Sandy was a boy I knew from the factory.

"Hello" from a sun-spotted face and then nothing else.

Nothing but his sunken eyes sometimes meeting mine and a mouth

that smiled and stayed shut.

For months he might as well

have been a painting, his

brown hair blending with the grays around us.

Head still, arms ticking like two metronomes.

Same sandwich every lunch break.

He was so silent he could d...

She was late and I was early. I haven’t been out much since the nightmares and I had never been on a blind date, so I didn’t know what the fashionable etiquette was. I had gotten her a grocery store rose, arrived ten minutes early and I had waxed myself pit to pinky toe just in case it went that direction.

I was already walking to the little cafe she’d chosen in a khaki button up dress before I ...