“Take one more step and I draw.”
Six years old, he carried a toy gun and barked commands at everyone within earshot. Most days, I ignored him. I really couldn’t blame him. At his age, I’d done the same thing.
I really should have listened. That bullet nearly hit me.
I recognized her immediately. Same eyes, but sadder; same hair, but grayer.
She’d dominated my yearbooks: cheerleader, homecoming queen, class favorite.
As she rang up my groceries, I suddenly wondered which was more unfortunate… Those who peaked in high school, or those of us who wasted our lives envying them.
The story of the week for September 18 to 22 is…
Fourteen by Jennifer L. Freed
I thought,
when my daughter finally left
my womb,
that I’d be free
again,
could go back
to my old self.
Nobody told me
my breasts would ache
for her hunger,
or that her heat, her scent,
her fierce little grip
would hold me
even after I’d given her away.
Fingers table-tapping impotently. Clock striking, but not the keys on my laptop. Blank face reflected on white empty screen mirrors the inside of my dark empty head.
I prod my muse. “Any thoughts?”
She waves a bottle in my direction, hiccups and sinks into a torpor.
“Try Facebook,” she mumbles.
Every time I eat here, I wonder if she’s still in the restroom.
I watch the cakes orbit on refrigerated turntables, a silent waltz for the ballerinas running omelets and coffee.
Back when she excused herself to the restroom, the hostess was probably still in diapers.
“Table for one, please.”
Crocodile and Hippo were arguing over who was the more dangerous of the two.
Crocodile boasted, “I kill a thousand humans annually!”
Hippo scoffed, “I’m responsible for thrice that number of fatalities!”
Then a man came into view. Pointing at him, Crocodile sighed. “I think we finally have our winner…”
“What are you reading there? Looks like some serious stuff; you must be really smart.” He worked his usual pick-up magic on the train. Ask a simple question, then pay a compliment. Always works with them ladies.
Just not this time. “My divorce papers,” she replied angrily, and turned away.
Katya Duft is a translator, interpreter, and language teacher, and enjoys writing short stories, poetry, and her blog Tales from the Bus.
In the garden, I meditate, motionless. Birds, ignoring me, flit to the feeder.
A fat earthworm scrunches and telescopes across the flagstones into the sunlight, toward the feeder. Seeking food? Do earthworms eat what birds spill?
Never mind. Robins eat earthworms. One pounces, plucks.
Pity. I might have gone fishing.
I am standing on wet ground outside my childhood home, under mid-morning tropical sun. The air smells of earth and newly banished rain. Adults speak indoors; their everyday worries are abstract, distant.
I wake up to a snowy Chicago morning, work on a weekend, and infant needing to be fed.