short-story

  • the irises remember

    the irises remember

    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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  • Saturday

    Saturday

    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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  • what do You See

    what do You See

    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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  • Morning came like a pothole at sixty miles an hour—sudden, jarring, and hard to blame on anyone specific. The rooster down the road, probably unionized by now, took turns with his feathery co-conspirators alerting the neighborhood that the sun had clocked in. Matt rolled from his stomach onto a suspiciously angled hip and blinked at…

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  • Stop Looking—Just Know

    “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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  • Memorial Day

    Memorial Day

    not just one day.. “The Walk Down Gravel”for Mr. Graham, Vietnam Veteran It’s Sunday.The grass glistens with dew—tiny glass beads strunglike prayers along every blade,hydrating the earthfor the coming summer heat. Across the street,Mr. Graham’s black trash can stands at attention—a quiet salute to the curb,ready for duty.Only, it’s not trash day. Tuesday is the…

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  • Act One: Chemo

    Act One: Chemo

    The last live performance I saw didn’t have curtains or spotlights—just an office, a boss, and a pathological liar with mascara and crocodile tears.

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  • Simon and the Fish

    Simon and the Fish

    It was always somethinguntil there was nothing. Simon lived the only life he knew—a dockworker with more days off than on,meeting ends in a mannernot unlike a politician:smiles,handshakes,promises made in passing,rarely kept. But he worked. He didn’t question,not even when he probably should’ve—like when Mable,his neighbor in the trailer park,asked for his last dime.She had…

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  • “Not Yet”

    “Not Yet”

    “Some doors don’t open with force. They wait for the right hands, at the right time.” bb grey Yard sales weren’t Robert’s thing. Not even close. But Beth—Beth thrived on them.“Look at this! A whole world of treasures just waiting to be rescued!” she’d say, grinning like she’d found buried gold in a box marked…

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  • The Builder

    The Builder

    Billie Holiday cries softly, somewhere between here and the past—her melody warms the corners of the roomlike the heater humming in time with my breath.A cappuccino cozies the center of me,and I write—to life,to you,across this ethereal threadspun of digits and light. I weave thoughts and feelingslike a tapestry—yarns pulled from memory and moment:scratchy and…

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