Her figure still had substance, however slight. Standing fully erect, she measured four feet nine and a half inches, head to toe. Seated, she melted into a chair or sofa as an understuffed toss pillow might, owing to the pronounced curvature that had come in her neck and upper spine; her shoulders had also collapsed … Continue reading Afternoon Miniature 4.18.21
Afternoon Miniatures
Evening Miniature 2.7.21
Cecily returned home after a long day in the service of others, thoroughly spent and ready for it to end, but the faintest streak of pinkish-azure light lingered on the western horizon still, almost mockingly; she could not appreciate the beauty of the moment in her tired-out condition. Later on, she would slide down into … Continue reading Evening Miniature 2.7.21
Afternoon Miniature 11.8.20
Lucy tugged at her skirt, which had ridden up over her bent knees in a funny way, and now its satiny lining had shifted, allowing the wool fibers to rub her skin uncomfortably. Her head swam with obtuse and acute angles, theorems and axioms. She glanced down at her open notebook and saw where her … Continue reading Afternoon Miniature 11.8.20
Afternoon Miniature 10.25.20
The ancient truck’s open hood concealed her from the waist up as she bent over its engine; she rose a little onto her toes to get a better look at something shadowy and undefined. Try again now, she hollered to nobody in the cab, but all that happened was nothing, only the obstinate click-click-click of … Continue reading Afternoon Miniature 10.25.20
Afternoon Miniature 9.7.20
Cecily could still hear the little fan whirring, a sound that somehow underscored the silence that morning, if she thought long and hard enough about it. For all but the coldest months in the last year, Claudia had kept it going on a small fern stand next to her reading chair, more or less in … Continue reading Afternoon Miniature 9.7.20
Afternoon Miniature 8.2.20
It was twilight and Cecily’s bones ached. She stepped off the city bus and began the short walk to the home she shared with her mother, whose health had spiraled into a steady decline in the last year or so. She turned the key in the front door lockset and stepped inside quietly to the … Continue reading Afternoon Miniature 8.2.20
Afternoon Miniature 7.19.20
Bran’s bedroom was all that remained to suggest the original vernacular architecture of her little cottage—the rest she had dragged grudgingly into the 1970s. A pair of authentic-looking casement windows just above the bed had convinced Lucy this might be true, anyway: They were large and lacked mullions, with handwrought iron fasteners that worked surprisingly … Continue reading Afternoon Miniature 7.19.20
Afternoon Miniature 6.14.20
Lucy leaned over the sink to bring her face closer to the mirror, the better to apply her shimmering pink lipstick. Tiny wrinkles had started to come at the outside corners of her eyes, only just, but added more interest than age to her face. Earlier she’d swept her ebony hair into a French twist, … Continue reading Afternoon Miniature 6.14.20
Afternoon Miniature 3.15.20
Lucy lay sprawled on the floor of the capacious family room absorbed in her artwork, drawing on an enormous white tablet with a collection of graphite pencils scattered about, and the tin that held them at her elbow. She rubbed lines here and there with the outside edge of her hand to soften them, the … Continue reading Afternoon Miniature 3.15.20
Fresh Fiction: Monday Afternoon Miniature
However pointless Cessily deemed fussing over an empty house, mopping and dusting rooms missing their people, making and remaking already made up beds, she remained as grateful for the work. She could hear her elder coworkers in the butler’s pantry, a man and woman in servitude to this family long before Cessily arrived there. On … Continue reading Fresh Fiction: Monday Afternoon Miniature
Sycamore Stories 