Fiction

His scissors are soaking in soapy water. She turns and almost stabs him in the belly. He jumps back.

Marja would write the curse, seal it in a film canister, and then, in the guise of being a welcoming neighbour, bury it in the roots of whatever Marja planted in the garden as a gift.

As the video conference ended, quiet tears poured down her cheeks. She felt very small as if someone had taken her voice away.

I buy admission to the tattered big top amidst a hundred or more whose skin is the color of my own.

I mulled over what I could have done differently. A crack in one of the hazy panes caught my eye. A fissure.

My bullet has been eroding into my spinal cord for the last ten years, the sandbar under my feet slipping away..

This isn’t about you. It isn’t about the Barbie you once belonged to, or the kid that Barbie might still belong to. It isn’t about my own kid’s Barbies…

When I unfold the paper there’s what appears to be a bunch of feathers. As I reach for them I discover it’s a bird’s wing.

I sigh with the tree. The tears sprout from my eyes, dripping onto the tangled roots beneath.