I’ve written you a letter, I’m not sure why, because I don’t know where to send it, but there was something I wanted you to know. You see, I did plan for you, sort of, you were on my to do list, a rough draft pinned to the fridge under the ‘I love Ibiza’ magnet. I thought I had plenty of time, but something always came up, a doubt, a better offer, promotion, I thought time was on tap. I did feel a pang of something but thought it was indigestion from the kebab I ate, while waiting at the…
A massive spreading oak at the edge of the gas station's asphalt shaded my car. Across the steaming blacktop, not thirty feet away, a low-built one-story cross between a home and a gas station crouched just beyond the edge of the oak's cooling canopy.
Wilhelmina Guterson scraped the frost off the kitchen window to check for any signs of life outside. The distant nub of sun clearing the horizon offered watery light but no warmth.
The Adventure Inn boasts lots of activities for its residents, even the ones who shuffle with walkers or scoot around in their wheelchairs. In fact, the brochure given to families looking to place their infirm parents lists Shuffle and Scoot along with Knit and Purl as the most popular of its daily activities for a certain set in the A wing, “A” standing for Active.
Prophet Esther sat in her darkening office, hand resting on the telephone, brown skin almost invisible in the gloom, the social worker’s card a pale glimmer.
Mum was walking on the marsh again. Mrs Herbert at The Salting’s spotted her in a cardigan and slippers during one of the first frosts, staring over the kissing gate towards the sluice. The farmer drove her back.
The first time I saw Abbie, she was doing stand-up at a monthly open mic night for folk singers and poets at the Blue Angel. Her hair was blue then, and she wore an electric blue, satin cocktail dress with burgundy Doc Martens.
You sit up and stretch your arms as I fumble for the alarm. I had the strangest dream, you say through a yawn. We had this luscious garden and grew all our own vegetables.
We used to comment on the couples sat facing one another in restaurants, eating three-course meals without sharing a word. As our children grew, our criticism shifted to families paying good money to sit around a table focused on their devices, eating in silence.
Some situations in life can be difficult to navigate, so it’s helpful that there are conventional codes of conduct to guide you through them. Let’s call them fiats.
Alice is by the pier again, looking. Her eyes are blurred by drink or tears; she is no longer sure which. Finding a tussle of bushes she squats down to piss.
Baby’s father slips from bed at seven, dons a clean blue button-down that highlights his eyes. Tangled in sheets in a pale nightgown, I stink of milk, Baby Boy belly-down on me, chests rising and falling together.
They climbed in the misty rain without speaking, he in front pushing the pace, she behind, her view filled by his backpack and flopping shorts and the hairless slabs of his calves pushing like overworked pistons to get his bulk up the hill.
Fog hangs in the damp morning air when I pull the Mini Cooper into the physician’s parking section of the hospital garage. Grey and thick, it penetrates through the first-row spaces, wafting around the car, just like it did when I left the house a half hour ago.