Category: Fictional Musings

-It kept you warm that winter when you purchased it. It fit snuggly; yet loose enough to be the most comfortable article in your entire wardrobe. It was only the rain, which led successful campaigns against the cotton and wool fibers and concatenation of frays that wrapped themselves around your frame, from the soft bundle of the hood-folded, a make shift pillow at the back of your neck-to the tapered end hanging half way down your bottom, an inch from reaching the V from where your pants’ legs grew. It was the rain that proved the sweatshirt was not in […]

-The image that comes to mind is that of thread. Not thread wound into something sizeable, a bundle of weak frays, but rather thread in its abundant weakness, the thread that frays. The fray that tugs at the armor of a sweatshirt slowly convincing other threads, knit tightly, to give into their weak constitution. A chain of frays that become the slow unraveling and eventual demise of that sweatshirt, the one you wore on those occasions when you felt you needed a little something, some kind of reminder, perhaps of an accomplishment, perhaps of your value, that little emblem, that […]

-They were sitting, the two of them, at one of those small booths. The kind with the fake wood paneling and worn cushions, loose from the long years of people sitting and shifting. The kind you find in small mom and pop restaurants that try to pass themselves off as the kind of place you should visit in your Sunday’s best. It was a warm day in the unbelievably arid summer. They had been sitting for quite a while. Between them; several jokes, tidbits of what may pass as conversation and witticisms-the kinds of which they were both fairly prone […]

-“You look like you’re going to cry,” she says. “Men don’t cry,” he says. “It’s the impression I get,” she says. “Impressions are false,” he says, “We do not see the world as it truly is, but as we ourselves are.” She doesn’t say anything. They part. The phone wakes him. It’s been a long week and even though it’s early, he could not resist the call to slumber. “I’m miles away,” her voice over the phone. “I didn’t expect you to stay near,” he admits into the speaker. “It’s lonely here,” her voice crackles, bad connection. “It’s like that […]

-She started smoking, shortly after the last time he saw her, shortly after the last time she saw him. She used to tell him, “only you, smoke like they do in the movies,” she’d say this with a laugh. She meant, one drag after another, often, lighting one cigarette with the dying ember of the other. So many years gone by and this is what she remembers. This is part of the reason she started smoking. It wasn’t a cool Joe Camel ad, or the masculine facade of the Marlboro Man. It had nothing to do with a corporate image, […]

– We sit there, her and I, in that small room with off white walls. I sit, legs bent back against the wall, on the aqua marine carpet. She’s at the edge of the bed, facing me. Her tense muscles exposed. The breeze blows in behind the heavy curtain. Her thigh muscle twitches a little. This brings me a smile. She looks at me questioningly and grabs for one of the pillows to cover her bare skin. She holds it against her midsection it covers the thin straps of her bra and most of the black lace just above her […]

-As he sits there, his thoughts lost in thoughts, there is a familiar sound, a buzzing. It doesn’t startle him, but rather inches its way into his consciousness. Sharply, he turns his head, right. The doorway to his room appears ethereal, and maybe it’s the smoke, and maybe it’s the dreams. He looks at the blank space beyond the doorway, the empty wall. He knows the sound, he recognizes it, his alarm, but for the moment, he’d rather not step into the room. Not now, not while the haze of the doorway’s presence is present. And as he sits there, […]

-He stares at her, a gaze that almost speaks of friendship and whispers something about kindred souls. They’re too young to understand. When she tells him her joke, he laughs hysterically, though he doesn’t quite get it and the truth is, if he did, he wouldn’t think it funny, but he’d laugh anyway. Deep behind it, a yearning, a wish, though unuttered or understood by either of them. It is the wish, more his than hers, that the friendship in his gaze, reciprocated by her outward actions, were more than the mere circumstance of being classmates, of sitting on the […]

-He taught her words, a whole language. Before that, she did not speak to his kind. Not if speaking means knowing more than one word. She’d stare at him intently as he annunciated every syllable. She’d smile at him sweetly, even before he annunciated syllables for her and she began to learn words. He thought they were communicating even before she learned his language. She thought she was learning his language to communicate with him. She learned quickly. He was a good teacher. They were both motivated by what they thought. They’d spend hours together, trying to communicate. Mostly in […]

-Johnny sits, his chair directed toward the window. The rain falls outside, slowly gliding down, creating a sorrowing effect against the light as it pierces through the droplets, into the quiet diner. He stares vacantly as a few cars pass outside on the street and displace the puddle water gathering near the broken curb. His eyes droop down tired of life, like an old dog hound. He slouches over as he sits, succumbing to the force of gravity, unable to push it off with any energy of his own. He sits slouching, his eyes drooping, the door opens, the cold […]