Christopher Owen lives in Texas with his wife and two cats. His work has appeared at Daily Science Fiction, Mirror Dance, New Myths and other places. He is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and the Yale Summer Writers’ Conference.
I just turned fifty: the same age as my estranged father when he died. Such a thing gets a man to pondering the details of his life. Such thoughts made me get busy, first by cleaning up my dingy old… Continue Reading
“What’s that sound?” asks my wife, Kadie. She and I lie in the loft of the barn, the wan light of a cloudy dusk making the world a shadow play through the unshuttered hay door on the west side of… Continue Reading
Jenny saw the cat on a March afternoon that was blustering full-on with a rare Texas snowstorm. She had been staring out into the blue-white dissonance beyond her apartment window, lulled by the gentle drift of the flakes. Snow came… Continue Reading
Lotta rain since Shanna left—weeks and weeks of it. It seems forever since I’ve seen a blue patch of sky. Drops of rain pelt the tall windows of the old Manhattan loft I call home, the occasional clap of thunder… Continue Reading
Late on certain afternoons I often liked to climb into my small boat and row out into the pond near my cabin. Sometimes I played a flute I had carved from a hickory branch and watched the perch dart about… Continue Reading
An old man named Lester lived at the same nursing home as my grandfather back in the late 1970s. I still cringe when I think of that place. The smell of stale urine dominated the bleak institution like a horrid,… Continue Reading
Marci and I run through the streets of Montmartre, drunk. Rain falls, turning the streetlights of Paris blurry against the dusk-time sky. Marci is barefoot, shoes in her hands, the streets too slick for high heels. She seems particularly exuberant,… Continue Reading
The wrens came in early March, building a nest of twigs within the ivy that grew in a twisted cascade from the old butter churn planter in Barbara’s sunroom. The old woman took to watching them, her face hovering scant… Continue Reading
In my dreams, I’m Romeo, Casanova… Lothario, even. I swirl into a room and the girls swoon, their eyes bright as icicles snapped from the eaves of their flash-frozen hearts. My glance did the freezing, but my touch warms them;… Continue Reading
One last dozen or so, eh, I think to myself as I return to my apartment and see red roses sitting outside my door. It’s Valentine’s Day and my ex-girlfriend must be getting ideas again. Ha! What kind of girl… Continue Reading