Category: Fiction (Page 1 of 6)

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Book and a Bagel

6 March 2025 / Editor

Fiction by Alice Baburek

The old woman shuffled into the cozy and popular place. The line was longer than usual, yet she had no qualms with waiting. She held her prize possession against her sagging chest.

After several minutes, her legs began to ache. She tried desperately to rid her mind of the continuous pain. Finally, it was her turn.

“Good morning, Joan. I’ll have my usual, dear.” Her faded blue eyes still twinkled. A smile filled with yellow, crooked teeth. Her thinned gray hair tousled from the cold, blustering wind. But nothing could deter Elsie Mills from her rooted routine each morning. Nothing.

“Morning, Elsie. How are you feeling today?” Joan busily toasted the bagel twice and smothered it with melted butter. Just the way Elsie liked it.

“Every day is a good day when you’re alive!” Joan chuckled as Elsie waddled along to the register. “Coffee, please.” The tall young man handed her a medium-sized cup.

The second-hand coat hung to her knobby, arthritic knees. She fished inside the pocket. After several tries, Elsie yanked out a five-dollar bill. With a shaky hand, she gave it to the cashier. The other hand held the precious commodity.

Without saying a word, he took the money and gave Elsie the change. She abruptly shoved it back into her pocket. Change came in handy when taking the long bus ride home.

Minutes later, Elsie sat alone in the crowded cafe. The small round wooden table fit her nicely. She sipped at her steaming brew—roasted hazelnut, her favorite. With an everything bagel to her right and a hot cup of coffee to her left, she dared to open her escape from reality.

Today was an adventure like never before. Traveling the countryside on a wing and a prayer. Enjoying heaven’s delight as nature greets the foolhardy, leaving the chaotic world behind.

A warm summer breeze. The sun glistens off the white-capped waves as they roll onto the bronze sandy beach. Life at its purest moment.

Elsie let out a huge sigh. The Morning Café had emptied. She had been reading for hours. What was left of her coffee had become cold to the touch. The tasty bagel was long consumed in all its delicacy; how she yearned for younger days. When her life was no longer ruled by sickness and pain. When her mind was sharp and free from muddiness.

For Elsie, the enlightening sense of freedom came in books where imagination brought peace and serenity without physical restrictions and inabilities.

The frail woman leaned back and closed her grainy eyes. Suddenly, exhaustion reclaimed her body as it went limp. The book slipped closed. Her right hand fell by her side. Elsie drifted away into an endless sleep.

The paramedic checked her pulse once more. She looked up at her fellow EMT. Slowly, she shook her head. The two of them loaded the deceased woman onto the gurney. It was then they both noticed something quite strange. Elsie Mills was smiling.

Alice Baburek is an avid reader, determined writer and animal lover. Retired, she challenges herself to become an unforgettable emerging voice.

Season’s Farewell

27 February 2025 / Editor

Fiction by Kira M. Tjomsland

The lonely breeze moaned through the sepia grandeur of autumn decay. Muted rays of off-gold sunlight filtered through crisp crabapples; branches permanently withered from the memory of heavy harvests. Their roots were soiled with the rotting remains of their life’s work.

Deep in an abandoned hollow, where spiders spin tapestries of silk and antlers lay abandoned, the dragoness lifted her aching neck, tasting the breeze as it kissed her scales. Her eyes, gold laced with an aged fog, caught a brittle leaf twirling in helpless descent. Tucking her wings closer, the cold-blooded wyrm shuddered from the chill. She had to keep moving.

Her scales, once a brilliant suit of amber and bronze, were now dull brown. Her limbs shuffled with the gritty gait of arthritis—her heavy wings too tired to fly. Still, she pressed on, only pausing for breath when she reached the gaping maw of an ancient stone cave. For a moment, she stood at the threshold, feeling the flame in her breast sputtering and losing heat. Then she ducked inside, the blunted edges of her horns scraping the rim.

The dragoness tried to ignore the blanched bones piled up before her, empty eye sockets staring at the next priestess—the next sacrifice. She kept her eyes on the object before her, stumbling and falling before the altar just beginning to film over with a thin coat of frost. Prostrate and trembling as her own claws began to freeze over, she strained to look up at the stone statue crumbling to life.

Scales peered from the heartless gray, glacier-white and brilliant. Eyes opened, deep and blue as arctic waters, as a crown of horns clattered like freshly-formed icicles. Dappled wings stretched open—a plume of frostbreath whispering into the air, dancing with the beauty of winter’s birth—and the world went dark.

