The birthday boy got a parrot because he loved pirates. He also received hardtack and salted meat. He ate them every day. “Yarr!” he shouted, chewing the unchewable and waving his cutlass.
No fruit all summer.
At school he show-and-telled his bleeding gums. The other boys, duly impressed, asked how.
TL Krawec loves pirates, too.
The mother spread out over the bench, waiting for a bus to squeeze herself on to. Her blond child’s paleness rusted red in the sun. He wanted to climb and jump.
“No,” she said, offering chocolate. “Eat this.” Extra ballast would stop him floating. “Please,” she said. “Eat now. Eat.”
TL Krawec doesn’t have children, and keeps his chocolate to himself.
The organist’s drunk fingers blew atonal notes. No-one noticed: the bride was so beautiful in her dress.
Her father cried.
A child started clapping, but was silenced immediately by a sibling’s shove.
In silence she stalked the aisle, floating forward to her blissful future.
“She looks fat,” her mother-in-law said.
TL Krawec writes because why not?