Week 5

April 19^th, 2012
                The front page displayed a rare bird that hopped across the road and entered Gregory’s Market, tripping the wooden doorstop to the supply closet and locking itself in. Gregory’s son and successor, Francis, was too busy reading the front page of the previous day’s news to consider who went into the bathroom, and how long they had been in there.
                It took a few days and restocking the dairy products to realize the smell came from a carcass that had been torn apart by an unknown infestation of rats. The bird was disposed of by wrapping the newly outdated article around the body, picking it up by the leg, and tossing it into the woods.
                Needless to say, every day is a slow news day.

April 20^th, 2012
                Frances’ only memory of her mother lay in the photograph. Shrouded in a silk sheet, she held her still; long enough for the camera film to reach the proper exposure.
                Now, as a teenager, she talks to her hidden mother who takes the form of a curtain, stored furniture, or the sound of a flickering candle’s breath.  

April 21^st, 2012
                He has mastered the art of watchmaking to such an extent that he keeps all time by a watch broken at 8:16. It sits in front of him at the table, reflecting the moving daylight from its golden sheen to different intervals of the day. When the pinpoint of light reaches its minute, it strikes him in the eye, and he winces briefly, enough to conclude a day has passed since yesterday.  

April 22^nd, 2012
                Hastings turned the key in the ignition and Reed pressed the button on his jacket. For a brief moment, an uncomfortable silence spread between the two of them. “Start the engine.” Reed said.
                Hastings turned the key again. The car wheezed but refused to start.
                “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
                “Should we call somebody?” asked Hastings.
                Reed shook his head. “I’m padlocked to the seat. The plan was to start the timer the instant you turned the key. Then you’d drive along the highway and speed through the motorcade and hit the limo. According to the precise nature of our timing, they wouldn’t have time to stop us. Naturally, the key turned, and I pressed it.”
                “We should have said when the engine started.”
                “Agreed.”
                “Is it okay if I leave?” Hastings asked.
                “You’re going to leave me in this car to die alone?”
                “Well, I mean… since the plan is fucked.” Hastings shrugged. “Yeah.”
                Reed decided it would be best to refrain from saying anything for the rest of his life.

April 23^rd, 2012
                The greatest pride Virgil had in his job was spending his break high up on the window washing lift, eating his bologna and cheese sandwich while dipping the squeegee in the dirt-and-soap water, and holding it out over the edge and shaking it vigorously. There was nothing funnier to him than watching a few drops of water plummet into the oblivion in the city, only to imagine that something so insignificant would ruin somebody’s jacket, hair, or day.  

April 24^th, 2012
                I remember how my first trip to a synagogue was also my most memorable experience with the Jewish tradition, while at the same time, a freshly purchased blueberry and cream cheese bagel, a double shot vente black coffee from Starbucks, and a small slice of fudge aided me in understanding Yom Kippur from the middle row.

April 25^th, 2012
                During the Christmas season, the nativity themed tour guided the visitors through Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Galilee, but in the summer at night, my friends call it Jerusahemilee. The men and women of that time are long gone, and the dust and hay settle on the abandoned structures and obscure the boundaries between each sectioned area. Even Christ’s empty manger is hard to find in the darkness, and my closest friend, when finding it misplaced by local pranksters other than ourselves, feels an eerie compulsion to return it to the proper building. But as the season fades into autumn, and the night becomes cloudier, it is hard to find anything. 

Week 4

Thursday, April 12, 2012


                Marie Antoinette was frequently watched by curious aristocrats who wanted to see firsthand how she went about producing an heir. How were her legs positioned? What did she whisper to her king between the grunts of bearing his weight?
                She is dead, but everything else is still on display.

Friday, April 13, 2012


                The theater is historical in the sense that it still carries around its past between the path of pennies lodged above the doors and windows. Eventually though, like the Ouija board marketed by Hasbro, the building will be renovated, and the spirits will be given free roam once again.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

                Philip Marlowe is too old now to begrudge the women who only caused him trouble. Life at his age teeters on the abyss daily – the cholesterol in his eggs, the blood-thinning painkillers, the bending wooden stairs. No, he thanks them in prayer for bestowing within him a sense of adventure in his passions.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

                Petrov was almost asleep when a martyr of Christ kicked down the door with two fists of recently converted water. “Get out of bed,” he howled. “I want to hear your rendition of Hallelujah!”
                Petrov could never tell when his saint was divine or drunk, or if the tears were sincere when he repeated in sobs, “This song is about me!” but he continued to play without hesitation.

Monday, April 16, 2012

                When I imagined the horror of his lightness, I jerked awake in bed and prayed it wasn’t the body of a boy I knew. I wouldn’t think about that sort of selfishness until later, when I felt a part of me was assured by the possibility of the incident being somebody else’s tragedy.
                When I we were given a name and an idea of the time of death, and how people stared out their windows without telling anybody else about the body mangled in plain sight, I wished again that it wasn’t somebody I knew.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

                The cigarette in his breath bore down on my nose with the heat and scent of a cherry smothered in burned charcoal, and the tar on his tongue made it slick as velvet against mine. I cringe to think of how I want him to smoke more, drink more – how I want these vices to hold him like they do for me.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012


                Jack was always in a good mood so long as the tree was pink. He fell asleep frequently below the cherry blossoms and awoke to the soft new diadem crowning his head and backpack. During the spring, when the wind would blow down the main road, he would fill his backpack several times over with the petals, preserving them in plastic bags through the warmer seasons.
                When winter came, he removed his stock from the freezer and thawed each one, peppering his apartment in the autumn and winter, in a good mood once again.

