch of other things that went by the wayside the moment he decided to tell me about his ridiculous, “mid-life crisis” indiscretion.
Continue reading “Eternity of Descent by A. Elizabeth Herting”
I sit in silence amid the scattered, worthless rubble of what were the symbols of your life’s bright flashes and triumphs that you hold so dear. These shattered remains lay in tribute to unbridled, hate-filled rage, spawned from the union of betrayal and deceit.
“Your limbs grow weary, and the inn’s still far. Rest here. No need to punish your faithful and pleading flesh. Rest a moment, only a moment, and then proceed with new vigor and greater speed.”
“Foul specter, hush, quiet your insinuations and temptations. The inn’s fifteen easy minutes on a good road, and dusk stirs; the sun lowers, and your kind will be about soon. Still, still, it’s too soon to vacate your gloomy tomb.”
“Isn’t this all a bit – I don’t know – American?”
It was the only description I could think of that fully captured my distaste. I sat in the kitchen with my arms crossed, looking up at where Jack, my husband, and William, his publicist, were standing on the other side of the kitchen island; the low-hanging light above us illuminated their faces as they watched my every reaction.
What is the most important quality that your Soulmate should possess?
It was not the first question, or the last. It was somewhere in the middle. I could look it up but you took my electronics. It’s only memory I can look to now, and we all know what a liar that motherfucker is.
Honesty.
When Sarah woke up, Thomas was already making coffee and smoking a cigarette. He couldn’t live without fags. He seemed to be anxious to even go to sleep, because this would deprive him of his favourite object of consumption, and he smoked straight after they had sex, like a character in films about prostitutes and their clients. But Sarah did not mind it, even liked it, because cigarettes suited him and after sex she wanted to be left alone. Thomas also liked to eat, and his eyes were always on the best risotto or cherry pie in the city. In the past one would call such a man a bon vivant, but these days this term had an archaic inflection, so in her diary she named him ‘Agent Cooper’. Despite not paying much attention to his health, in his late forties he still looked good. Probably he even looked better in his forties than in his twenties. For her he looked best when he was naked. Most men look ridiculous without their clothes and they try to hide their shrinking muscles, dicks and balls or try to puff them up by this or that means. Instead, he simply liked to spread himself on the bed, as if unaware of the space he occupied or offered his body as a vessel into which she could escape into a different reality.
Continue reading “Homo Sacer and Her Lover by Ewa Mazierska”
