• SOULMATE

    He had been lonelyfor as long as he could rememberalways wishing for loveor a relationship he could call love.That emotional emptiness hadbecome crushing and he knewhe had tried every possible option:church groups, singles events and bars,and countless dating sites and apps.He read that some like him,had turned to AI to createwhat his life was lacking.He…


  • HOME

    I don’t know what I expected to findstanding on the corner of a residential streetin Charleston, West Virginia, the domeof the capitol peering up in the distance.That is not surprising, the orange brick homewas much larger than I had assumed, but youlived there only a few years before leavingQuarrier Street to start a life of…


  • ON ARRIVAL

    When I arrived it was as thoughyou had expected me, althoughneither of us had anticipated meeting.You wondered if we had metin some former life, but I wasthen a skeptic for circumstancehad never really conspiredto cause me to cede my tightgrip on what I was certainwas the only possible reality.When that evening endedmy flotilla of certainties…


  • GROUND HOLD

    She sits in the middle seat of an oversold DC-9, Carhartt jacket and watch cap pulled tightly over her hair, a blond wisp slipping out the side. She cradles on her lap a tawny brown Stetson with a tooled leather and silver hat band. “It’s never goin’ in an overhead, my fiancee’d go up there…


  • ENDING HERE

    I am still not certainhow I ended up hereon the other side of silencewhere words go to slowly die.It was to be foreveruntil severed cruelly by deathbut neither of us diedin manifest ways, justsmall deaths that over timesevered the bonds that still held,a death-borne parting of sorts.It was never a mistakeor an omission of logic,…


  • GAZING

    She says that for a small fee shecan guide me through my prior lives,introduce me to former loves, let mewatch the battles in which I fought,shield me from scenes of battlein which I died or was wounded.She says I will see many I now knowin my present, recognize how wewere once connected so our presentconnections…


  • SEEING YOU AGAIN

    I saw you again yesterday, as I haveso often recently and once again thoughtof approaching you for there is muchI would like to know about you and howwe ended up in the same place.But once again I sensed that youwanted solitude, wanted notto be disturbed, not to be questioned.You did smile briefly, a momentarysoftening of…


  • MEMO TO MEMOIR

    I will recitemy absurdist life,and do so without coercionsave my need to tell it.Imagine a new wave filmin French, perhaps,directed by Dali and youmay approach my truth.If this is beyond you, Idon’t care, do you?In the end it is youthe listener who writesmy story, my life,and I am merelythe pen and paper,the prompt, so pleasehelp…


  • SPACING

    We have been told that spacewith its billions of starsand countless galaxies is vastand still largely empty, a voidthat needs no filling, ever expanding.We are small creatures in that vastness,important only to ourselves, motesof cosmic dust easily forgotten.But the space between heart and mindcan be equally vast, one untetheredfrom the other, always a voidthat we…


  • WANDERER

    I was too long an Israelite wandering in a desert searchingfor the promised identity, followingon faith and a belief that allwould eventually be revealed.I created images of you, of whoI thought you might be, hiddenfrom all, just a voice in my dreams.I was an Aaron, the loyal siblingnever questioning why I livedin their always slightly…