Kira M. Tjomsland is published in national journals including The Rectangle, The Westmarch Literary Journal, and Timada’s Diary. An avid bookworm and scholar, her adventures include a semester at the University of Oxford. Living with her husband in West Palm Beach, Kira is an editor for PBAU’s Living Waters Review.

Spaces

10 February 2025 / Editor

Fiction by Christine Breede

My son has outgrown me. He leans down for a fleeting hug, then turns away; he’s already on his way out again. I stand with both hands on my hips, eyes following him, seeing a boy in a man’s body. Where are you going?

Maybe this is a story about destinations.

We are not talking, I say. Why can’t we sit and talk? What’s going on? I ask. My son is making plans with a friend on the phone, and I am asking him to speak to me—now.

Maybe this is a story about making plans.

I buy new books, schedule yoga classes and getaways. I see my friends, spend quality time with my partner, eat out and eat in, plant herbs, work more than I should. I’m energized in the morning and drained by nightfall when I see his room empty.

Maybe this story is about newness.

I am listening to my son’s voice change. I am watching him cook pasta al dente and call the hairdresser himself. He talks to my mother whenever we visit, making her laugh—until he stands at her grave, now speaking to her in a whisper. We miss her and her voice on the phone, unmistakable above all others. I feel the void and the void growing.

Maybe voices are the story.

I remind my son of when we took a gondola in Venice, boy and mom, and after a minute of rocking in the dark canal, before we even left the pier, he closed his eyes. I remember this, he says. What can you remember? I say. You didn’t see a thing. I know, he says, that’s what I remember.

Maybe remembering is the story.

Pictures from years ago pop up on my phone. My son looking at a pumpkin as if it were an oracle. His mister spy eyes under ruler-straight bangs no one understood but him. The two of us with ice cream cones and big smiles. My head leaning on his shoulder after a birthday dinner.

Maybe this story is about appreciation.

Everything about him is as it should be. I have a strong sense of his being. He has a strong sense of his being. But I don’t know where we are.

Maybe fear is the story.

I am watching my son grow big and myself grow old. It’s about aging with grace, someone says. Who the hell ages gracefully? It’s about aging with mischief, with bold beliefs, with a heart in the right place, I tell myself on a good day.

Maybe courage is the story.

His eyes are telling me his heart is in the right place. His stillness is telling me I need to listen. I watch him get ready to go out. I resist an impulse to go over to him, resist again. I feel the space between us and the space within me.

Maybe this story is about listening to space.

Christine Breede writes long, short, and very short fiction. Her work has been recognized by several leading contests. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2020 and has won the 2022 Bumble Bee Flash Fiction Contest. Working and collaborating with fellow writers is one of the things she enjoys most.

Estate Sale

19 August 2024 / Editor

Fiction by Deborah Wessell

“Excuse me. Excuse me? Would you take ten for this?” Lois hoisted the tuxedo
pants and jacket before the bored, merciless eyes of the man accepting money.

“Tag says fifteen.”

He was middle-aged, as she was, but lean and weathered, with a graying ponytail
and bare feet. His till was a fishing tackle box. Behind him a Sunday morning crowd
picked over the debris of someone’s life, the husband who had worn the tuxedo and read Sky & Telescope, the wife given to macramé and saving cottage cheese containers. Lois wondered if they were dead, but of course it would be ghoulish to ask.

“I know the tag says fifteen. But it’s not in good shape, and anyway I only have
ten dollars with me, so…”

“So?”

“Never mind,” she murmured, but he cut her off.

“OK, ten.”

Lois was certain that the man knew she had always wanted a tuxedo jacket, just to
wear with jeans, and that she feared she was too old and overweight to carry it off. Well, was he such a prize, with that silly hair and the T-shirt with the rude slogan? She pulled out her wallet and something dropped from her purse: a slip of paper folded around two twenty dollar bills.

“Oh!” said Lois, appalled. “Oh, that’s right, I went to the cash machine last night.
I could, I mean, if you want fifteen…”

The man snorted. “Forget it.”

