The stars twinkle. I remember when you pointed at the one you wanted to go.
My tablet beeps. A message from “somewhere in Virgo,” you say. Sent fifteen years ago.
I wonder if I should I bother replying. It’ll take longer than fifteen years to…
Clutching the tablet, I type.
Joey doesn’t even have a tablet but he can be messaged at joeytoey.com.
I couldn’t flush my dead goldfish. Instead, I left him in the bowl in the kitchen and I cry as I mix a tuna salad for lunch. My dishtowels smell like low tide. I keep his plastic toy squid on my bedside table and I dream of a heaven, underwater.
Carolyn Mainardi, a graduate of Boston University, lives and writes all around New England. Her short fiction appears in Danse Macabre and is forthcoming in Burn Magazine.