“Do you remember when we first started dating?” he had asked me. I had nodded, with a small smile on my lips before he finished his thought with a laugh. “I loved you more back then.”

For two weeks, I’ve noticed a beyond-handsome soldier waiting across the street from the stop two stops before mine. I’ve been trying to determine a casual way to meet him. On this morning, he smiles at me. Who am I to argue with fate?

I wait, masked as they wheel her out. Six feet away, also masked, a shrunken white thing. In clothes I've never seen before. I tell her my name. She repeats it, as a question.

I returned to the airport with my student after an instructional flight. The airfield had been VFR earlier; a cloud ceiling developed while airborne. A recall of solo students that were launched earlier had been initiated.

I saw it: a child's metal spring horse. My own had been bouncy but this, this was stiff with rust. Brown paint, shine gone, motionless in its gallop through the weeds.

I was at the Rewe checkout when a mom entered, pushing a cart piled with crates of recyclable glass bottles. Her son pressed on a bottom crate with his toddler legs. Crash! Smash! Silence.