Lois drove home in mortification, and it was days before she could bring herself to try on her purchase. The pants, at least, made her laugh: clown pants, much too short and huge around the waist, with stiff black suspenders. Then the jacket, heavy on her shoulders. She slid her hands down the lapels and smoothed the skirts over her hips, sighing over the bulges. Then she frowned and explored a miniature inside front pocket. A small rough nugget met her fingertips and she drew it forth: a tiny ivory wedge, smooth-sided, red-brown at the jagged base. A baby tooth.

Lois had a rushing vision of a dark bedroom, a child’s breathing, a slanting slice of light from the hallway. Daddy, with his barrel belly and his suspenders and his satin lapels, on his way to some long-ago fancy night out, steps to the bedside and slips one hand gently under the pillow to exchange a silvery dime for this disgusting little miraculous tooth.

The man in the rude T-shirt, was he that child? Even if he wasn’t, he was a child once, and someone loved him, or didn’t love him. Lois was dizzied by the thought, not only of the man, but of everyone, herself and her own children and her friends and their children and oh Lord, everyone she’d ever met or would never meet and all of them, every individual on this entire warm busy planet, would someday be dead, and there would just be these little things, these objects once significant of love. The thought was marvelous but entirely too much, and Lois threw the tooth away.

Deborah Wessell writes the Wedding Planner mystery series under the name Deborah Donnelly. She is a former librarian, copywriter, and speechwriter. She lives in Bellingham, Washington, with her writer husband and their unruly corgis.

Angel

1 February 2024 / Editor

Fiction by Paul Hadella

“You can say sorry all you want about breaking the lamp,” Mom said at the top of her lungs, “but this isn’t about breaking the lamp.” Then she stomped out of our apartment and slammed the door.

I asked Vince, “What’s she mean? If she’s not mad at us for breaking the lamp, then what’s she mad about?”

“Maybe she meant it’s about the money,” he said.

“The money?” I said.

“That now she has to buy us a new lamp,” my brother said, “and she doesn’t have the money. She never has the money for anything.”

“Do we really need the lamp?” I asked.

“I guess so,” said Vince. “I don’t know.” Then he asked me what I thought she meant.

“Beats me,” I said. “That’s why I asked you.”

“Could be she’s just mad because we’re boys, and boys play rough,” Vince said. “She really wanted girls. How many times has she told us that?”

I said, “She’s just teasing us when she says that.”

“Just teasing?” Vince grumbled. “Get real.”

Anyway, I’m not blaming the broken lamp all on Vince. It’s true, though, that I didn’t start it. He was the one who brought home the tennis racket with two busted strings. He found it on the grass outside Building Five. “It was just laying there,” he told me.

“What good is it?” I asked him.

“Watch,” he said. Then he went into the kitchen and came back with a sponge, just a bit damp, so it had some weight. Then he started whacking the sponge around the living room, using the racket like a hockey stick. “You be the goalie,” he told me.

We slid the coffee table against the wall and made it the goal. Then things got a little out of hand.

Mom walked through the door, home from work, about five minutes after we broke the lamp. She saw we were picking up the pieces.

Right away, Vince said to her, “Sorry for breaking the lamp.” I said it next. Mom tried plugging her temper but couldn’t. She yelled that thing about it not being about the lamp, then left me and my brother standing there in the living room, our heads down.

It wasn’t the first time Mom has stomped out of the apartment. It’s happened, I think, five other times. So me and Vince know how to handle it by now. First, we give Mom about fifteen minutes to cool down before we go get her and bring her back. We know where she’ll be. She walks down to the pond behind the apartment buildings, sits on a bench, and stares at the water.

Here’s how it usually goes.

First, when Mom hears us coming, she scoots to the middle of the bench. That gives me room to sit on one side of her and Vince on the other.

Then I take one of her hands, and Vince takes the other.

Then we all sit there and watch the water for a few minutes. None of us says anything.

Then I tell her I love her. Vince says it next. He should go first, because he’s older, but he always waits for me.

Then we promise we’ll try to behave better, and not make her life so rough.

Then we ask her to please come back home because we can’t live without her.

Then she kisses both of us on the cheek, and we walk back to our apartment together. Mom might even crack a joke or two to show there’s no hard feelings.

That’s how it usually goes—but that’s not how it went yesterday, after we broke the lamp. Not exactly. Yesterday, when me and Vince got to the edge of the parking lot behind Building Ten, we saw Mom down by the pond, just like we expected. She was even sitting on the same bench she always sits on.

