Where Is The Goddamned Light?

Where was the goddamned light? Couldn’t they send someone for her? She hated the way she felt; dazed and hazy the way you feel when you wake up from a nap that has done more harm than good. It was dark and there were no lines only jagged ends to things, half of this and a quarter of that, she didn’t see any wholes. This place wasn’t what she had expected.

Living the Life My Mother Once Did

I remember the smell of smoke in our living room. My father sat on the velvet green couch, a Lucky burning in the ashtray beside his tumbler of scotch. He held one eye on the sports section of the paper, and the other on the nightly news. My mother often came in, though she rarely joined him. The living room, with it’s intricately beaded throw pillows, belonged to him. 

Five Senses: A Short Work of Fiction

She died on a Tuesday, before her nail appointment, but after electrolysis. Karen remembered the way the homeless man shuffled his feet, one of his shoes cut in two. He’d pieced them together with what looked like a metal hanger. She thought him quiet clever, but didn’t tell him so. The man smelled of lemons and piss. The lemons were from her childhood, but the piss belonged to him.

Ghosts

As I walk through my home, the one I make with my children, there are ghosts everywhere--reminders of the person I used to be. My grandmother's dining room table, bought when I was in eighth grade, just before Christmas, was inherited after her death. The children use it to color pictures and draw worlds culled from their imaginations. The chairs, already reupholstered once, wear the various stains a life with children dictates, and the wood is wearing down and uneven.