Tommy Masterson’s mother looked him over. She grabbed him by the chin and twisted his face this way and that, making little noises of dissaproval as she ticked off items on some hidden checklist.
She ran her thumb across his lips, stopping at the corner where a dab of blood had dried. She pulled his eyes level with hers and, putting her forefinger beneath the left one, pressed firmly at its puffe...
The old man lay in his bed, his breath shallow, each rise and fall of his chest a slow, measured struggle. Outside, the soft murmur of a fading day filtered through the open window—leaves rustling in the gentle evening breeze, the last call of a bird settling in for the night.
He’d always loved the quiet at this hour. But tonight, the stillness seemed to carry more weight. His vision blurred, un...
I am made entirely of flaws,
stitched together by good intentions,
Prone to error without cause
Known to leap but fail to mention
This or that
Some little thing
Just a trifle, really
But despite its size
A bee still stings
So at the risk of sounding silly
Accept from me
This apology
Know the contours of my heart
Hear my stupid, throaty pleas
Don’t let me tear us apart
I am bad
And you are good
I...
She painted pretty faces
Pretended everything’s alright
But the truth finally came to light
He wiped away the tears
Kept them hidden out of sight
But the truth finally came to light
They fought to keep their secrets
Yeah they tried with all their might
Never talked about the many things
That kept them up at night
Avoided disagreement
But sometimes life is worth the fight
The truth finally ...
“I have to pick up my wife,” the man says to me, without provocation.
“O..k?”
“I know, why would I tell a perfect stranger that I have to pick up my wife. On the bus of all places. Do you know what kind of people ride a bus? Well, I ride a bus, and so do you and you don’t look like a bad person. Well, not too bad anyway. Did you know buses were invented in Germany? I don’t know why but that jus...
The stars were what she liked most about the sky
Then, they started to fall
One by one they disappeared from view
Until there were none at all
She sat in her window, her eyes affixed,
To the infinite, endless night
For what, she wondered, perhaps just to ponder
The memory of the thing she once knew as light
How lonely it felt, this empty abyss,
this deep and dreamless sleep
This probing, gnawin...
It was 7pm in Wisteria. On Main Street, Sadie Kimble flipped the big blue sign in her store window. “Cl😊sed,” it read, since some years before her daughter colored in the O and made it a smiley face.
Down the block, the giant flood lights over Hank’s Auto switched off and Hank’s brother, Earl, pulled chains across the entrance and exit.
At Suwanee Bank, young Lydia Nix exited in a huff. She dro...
“Excuse me. Can you pass the salt?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. Here you g-ohhhhh fuck. Fuck me. Are you? I mean - oh fuck you are, aren’t you?”
“What do you - oh, sonuva - my cloaking device went out again didnt it? Of course it did. You know, I’d swear to God those things don’t work as well as they used to, but really I should swear to God’s accounting department. They’re the stingy bastards w...