Yesterday, though, she wasn’t there alone. She had company. Not a person—but a big white swan. There’s a bunch of swans that live at the pond. Yesterday, all but this one were out on the water, cruising around like little ships. They plowed right through the creases the breeze was making. This other one, though, was sitting on the grass, facing Mom, about ten yards from her and the bench. It looked white as an angel.

Even from where me and Vince had stopped, at the edge of the parking lot, we could tell Mom was talking to the swan. Talking and talking. Her hands moving to her words. You could bet she was telling the swan about our hockey game that got a little out of hand. I could almost hear her saying, “But it isn’t about breaking the lamp.”

The swan bobbed its head up and down as Mom talked. It was like an angel telling Mom, “Yeah, I get exactly what you’re saying, and I take pity on you.”

It even opened its wings and flapped them a couple of times—which made it look even more like an angel—a mighty angel. Maybe by flapping its wings it was giving Mom a blessing.

I spent a year in Catholic school, second grade—which is probably why I saw an angel and Vince just saw a swan. Vince has always gone to public school. He did think of something, though, that didn’t cross my mind. He said, “That swan must be a she.”

Paul Hadella is a journalist, creative writer and musician, living in Ohio. “Angel” is from a series of stories about his childhood on Long Island, New York.

Days After Christmas

31 December 2023 / Editor

Fiction by Gregory Cusumano

The Christmas tree had begun to sag. It actually started to sag several days ago, but it was a slow process— incremental, first the bottom branches drooped, then the next row up, and the next. The pine needles dried, and the trunk slumped to its side. Now, the needles were pallid, and the string lights had slipped low on the branches. It was daytime. The apartment dim, lit from only the front window, which was defused by flurries of snow.

The new Christmas gifts had been opened, played with, and now set up neatly in all their new homes around the living room. The hollow green Castle Grayskull, with its skeleton face, mouth for a drawbridge, sat at the foot of the tree. Across from it, next to the sofa, was the purple snake-like castle of Skeletor. A landspeeder sat above it on the side table, accompanied by a 4″ plastic Luke Skywalker on his Tauntaun battling a fluffy white horned monster called a Wompa.

On the TV stand, the new Donkey Kong Jr. and Q*bert video cartridges were lined up with the other Atari games next to a Zenith box tube television set.

Yes, all the presents had found a home except for the lone package beneath the tree. Its paper was crinkled, the rips taped, torn again, and re-taped again with stronger masking tape.

The name tag lost days ago.

A strong wind whistled past the window, making it shudder. “Will you get off of there?” the mom said as she dragged a large suitcase into the living room. She was dressed for traveling, comfy jeans, a sweater, and sneakers.

“No,” said the boy sitting by the window, his nose pressed against the glass. He was almost too big to be sitting on the sill. Once upon a time, he could crawl along it with ease. Now, at nine, he had to balance carefully.

“It’s too cold to be sitting that close to the window.”

“I’m not cold.”

“I’m cold just looking at you, and it’s time to go. I’d like to get on the road before the weather gets really bad.”

“Can we wait a little longer?”

“We’re going to be late.”

“Half-hour?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“Ok.”

“Can you at least get off of there and put on a sweater?”

“No!” said the boy, not looking at her. He was intent on staying there all day if he had to. He didn’t care if they spent New Year’s Eve with his cousins. He was half-hoping that they would get snowed in.

His mother came over to him, putting her arms around him. “You’re freezing. Come on, let’s get down.”

He didn’t budge.

Outside, a handful of kids dressed in snow gear entered the courtyard of their apartment complex, whooping and chasing after each other, throwing snowballs. “Nicky and Joel are outside. It looks like they are having a good time. Why don’t you go out and play with them? It’s as good as waiting here.”

“I’d rather stay here.”

“It will be more fun with your friends.”

“Can you call again?”

“I called already. There was no answer.”

“If you call him again, maybe, he’ll answer this time.”

“I’ve called! He swore he would be here Christmas morning. Then the next day and the next, and now today,” she looked at her watch. “He’s five hours late. No, I will not call him again. We should get on the road.”

The boy pushed his tongue against the back of his front teeth, crinkling his lips and nose, holding back the brimming tears.

“Please,” his lower lip trembled.

“If you get off there, I’ll call him again.”

The boy didn’t budge.

“Suit yourself.”

The boy watched the kids play. The chase had ended. Now, they were behind the short leafless hedges on the courtyard area that, in a different season, would be green with a manicured clipped lawn. They were building a snowman.

