The lifelike robot had blended in on the train seamlessly.
The lifelike robot had blended in on the train seamlessly.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll see you soon.”
After,
I stood on the street
as the drunken city hurtled past,
broke around me in eddies.
The boys bound ahead down the steep path, and the dog pulls at her leash. My footing, accustomed to sidewalks, remains unsure.
I am brave. Small spaces terrify me. I hate my fear.
I spent hours, days, weeks playing an online form of poker called Pai Gow. Finally, I was ready.
“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 turned and held my salute, waiting for the limo to drive by. Instead, it stopped. Nixon got out and walked toward me.
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.
I idolize Bob Dylan. When my son got a work-study assignment to prepare Bob’s dressing room for a campus concert, I drove six hours.
She’s sorry if she seems out of it, she just got back, she was gone. Gone to New York, her son passed away …
She said, “We need to talk.”
My heart leaped to my throat.