“Oh, you make my heart clap!” I blurt but it’s true, with her soft hat on I’ve not seen in months. She beams, and she’s inside my coat, hugging my ribs hello, and I’m all around her, and the sharp cold and dark of the evening offset the bright lights pouring off of the shops, …
Dan speaks to me in Zen koans. A line, two at most, flung at me like a wannabe philosopher’s frisbee. He has been taking classes at the Buddhist Centre. At the end of week one, he came home with a pink lotus-shaped meditation cushion. Week two, he walked around the yard barefoot. He switched from …
Anya let the balloons take her upward. She’d waited so long for this she wanted to enjoy it, despite the flying feeling being so alien. She told herself to relax, like she had as a child lying back in the swimming pool, allowing the water to cradle her. Some of the strings cut into her …
I wear other people. Their clothes, their shoes, their hair and skin and bones. An organ might not fit, or a limb might creak, or a muscle groan. Adjusting to auditory and visual signals takes its toll. And practice. A new residence is wearing on the soul. I fill the hollows first. This morning a …
Her over the road’s got a fancy man. He’s got a face like a bulldog lickin’ pish off a thistle, but he’s got a BMW, so she’s happy enough. He’s there now, washing the car. She’s in a deckchair, filing her nails, fake-tanned legs crossed, one bouncing up and down so her sparkly gold sandal …
Truth be told, though it was Eric’s doing, it was hardly his fault. It was she, after all, who was late for her ‘August 22 @ 11:00am’ interview, retreating with a watery glare when the receptionist ignored her wheedling. Stomping dejectedly into the street, she slammed into Eric in a silky-smooth blur. When he straightened …
The morning after my husband announced he didn’t think he loved me, I woke to the squawking of gulls and terns, which was strange since we didn’t live at the shore. When I slid out of bed, the floor tilted at an odd angle and I braced myself against the bed to keep from sliding …
There’s a gap in my memory of that morning, and it ends in front of our house not long after sunrise. I have no recollection of being on the 486 bus, nor do I remember walking from the bus stop to our road. Sometimes I wonder if I took a cab, which would make sense, …
I sob convincingly into her shoulder. She’s so sorry. She feels responsible. She can’t believe he’d do this. Except she does believe it. Of course she does. Why would I lie? They had started out as a casual, no-strings-attached thing, but now every few days I end up painstakingly picking through the tangle she’s got …
The care home has a sound. The disembodied chatter of TV gameshow hosts, a distant timpani of plates and cutlery, the tectonic rumble of industrial washing machines. The residents themselves speak in broken syntax, haunted parentheses. Mouths yawning, forgetful. Yulya starts her shift at seven. By the time she gets her first break at noon …
Perhaps she knew something they didn’t. The girl, who danced in the castle grounds, who flitted through the gardens with the breeze, far too light to touch the grass that should have crunched beneath her feet. It was possible she didn’t exist at all, this girl. The servants who had lived within the castle walls …
When I was little, I wondered how something as dainty as a radio could fit so many people inside it. How all the owners of those droning voices could come from a thing the size of a toaster. A whole tiny town’s worth trapped inside, each person pressing themselves against the grill of the speaker …