I’m driving west into the setting sun on streets I’ve known for over 50 years in a car I bought brand new seven years ago. I’ve been driving for fifty-eight of my seventy-three years.
Tag: relationships
Carson by Caleb Harvey
I don’t really know Carson. I mean I know him, everybody knows him but he’s not my friend. It used to be that I wouldn’t be caught dead spending time with him. Now… I dunno, I wonder if he’d take me.
Carson is one of just three retarded kids at Robert F. Kennedy High School. The rest are too retarded for public school; they go to Strathmore Academy which is a “Special School” just up the street from where I live.
Odyssey of Tears by Titus Green
We move forward, dragging our punished, callous-covered feet in the vague direction of a hypothetical salvation. It is freezing cold, and this spiteful European wind spits rain into our faces. The storm strengthens, and the droplets turn to hail stones, which sting our cheeks like the words of the people who line the roads to curse us as our pathetic procession shuffles through their towns. “Stay Out!” and “We Don’t Want Your Problems!” scream the placards. “Stay Away Terrorists!” reads another forceful imperative. I look at the scholarly looking woman in wire-framed spectacles holding the sign, and wonder if I should stop and offer her advice in how to recognise real jihadists, since she’s clearly a novice.
Top of the Line by Marissa McNamara
Melanie’s boyfriend Ray began drinking as soon as he moved in. At first it was just a few after work. Then it was four, maybe six. She liked to cook, but he always wanted to go out. She was tired of every restaurant within 10 miles, but whatever, he paid. He always made a big deal of paying. Pulled out his worn brown wallet, the one he said was “top of the line.” He always said that. His things were “professional grade” and “top of the line.” He “spared no expense.”
We Love You, Flo Haverson by Jeff Blechle
“Your face looks ugly when you’re thinking, Haverson, so knock that shit off.” Flo eyed him as she angled and exhumed a Hell Energy from the small fridge, then she and her implied neglect left the finished basement, climbing the carpeted stairs with such pomp that the two men looked away and shook their heads.
Joel Haverson leaned over Flo’s handcrafted bar and whispered to Earl, “She’s going through some things.”
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I ♥ Burt by Leah Holbrook Sackett
I am both partial to and particular about angora sweaters. I like to wear them without a bra. I imagine that is what it would feel like to press my breasts against a hairy chest. I am obsessed with hairy chested men, and it all started with Burt Reynolds in Cannonball Run. I was 9 when I saw the movie on TV one Saturday afternoon. I’ve been a Reynolds and hairy chest fanatic ever since. Even when I go out dancing with the girls, I go braless in my angora. Once I braved going braless to work. While I found it liberating, it was also distracting.
Closure by Mary J. Breen
The parking lot was filling up around me, their headlights bouncing off my rear-view mirror. I sat gobbling my maple-dip donut and watching one old person after another make their way towards the lighted pathway. Just ahead of me, a tiny couple launched themselves out of an ancient white Cadillac, linked arms, and rocked away in unison, picking their way around the frozen puddles. The clock on the dashboard said 7:37; I couldn’t delay it any longer. All I had to do was get through the wake tonight and the funeral tomorrow and I could be gone by lunch. Short and sweet. Hello Gerald. Good-bye Roberta. And no time to talk about Paul.
Rust is Rust, Is a Petal, Is Love by Adam Lock
Reed watched as Orla moved closer to his wife, as if intent on convincing him just how much prettier she was. He didn’t need convincing.
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The Last Time I Saw Grampaw By Matthew Lyons
We paint smiley faces on the balloons so he knows we love him and everything’s okay. We tie the strings in bowline knots so they won’t get loose and mess everything up. We wheel him out of the room, and we think he smiles when the morning light falls on his face, and that makes us all smile, too.
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Comes a Prisoner Bound in Rags by Tom Sheehan
The mountains were sunlit, like glory loose of heaven, dark as old souls at their valley roots, in the clutch of earth trembling from a sky-high battle with its last aerial shot not yet fired, its last echo of death riding the sweep of air, when the screeching, not identified, began on high. The sounds of death had breath to spare, and the U.S Air Force’s F86 Sabre pursuit fighter plane from the 4th Fighter Interceptor Wing, out of Suwon Air Base or Kimpo Air Base, both in South Korea, tumbled from the sky, the roar, the screech, the scream of air being sliced nearly by its atoms or other miniscule thinness not measureable by any of the troops facing each other on the ground.
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