South Main

I watched a red haired girl, from the window of my car, while I was stopped at a busy red light. She was in a long black dress, covered in roses, that looked painted. A cloud of smoke trailed her wherever she went from the cigarette she held between her fingers. Further up the road […]

The Hall

She tells him he is paranoid and brushes pencil shavings off the table where he has been sitting all night, with a knife, just making them sharper. She likes to dry the flowers out, so even though they’re dead they still look pretty. She’s like a mortician embalming corpses, replacing their blood to preserve the […]

Pantry

Cheap mulch the color of the desert, full of pink flowers all bred to look exactly the same, all trimmed to restrain any grit; never able to spread out toward the sun, tamed to look beautiful and never die. At the edge of their world is a parking lot where people line up for food […]

Electricity

Unloading guns to count the bullets, each of them with faces drawn on them like missiles on a fighter plane. We do our part every day, but no one really knows where it’s all going, what final picture our collective effort is painting. I’m becoming more doubtful that it is beautiful. People wash their faces […]

With Nothing

That moment in a movie when the sinister music starts to play, and your gut sinks slowly like a ship that is taking on water. Dissonant piano chords chopping at your eardrums, breaking glass bottles against the bar until there are no more. A photograph that’s hard to look at because it shows you something […]

Mood Ring

The window was open letting in cold air that slowly woke her up. There was a note, on the crocheted blanket, next to her that said he just ran to the store. As she rubbed her eyes to clear her sight she thought back on the other night, and the two of them holding hands […]

Morning

A flooded elevator shaft taken over by fish with their dead motionless eyes. The fancy carpet laden with floral imagery, and the Art Deco door frames now fading away into dull featureless wreckage. A hole in the wall tavern where the city would gather and express its angst in vulgar conversations, tight dresses, and music […]