Week 3

April 5th,2012:
He imagined they were all in love with him. Every gesture - an offered cup of coffee, a stare lasting too long, a well fit pair of jeans - was an invitation to the heart. "If only," he thought, "there was something I could do about my weird infatuation for having sex in socks."

April 6th, 2012:
I cut down the tree for her since she couldn't bear to relive the sight of her son swinging from the branches. She called me a week later, crying and asking what to do about the massive space encroaching on the kitchen through her window.

April 7th, 2012:
A moth flew through his window and proceeded to ram against his palm, the fuzz of its body and fluttering wings brushed against the inside of his knuckles. With every caress, he drew back his hand and shuddered. Too much gentleness became such an eerie thing.

April 8th, 2012:
Jesus can rise from the dead on Easter but nothing can kill the conversation between my stepdad and his mother about pornography. Somebody mentions semen and the gravy goes sour in my mouth. I move my plate to the kids' table and sit cross-legged next to my niece. She offered me a plastic teacup of Kool-Aid and I begin to feel thankful for people like her.

April 9th, 2012:
The growth on the leg of the girl in science fiction is a perfect circle beneath her torn jeans, and I can't help but marvel at the natural geometry. It looked like a scarlet hamburger, irritated either by something from without or something within, and alien maybe, or a large sac of eggs, is pressing up through her muscle. All of this comes to mind before I realize I am not paying attention in science fiction class.

April 10th, 2012:
Death is surprising in the way it works its way into a room and stays there. The raccoon who came to know this well was belly up in the tub, its claws tangled in the window's screen mesh and its eyes wide with invitation.

April 11th, 2012:
The one good thing about the apocalypse was that nobody at Ted's job required him to come to work in a white, buttoned down long-sleeve shirt and black tie.

Week 2

March 29^th, 2012:
                The wind snapped the umbrella like a twig underfoot. The two unhinged joints left one side of the fabric limp like a collapsed lung. My anger soon dissolved into laughter as I caught sight of the windproof tag before tossing the ragged skeletal mess into the trash.

March 30^th, 2012:
                Somebody knocked on the door. I went to see who it was but the peephole had been covered. I cracked open the door and found an empty hallway resonating with televisions, crying children, and the smell of cooking rising through the floor. A letter was attached to the other side of the peephole. Typed were the words, “I am watching.”
                I spent several nights with the blinds shut, pulling them back only slightly to see if any eyes were returning the vigilance. What I saw instead, in the apartment across the way, was my boyfriend locked in the arms of another man. His face was buried in the stranger’s matte of chest hair. With all the time I spent watching them, I completely forgot about my previous fears.

March 31^st, 2012:
                First it was my roommate waking up at three in the morning screaming my name, demanding that I wake up. Then it was a light outside my roommate’s window, rising like a firework and cutting across the sky. The final phenomenon was the fluid figure running on all fours through the underbrush while my mother strolled in the arboretum. I shivered at the stories, and again at how close they had all been to me without so much as stirring me in the sheets.

April 1^st, 2012:
                I thought nothing of her laughter until I could foresee no end to the noise. Her voice rose from a giggle to a chuckle to a laugh and finally into a cackle that forced her to thrust in her stomach and double over with her elbows in her gut. I set my book down and looked over to her, where I saw a demon hyena ramming its head against the inside of the young girl’s jaw. Eventually it unhinged and the strange beast escaped. The woman’s eyes rolled back into her head, and blood and saliva mixed into pale foam at the corners of her mouth. She passed out onto her latte and I resumed my homework.

April 2^nd, 2012:
                On the library shelf there was a cross; its check out history a yellowed sheet wrapped around the edges of the crucifix like a shroud. Present dates conversed with the past in accidental intersections. I found myself enamored with the names and dates: Donated by Kenneth Carson, 1919. Stephanie Lynn, 1997. Martin Lancer, 1954. The list went on. I spent so much of my time pondering the potential fates of these names and their faiths that the hours passed and I hadn’t even considered the icon.

April 3^rd, 2012:
                I donated my four dollars for a box of Girl Scout cookies. I ate them at home, hunched over the individual plastic cookie sleeves like a malfunctioning sewing machine tearing through the fabric. Even with the knot of nausea tightening its way into my throat, I continued to eat. As I lay in the bathroom, my stomach and head pressed against the tiles for their icy surface, weary from the sugar coma illness, I imagined the Girl Scout receiving a badge for her efforts.

April 4^th, 2012:
                The mute man, who felt sad for the blind stranger in the waiting room, began to fear his own existence. Although the blind stranger sat in silence without any company, it was the mute man sitting in his company who could not be acknowledged without some form of interference. The blind man read The Possessed in braille and moved his lips. He was reading to himself, or talking, or maybe he was singing, connecting to a human mystery the deaf man would never master. The mute man had sight, but only the sight of the waiting room in its four whitewashed walls, a stack of slowly dating magazines, and the blind man who did not have to endure the sense of invisibility.