fiction
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A man fixes what’s broken in a woman’s house long after he’s stopped being able to fix what’s broken between them. Brett was on the phone with Kelly, listening as she recounted the small dramas of her workday.“So-and-so was complaining about this and that,” she said, her voice running out of steam until resignation set…
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A fraud, they said. But to be a fraud one must first know the real thing.I never got the blueprint, only the ghost of a house.This rope, not hemp but memory, knots me to myself.I dream of Houdini-ing out, each kiss from my wife a lockpick made of breath. I was married once. I think…
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He sat undone. His left leg folded under him, his right stretched into the pale dark as though it belonged to someone freer. The air at 2:30 slipped through the screen and slid across twelve inches of open window. The blinds caught it, sliced it, and delivered it to his skin with the precision of…
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the old woman is making a war in the other room— shoving anything not nailed down, raising more dust than she ever sweeps up. I don’t look. looking is an invitation. and it’s Saturday. and Sunday is coming. “preach it,” I whisper to no one. I hold my phone like it’s a holy book. feel…
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The screen glowed in the 2:30 AM stillness, a sudden star in the domestic dark of his bedroom. Her text bloomed, then vanished, a digital ghost that left its afterimage on his retinas. Arlo fumbled for the phone, pressing it awake. He didn’t bother with his glasses; his nearsightedness was a loyal servant in the…
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“Chancho. When you are a man, sometimes you wear stretchy pants.” Nacho Libre Nacho Libre drops that gem on his sidekick while getting busted in his luchador tights, and damn if it didn’t sneak-attack my brain the other day. Picture this: I’m crawling along the freeway, soul-crushing traffic turning my car into a rolling therapy…
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“My father never spoke in parables, but his hands told stories clearer than any sermon. In wood, he found truth. In silence, understanding.” The sander thrummed in my grip, its vibration crawling up my forearm like a pulse, like memory. Mahogany dust hung in the warm air, rich and sharp, smelling of patience, of near-perfection,…
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for my son, who flew toward his own sun It’s always been a sin, hasn’t it?To want too much.To hope.To leave.To stay. The days with you—man once a boywaiting for eggs I’d scramblelike penance,as the toaster hummed its tired absolution,those mornings are rosaries now,threadbare prayersslipping through guilty hands. You make your own breakfastin a city…
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—have you ever broken a bone? Picture this: a scrappy backyard baseball diamond, cobbled together by three siblings with big dreams and zero budget. First base? A sickly, half-dead plant wheezing in a faded terracotta pot, so heavy we nearly busted a gut dragging it into place. Bits of clay flaked off, sticking to my…
BB Grey--musings 