STOLEN KISS • by Michelle Klein

You stole my kiss goodnight.

Listen.
This is how it happened:

Every night I closed my eyes and dreamed of angels watching over me, knowing me, loving me, longing for that connection of humanity and holiness that only dreams can bring.

They brought tea.

They’d sit on my windowsill, gossiping, wings flapping slightly to fan their overworked brows.

“Overtime again, Zaphkiel? My, you’re looking pale.”
And so on.

The porcelain clink of their Lenox China cups was my sweet lullaby. We had an understanding, the angels and I, we had our night-time ritual. To say goodbye, as I drifted from the haze between bed and dream, one bright-eyed Seraph would touch his lips to mine in benediction.

I opened those lips and told you; I spilled out the secret of my hidden magic.

“You shouldn’t dream of angels,” you said to me. “They’ll never be real, never be able to hold you, kiss you, touch you with their long and gentle fingers.”

“They don’t have to be real,” I said. “They only have to be beautiful.”

You unclapped them then, your angel-believing hands, your dreamer’s gloves, your flesh of many colors. You unclapped them once, twice, thrice — and sure enough the angels disappeared.

Now I cannot sleep. I stay awake, pen to page, writing about the day I lost my angels, the day you stole my kiss goodnight.

Maybe if I leave the window open with some sugar on the sill…
I wait with open window, open heart, and lips sealed with Solomon’s liquid star.


A native of Philadelphia, PA, Michelle Klein brings the flavor of its ethnic neighborhoods and tree-lined streets to her fanciful tales.   Her written work includes “The Secret of Gardons”, swashbuckling serial fiction, and “His Mother’s Son”, a pirate fantasy story published in the anthology Black Sails. She currently resides in the treacherous swamps of Delaware, guarded day and night by her four-year-old son, “Le Petit Pirate”.


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Every Day Fiction