The tree beside the window was blooming but scentless. I sat on the star-covered spread. Smoked clandestinely. I lit candles, though they were verboten. The fireplace was flanked by tile. Lustrous. It would have been a sitting room when the house was new. I could do nothing there and he lived on the other side of the door, breathing, offering me quarters. Here is … Read More girlfriend
All day, I wait for the betrayal. A person is not who he says he is. A man waits, unmoving, on the bench next to me. I see his knees and his feet. We must wait. Here together, we must wait. I learn that he plays the ukulele. Someone asks him about his music and he responds. More questions. His parrot has died. I … Read More party
The wind knocked petals from the trees and it looked like snow. It was cold enough for snow. But it was petals. Gently. Let’s not talk about the weather. Not talk about it anymore. The blue is up above the clouds. On a plane, you would see it up there—blue and the sun in the distance. The sun might even shine through your window. We … Read More Incubator
The next town on the map was Ashtabula. She kept thinking of Bob Dylan and expected wildflowers by the side of the road. Instead there were train tracks and abandoned buildings. The restaurant they ate in served them iceberg lettuce. They were tracing the map. Michigan. Minnesota. South Dakota. Across. Across the mountains. And then there it was. The desert. It was like you … Read More Ashtabula
The bed she once shared with her sister was pushed against the wall. We were told we were lucky to see her sister’s pearl gray wedding gown laid out on the bed cover. She would never marry, would never want to. There were two desks in the room. One desk was formal and heavy, A piece of furniture. The other was a small semi-circle … Read More in her bedroom
The light over the marsh was hesitant, resisting the day. Cereal bloated and pushed against the sides of the bowl. Later, rain would fall, pulsing onto rolled hay. We would feel there was something wrong. A deja vu of movement, pressed into the eye. We would take our dishes out of the cupboard and put them right into the dishwasher to save time. We wouldn’t know … Read More break
At 4AM the birds outsound everything. Their songs are desperate, me, me, me, me. You, you, you, you. As the sky lightens, a V of geese sweeps over, heading north. His eyes try to make sense of them. Everything is new. The greenness blurs the edges of space. Boundaries are lost and found again. There is a black pocket in the forest where he … Read More He Has Been Warned
The man across from me made art out of solder. His hands never touched the table, sticky with spills, before the seisiún. And your outrage and your pride. It was about those, too. When we put the dog down. When we euthanized the dog. When we killed the dog. The second after he stopped breathing. The second he stopped breathing. I said, “I want … Read More solder
myfanwy collins 