She was not a widow, but Elyse earned that same kind of sympathy and avoidance wherever she went. She’d spend long hours staring in the mirror during her morning routine, applying lotions and makeup, trying to look and smell the part of everyone else around her. She wore kind dresses with necklines providing an easy […]
Read MoreShe leapt through age, even as she knew tip-toeing was the more logical approach. The skies bled their failure in cold hues when she saw them, never in the vibrant pallet of her youth, but in lovely melancholic blues and she wondered if that’s why they called it the blues. Somewhere in the alleys of […]
Read MoreCalvin always argued to never think of today. He just kept looking forward, to not just tomorrow, but next month, next year, the next ten years. He planned and executed. He saved. Days were rungs of a ladder and the top was in constant view, his green eyes gleaming as he spoke about each step […]
Read MoreCarol and Bruce had said all they could say. The day was expiring the same way their words had; quietly, but with a kind of ferocious inevitability that spread like hungry fire across the cloud-bruised sky. Carol looked up often, noting to herself how the gray had exploded into rich orange above the sea, their […]
Read MoreWhen she’d wandered out into the rolling green of McClellan’s Glen, Sarah had no need for anything but the box, the shoes on her feet, and the light blue windbreaker she’d inherited from her sister as the cancer took hold. They were of course the same size, but months before she died, Laura had lost […]
Read MoreRina sat on the edge of the high rocks and dangled her gangly legs over the crash of the sea below. It growled at her as if it were a circus lion set free on a cruel ringmaster, and so she faced the gray above and welcomed the cool mist covering everything as if the […]
Read MoreCallie believed in dreams. She would watch clouds pass overhead and the way the sun faded and strengthened behind gray cotton, and she’d make a wish whenever she could see it without squinting; an orb of unimaginable power staring from Heaven like the eye of God. Then she’d think of Damon, his sea blue eyes […]
Read MoreThe last thing he saw was the last thing he ever wanted to see. She, on bent knees, prowling like a cat in the wild, but not desperate or hungry. A well fed cat. Confident. Relaxed. The night outside was cast in the glow of streetlights, their orange bent into umber by the low ceiling […]
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