Fiction

Days would slip by without a whisper from Alex. “Sometimes friends drift apart,” Mom said when I called her instead. Then Alex would be back again, our teeth hard-set against the cold of the walk-in. Her voice sounding more and more like the silent void of her voicemail.

Her oranges lay macerated beneath her, but she did not care to even glance at them. She kept her eyes on that last car, trying to stay tethered to it, to pull it back to her, but the train picked up speed, and there went Chico with it, eaten by the darkness of the tunnel…

From all over the continent museums reach his phone, mounted on the wall aside a small mahogany that only a Tom Thomson may fit, searching for the frame they need for their exhibit.

Peter’s frames are in mass quantity. He collects them, he restores them, and then he lets them free. 1532 Frames...

I watched a blur of the cat’s feet disappear around the side of the church. A man who was either 30 or 60, his age dried up by the sun, sat in the shade of the old building, laughing a smoker’s laugh. He wore a bucket hat striped in Rasta colors and a t-shirt spotted with holes…

A year out of the woods, having gotten away with it, I still hate him. I still thank the man who cremated him and I still think he wanted to die, but I’m still stuck on that mountain. A mile high with nowhere to go. If I could just get further, higher. If only there was more trail, more for the hatred to fuel. But no. I’m a tired woman with hate in my heart, clouds in my eyes...

She makes you nervous, but not like she used to. Her stormy moments had once been part of the love. Whether it was right or not didn’t matter when up against the maddeningly seductive anxiety fueled by the possibility that everything could collapse. The threat of having your first fight buzzing like coffee in your veins, charging you forward. But then when that first storm did come it was harder than you thought it would be, wasn’t it? Sadder. And you realized the rumbling maybe wasn’t the electric love making you nervous in a fun way. It was something else…

With her help I slide into my wheelchair, this move far more familiar to me. A dance I do know how to do. There is a sweet little chicken sticker next to my right hand. “Chickie,” I say as we slide down the hall...

He doesn’t mind the trouble the shovel gives him. In fact he often takes his time getting into line for one, so that the others will take the biggest ones, the sturdiest, first. They always fight for the one with the red, rubber handle, complaining about the exceptional pain they’re in, doing each other favors for a better spot in line, so they can finish their two simple jobs for the day: digging and stacking...

We met here, on this app, where you were attracted to my bio made up of heart and sushi and peace sign emojis...And then, fatefully, you said, “Sup?”...