The flurries were picking up. Maybe he would get his wish. A gust rattled the window. The snow was making it hard to see. Yet the boy steadfastly continued to search. Then, in the distance, near the road, a man entered the courtyard. He was bundled in a parka, his arms laden with packages.

“HE’S HERE!”

The boy leaped from the window sill, running across the living room, hopping into his boots, tearing open the door, and bounding down the stairs.

“Wait, your coat!” his mom yelled out to him. THUMP – THUMP – THUMP, the sound of his boots thumping down the stairs to the front door.

He turned the knob, cold to his ungloved hand. It spun, he pulled the door open, and he was hit with a windy, white torrent of flakes. Wiping it away, he plowed ahead, running as best he could, slipping at times but righting himself before he could fall. He ran up to the man in the parka holding the packages.

“Hello,” said the mailman with a smile.

His face went gaunt.

“Hi,” said the boy. He blinked. One tear appeared, then the next. No matter how hard he pressed his tongue against his teeth, he couldn’t keep back the thing he had so successfully suppressed in the past.

From behind him, his mother approached with a coat. He slipped his arms into its sleeves. She zippered it for him. “You always have me.”

“I know.”

“Is that enough?”

“I don’t know.”

“Me either.”

They walked side by side back through the courtyard. She knew better than to offer her hand. After a time, he offered his. She accepted. The snow drifting around them, sometimes in torrents, sometimes in flurries.

“Do you want me to call him?”

“No,” said the boy, less sullen, “I think it’s time to go.”

Greg Cusumano‘s love of storytelling began at a young age sitting at his grandparent’s table for the traditional Italian Sunday meal. He is mainly known for his work as a film and television editor; his recent credits include Grey’s Anatomy, Teen Wolf The Movie and Wolf Pack. This is his first published story.

Christmas

17 December 2023 / Editor

Fiction by Ernest Troost

She snatched the moon from the winter sky and buried it in the stubbled field. When she was done, the old lab sniffed the fresh dirt.

She walked back towards the house with the dog at her side, their breath little puffs in the dark. She could smell the wood smoke from her neighbor’s chimney. Fat snowflakes floated slowly down through the light from the corner streetlamp. The night was still, except for the soft jiggling of the dog dragging its leash.

What had he said? “I like it here on the coast. I’m going to stay.”

And then, nothing but the soft wash of white noise, sloshing between relay towers, through transmission lines, across the 3,000 miles between them.

She let the dog in and leaned the shovel against the house. She took one more look up at the December sky and thought, tomorrow night I’ll put out the stars.

Ernest Troost is an Emmy-winning film composer, and Kerrville New Folk winning songwriter. He is also a writer of essays and short stories when he is not composing music.

Say It With a Smile

13 October 2023 / Editor

Fiction by Melissa Witcher

Tory’s lips form the first syllable but no sound comes from her throat. Conversation swirls around them, voices rising and falling, people coming and going. She pinches the bridge of her nose. She recently read that there were three systems necessary for voice: the respiratory, phonatory, and resonatory systems. She only vaguely recalls learning about the resonatory system, and wonders if that was why she can’t say sorry.

She is not an overly apologetic woman. In 3rd grade, she was the new kid in a suburban school where everyone knew each other. At lunch, she sat at one of the long formica tables in the cafeteria and said something funny. A girl with silky brown hair and a striped blue shirt had laughed, milk coming out of her nose. It never occurred to Tory to apologize—she wanted to do it again. She looked it up to better understand; it happened because of the uvula.

She looks across the round table and Chris’ pursed lips make it obvious that he is waiting for an apology. If she doesn’t say it now it will require further explanation and more extensive effort later. She puts up one finger and balances her head up and down. Her throat is dry and her tongue burns as it pushes against the back of her teeth. She tries again, her mouth opens, but the only noise she produces is the wet sound of her tongue moving.

The offense occurred during a simple thought exercise: who is best equipped to survive the apocalypse? It is no longer a hypothetical situation, with global pandemics and the climate crisis and the rise of machine intelligence, they are literally living through the test run, but it is still far off enough (5-10-15 years?) that the topic wavers between necessary and humorous.

