She held up her wrists to show the scar at the end of the world, peeled away flesh to reveal the bruises within.

He kissed her cheek, remembered when they first met—how happy they’d been—and he watched the earth cover the last rose he could ever give her.

Mike McLaren gave up teaching and technical writing to play slide blues. When not gigging, he sits in an RV somewhere in the Oregon Wilderness with a journal—his mish-mosh of stories, poems, and essays.