The ProtectionsThe cold coming through the thick windowpane, the lack of light in the room, the feel of something on one’s skin, alleviating the sore throat’s or sore shoulder’s minor pain. The something may not be real, may not be skin or something alive, may just be some fabric, some clothing, but the mind makes no matter.The Protections
Outside the wind bends the coarse-skinned trees. The people walk below, on the grass, on the sidewalk, right in the middle of the street. Like the stars, there are many, but spread apart, and you can’t see them all. &n
Independence DayThere was no red in his cheeks, the man in the booth in front of me yesterday evening at the diner, the one with the voice as wrinkled as his skin, telling that smooth-faced young woman stories from when he was a child, like many men his age do more often than they should. This is what he said:Independence Day
It was the sixties, you see, and back then his family lived right near the town line – little white houses spaced far apart, thin winding gravel roads, the woods surrounding them, a reminder of the wild. (“I can’t go back there anymore,” he interjects. &nb
On the GroundThe statue sits in the middle of the road, a general, made of limestone, with dozens of medals sagging from his shirt and a wizened face, colorless eyes piercing nothing but the eastern sky, sitting astride a horse with a broken hoof. In the heat of the midday summer sun the air, obscured with invisible water flying to the heavens, fails to hide the bird shit lining his epaulets, the dulled, pockmarked skin, the soda cans underneath a horse forced to the ground by its rider.On the Ground
The cars’ drivers who swing around it and the people who pass i
I did it again, didn't I?
