-

WITH A CAUSE
She says if you could only peel back the photograph, you could read the entire story that lies beneath. It is deeper than the image below which it lies trapped, and wider, imbued with a meaning the image could not capture, just as, she says frowning, there are no words for parts of the picture,…
-

GLASS HOUSES
You want to yell at him, tell him to stop, that it is too soon, that he is not ready, cannot be, won’t be for months to come, but you know he will not listen to you standing, gesticulating, imagining a stone in your hand, shattering the glass walls, the crackling gaining his full attention…
-

OBITS
You read the obituaries every day not only for the confirmation that you are not listed among them. The key five words there are not only for the affirmation, particularly upon hearing the gentle man you liked, but you also valued as a friend and craftsman is gone, and you didn’t say goodbye, that you…
-

GYOZAN SITS
To a parched man sitting along the roadside a picture of the ocean will provide him nothing to quench his thirst and even if he jumps in the salt will lead to his imminent death. But give him the idea of a pond fed by a pure stream and he will be a content salmon…
-

A PEELING
She says if you could only peel back the photograph, you could read the entire story that lies beneath. Is deeper than the image below which it lies trapped, and the wider, imbued with a meeting the image could not capture, just as, she says frowning, there are no words for parts of the picture,…
-

PLATFORM
They said it was essential for a writer to have a substantial platform, one built high enough to be easily seen by those passersby who might just give a passing glance, even if it was a typo landed them here, updated, regularly changing with time, tide, and fashion always ready, always accommodating. It must be…
-

PHOTO
Oddly I have a photo of my grandmother’s grave, but not one of my mothers, either of them actually, and we’ve yet to have a funeral for the one who raised me. I forgive the one who gave me life, for she gave me to one she felt could care for me well and she…
-

THE CEMETERY, AFTER THE BATTLE
They come to her in the dark the voices whisper, she hears them from behind half lidded eyes they sound like the children that once ran across the open field chasing the ball, a too slow bird a mortar shell whose fall outpaced them all, left them scattered, shattered, marked by simple wooden crosses that…
-

DRAPERY
It was draped over the fence, a bridge for squirrels who would otherwise would go through the chain. There’s a sadness to its needles, many burying themselves in the accumulated snow, cast off by the great Spruce as extraneous, an old coneless branch, “that is the reason” the trunk whispers in the wind “why I…
