When you return to the city after some time away from it, you notice its clamor, the noise that is part and parcel of urban life, that people immersed in it no longer hear. Sirens, heavy trucks, trains rumbling under open grates in the sidewalk—and throngs of cabbies slapping their wheels impatiently, unrelentingly, in anger … Continue reading Morning Miniature 3.16.19
Writing
Morning Miniature 3.14.19
Lucy had kept a close watch on the gas gauge and promised herself she’d pull off the highway at an eighth tank, which was just about where the needle was now, maybe a skosh over. She was not far from the next town, only a couple of miles, where there’d be a gas station and … Continue reading Morning Miniature 3.14.19
Morning Miniature 3.12.19
She squished together the crusts of her toasted sandwich in such a way as to make its peanut butter innards spill out of two sides, and when they did, followed it with her tongue, down one long edge of the bread, around the corner, and up another, transforming it from a gooey bead into a … Continue reading Morning Miniature 3.12.19
Morning Miniature 3.9.19
If ever there were a picture of walking death, it was Celeste: at a hair’s breadth under five feet, her frame was so emaciated you could just make out the shape of the long bones beneath her baggy denims. The rest of her was hidden under a hooded sweatshirt many times too big, precisely how … Continue reading Morning Miniature 3.9.19
Morning Miniature 3.7.19
The incandescent bulb in the little wall sconce by the bed cast such a warm and pleasing light on the open pages of the book she held. She scrutinized the vintage typeface; without lenses in her eyes, she could examine every curvilinear shape, the swirl of each serif. So clear was the close-up vision in … Continue reading Morning Miniature 3.7.19
Morning Miniature 3.5.19
She plunked the scrub brush back into the filthy bucket of water that still reeked of bleach with undercurrents of, what was it? Mouse? Mouse poop? Something vile and disgusting. She’d swept her hair back into a tight ponytail, but a wisp had escaped and now fell over her brow, just a solitary ebony strand … Continue reading Morning Miniature 3.5.19
Morning Miniature 3.2.19
Most mornings Mme Saukhalova threw open the front door of her tiny pied-à-terre and took a single step backward, her head recoiling dramatically as if by whiplash, and then alluringly crossed its threshold onto the landing, glancing furtively left and right to see who might have noticed. Down, down, down each step she gingerly reached … Continue reading Morning Miniature 3.2.19
Morning Miniature 2.28.19
The last time he stepped through the front door of this house there was no pain in his knees and hips at all, but now he could feel the very landscape inside his joints as he stooped down to peer through a front window, cupping his hands around his eyes to block the sunlight. Gettin’ … Continue reading Morning Miniature 2.28.19
Morning Miniature 2.25.19
This would have been a perfect January morning, in any other January but this one, with the sunlight streaming through the kitchen window and falling on her hands at work under the tap. Every day they looked more and more like her grandmother’s hands, she mused—when had that change started to come? So much change. … Continue reading Morning Miniature 2.25.19
Morning Miniature 2.25.19
The civil defense sirens had not sounded, not yet, but the power had been out already for several hours. She’d lit the votive candle in the little holder on the nightstand just as soon as the lights flickered; in the distance she heard the unmistakable sound of an exploding transformer—that’s how her father explained it. … Continue reading Morning Miniature 2.25.19
Sycamore Stories 