He loves me. I study the petal held between my fingertips with interest, amused that something so fragile could determine my heart’s fate. I drop it to float down and land on the pavement where many discarded petals lay scattered… Continue Reading
I let the children play with the lions because I decided that it was part of their education to examine life from another planet. This was after I ordered a box of domestic cats but many of my students, the… Continue Reading
“Welcome to the Academy,” the Chancellor announced. His voice was echoed by the crowd’s applause, whose eclipsing thunder reduced his volume to that of a whisper. I was in that crowd, but clapping softly. When asked by the admissions officer… Continue Reading
Six-year old John barely fit in the storage cabinet, even with his knees pulled close to his chest. Red light pulsed in tempo with the blaring alarm klaxon, bleeding in around the door’s edges. Where was Mom? When the alarm… Continue Reading
Jason, a bronze sickle in one hand, glimpsed movement at the edge of the woods and straightened to peer above the golden stalks of barley. At the far end of the field, Dame Stilwell, his teacher, had emerged from the… Continue Reading
Garry waited patiently at the door as the bell rang. He was tall, taller than most of the adolescents he taught, and had a youthful face. Students were wandering out of their previous classes and through the halls, trying to… Continue Reading
He still sang Verdi in the shower. She listened and planned to leave him. Twenty years ago, when she was seventeen and smitten, she’d considered his singing romantic: her elegant, cultured calculus teacher serenading her while he soaped his graying… Continue Reading
The crazy woman was out in the street again last night, ranting and demanding cigarettes. “They took my stuff! Why do they have to come into your house and take your stuff?!?” It was the warm muggy days at the… Continue Reading
He is already screaming at me. Even before I cross the intersection, he is gesticulating in my direction, brandishing a tiny black prayer book. My accuser, garbed in black hat and coat, is perched behind an overturned shopping cart: a… Continue Reading
Cobra means the grandest, and not just any grandest, but a female grandest. That is not why Cobra’s parents chose the name for her, though. On the contrary, they chose it because in the mountains south of the Caspian Sea,… Continue Reading