Tory has no desire to survive chaos. She is fine with no hot water, it’s better for her skin, but no running water? No electricity or functioning food supply chain, no ready-made clothes, no medical services, no random internet searches to explain bodily functions? Really truly, no thank you. As such, her stakes in these discussions are very low. If zombies are a real thing, or a meteor hits, or fungi eat brains, or a virus wipes out 80% of the population, she wants to be the first to go.

She picks up her glass of pop, Vernors for an upset stomach made worse by Chris’ apocalyptic aspirations. The glass is wet with condensation and bubbles race to the top, desperate to explode. She gulps down the amber liquid fast, swallows hard, and opens her mouth before closing it in defeat.

Something that never ceases to amaze her is how intensely others want to survive. It shouldn’t surprise her—history is filled with humans enduring impossible-horrible-terrifying situations because of the sheer will to live—but she is still caught off guard by how ardently people insist they can do the same. Chris is one of those people; her comment that his quick texting fingers and a charming ability to never pay full portion when they ate out won’t get you very far when cell towers and diners don’t exist hadn’t gone over well.

Instead of agreeing, the group fell silent and his nostrils flared. When he’d jutted his chin out and crossed his arms over his chest she knew that an apology, not deep but at least sincere, needed to be made. She hurt his feelings, wounded his self-image, questioned his very essence, and he wanted her to take it back. Even if she was most likely right.

She opens her mouth again and knows it will not happen.

Instead, her burp is loud enough to silence those around them and startle Chris into dropping his arms to his sides. During the ensuing collective laughter, she makes eye contact with him and mouths the word. He nods in reluctant acceptance and taps out a message on his cell phone quicker than she ever can. She smiles with tears in her eyes, relieved that an accumulation of air in her esophagus diffused the tension and that their inevitable deaths won’t happen with any lingering resentment.

Melissa Witcher (she/ela) is a self-taught writer, collagist, muralist, and embroidery artist. She was born in Brazil, raised in the U.S. and has lived in São Paulo since 2011. Her writing has appeared in 805 Lit + Art and Panorama Journal.

green mountain painting — Photo by Jesse Zheng on Pexels.com

Artificial Lawn

12 August 2023 / Editor

Fiction by Amy Akiko

He flutters past concrete at the back of houses, knows the slabbed rectangles will not feed him. But look, up ahead, a square of green promise, his own emerald city of grass and worms and slugs and larvae. Swooping down, he prepares to peck into the lifegiving soil, but his beak is rebuffed by an unyielding ground―a manmade sheet of death for the fauna beneath.

Amy Akiko is an educator, journalism graduate and writer from South London. She enjoys creating various forms of fiction including poetry, children’s stories, flash and short stories. Her work is soon to appear in The Tiger Moth Review, and she is currently editing her first novel.

purple and blue light digital wallpaper — Photo by Tuesday Temptation on Pexels.com

Changes

25 July 2023 / Editor

Fiction by Brian Daldorph

“The only thing that changes,” Sheila says, “is that nothing changes.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I say.

Sheila’s been taking night classes at Juco, and she reads books of poetry in the kitchen while I’m watching TV. We used to sit together on the couch, our thighs pressed together, our arms around each other, and I’d tell her things about the nature shows I watch all the time.

Do you know how much a grizzly bear eats in a day?

Do you know how fast a tiger shark swims?

Which is bigger, the Taj Mahal or a humpbacked whale?

Sheila would ask me how I knew these cool things and I’d say, “I’m just a smart guy, that’s why you married me.”

But now she’s the one telling me things about Buddhism and poetry and this Russian story about a rich man falling off a chair, hitting his side and then he’s dying and his family and colleagues gather like vultures waiting to feast.

“What’s the big deal about that?” I say. “That’s what happened when my Uncle Alex got sick.” (We all thought he had money, but we were wrong).

Sheila asks me if she can read me one of her poems, so I say, “OK, just wait until after my show, please, because this is really interesting. It’s about tarantulas down in New Mexico and the border states.”

The show ends and slides into another about hyenas, and I keep watching though I know Sheila’s hovering, poem in hand. She’s in bed after the hyena show, turned away from me.

I don’t mind her doing some of what she’s doing but not all of it because we had things really nice just the way they were so why make changes?

I’ll tell her in the morning that I’d like to hear her poem, please, and tell her too that I bought chocolates for her. I put them in back of the refrigerator and forgot to tell her about them. She can write a poem about them, about how just like love they’re dark and sweet but sometimes difficult to find.

Brian Daldorph teaches at the University of Kansas and Douglas County Jail.