Tag: Romance

All Stories, General Fiction

It’s Never Too Late by Tim Love

literallystories2014

With most first dates, I knew within seconds that we wouldn’t meet again. I didn’t feel that with Janet. Except for a few wrinkles, she could have been years younger than me. Maybe her eyes were too far apart and her mouth too narrow, but when she smiled all her features worked together. That said, getting her to smile was a challenge. We exchanged questions about each other, learning nothing more than in our online profiles. I couldn’t help studying her again as she walked to the toilet – her bright floral dress showed off her figure (was she rolling her hips?)  and her long hair was jet-black. Waiting for her to come back, I decided to raise the topic that the dating site matched us up with.

Continue reading “It’s Never Too Late by Tim Love” →
General Fiction, Short Fiction

The Bicycle Man of Carlin Hill by Harrison Kim

literallystories2014

.

Shig Sagimoto appears to me in one short image, a slim, fedora hatted old fellow on a bicycle coasting down Carlin Hill, both hands on the handlebars.  As I observe him, he raises one arm upright into the blue sky of summer, then holds down the top of his hat, and for a few slight seconds, raises high his other hand, and balances as his bike wheels fly downhill through the hot afternoon air.  Then, he sees I’m watching.  Both hands press back to the handlebars, and he moves his head down as he pedals into the Tappen Esso parking lot.

Continue reading “The Bicycle Man of Carlin Hill by Harrison Kim” →
All Stories, Romance

The Laws of Attraction by Carol Willis

literallystories2014

The skirl of Citizens Arrest fills the stairwell of my walk-up. The electric guitar twangs and pulses through the walls; my key chain vibrates in the door lock, sending judders up my arm, rattling my teeth. I thump on my neighbor’s wall.

“Sorry, cielo!” Manolo yells.

The music stops but my head still throbs.

Continue reading “The Laws of Attraction by Carol Willis” →
All Stories, General Fiction, Romance

Cinema by Evelyn Voelter

literallystories2014

I’m in our living room and the sun is hitting the couch in your spot just how you liked it. I always wanted to close the curtains so it wouldn’t fade the fabric, but today I leave them open, like you would’ve wanted. I suppose I’m daydreaming again because I swear I hear your voice. But when I turn to look at you, your spot is still empty.

Continue reading “Cinema by Evelyn Voelter” →
All Stories, Romance

We’ll Both Forget The Breeze by Michael Tyler

literallystories2014

Emma was lying in the park between my dorm and mid-afternoon lecture and if it hadn’t been for the fact she was feeding birds with the grin of the manic and magnificent I may have continued my stride.

Continue reading “We’ll Both Forget The Breeze by Michael Tyler” →
All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

A Little Time by Dylan Martin

literallystories2014

 The world was so much simpler when Forever 21 was just a shitty clothing store. Nowadays, it’s nothing more than a bar off 42nd street, with a comically-large hourglass by the door filled with sand that never falls. I used to consider it nothing more than a cheap gimmick; another one of the city’s countless tourist traps. The truth is the bar was never what attracted people. All those stupid, far-from-subtle decorations aren’t what people come to stare at; we are.

Continue reading “A Little Time by Dylan Martin” →
All Stories, General Fiction, Romance

The Impeccable Diver at the Pond by Tom Sheehan

literallystories2014

In a bathing suit, of a most direct design, Shelly Kearns was gorgeous and desirable all the way past dreams and, in the water, a sylph of the first order, and with every dive she took, explored the bottom of our pond for odd treasures of any sort, reclaimable for new duties or positive salvage. She kept her treasure of such objects on two shelves and a corner table in her home left by her husband Steve, dead from a high dive onto a half-sunken log that we assume made the trip on the river from the forest thirty miles upstream.

Continue reading “The Impeccable Diver at the Pond by Tom Sheehan” →
All Stories, General Fiction

Dixcove by David Chappell

literallystories2014

It was not the love of eating fish that drove Kwajo out to sea, though he knew that taste better than most.  Nor was it the love of clawing with his paddle through the powerful waves and currents, or struggling to drop the net overboard and then retrieve it when heavy with catch.  Every morning, the fishermen waited on the beach for the third wave to blanket the collision of the first two, aimed the bow of their dugout canoe at the horizon and shoved off into the chilly mist.  As he listened to his father’s chant to motivate them, young Kwajo did it because he was proud to work with men.

Continue reading “Dixcove by David Chappell” →
All Stories, General Fiction

Eddie Jordan by Frederick K Foote

literallystories2014

The day after I turned 14, I asked Julie Wong to go to the Pepsi Cola show with me on Saturday. The price of admission was three Pepsi Cola bottle tops. We project kids loved to show up and show off as we watched cartoons, serials, and short movies. This was going to be my first real date.

Continue reading “Eddie Jordan by Frederick K Foote” →
All Stories, General Fiction, Romance

Cold Night’s Dark Advances by Tom Sheehan

literallystories2014

And always it is this Gift-giver, this woman from the other side of midnight, this darkness that is not taken from. And she comes in pieces, trajectories, soft angles and planes, curves from a world galore I look for in this, her classroom of touch, taste, and sleek terrors wherein she says, Hello, Two-Dream Tommy, here are dimensions of a barrier, the two roads you must take one at a time if you’re meeting me and getting crushed that side of midnight. Oh, is she north of me or south, breathing yet or not, an image impossible to see, yet I would bet on her on either road I find. Lo, I speak out to her and dream of her, spraddled, urgent, these two parts of unspeakable darkness. Do they have to mean or what become?

It is more than geography hugging me, but what deliciousness in the wind in January, trees stripped to the rawest dimensions, oh bare bark that’s borne. On edges of this electric road, crows by dozens the only intruders in full dress shadows, a three-day-old snow crusting to gray, three marvelous, mysterious wires hanging as if they knot ships together at low tide, weighted with more than a sense of ice, sing a song through the keen teeth of a day going down to its knees in her own perfection. Absolve me, love.

Continue reading “Cold Night’s Dark Advances by Tom Sheehan” →