No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story.
The father handed the box to the grandfather, and he cocked his head as if acknowledging his son should have the honor. The father ripped off the paper, opened the box, and removed a black gun.
That couldn’t really be a gun. I stared with my mouth open as the baby held out his hands and wiggled his little fingers just out of its reach. Then the grandfather placed the end of that shiny black pistol into the baby’s mouth, who sucked on it like a new toy.
Mr. Morgan considered his situation. He couldn’t keep paying this much to Eleanor, not without finding another job, not while he struggled to feed himself with cheap cereal and canned garbage; he’d lost wi-fi and every day he went to the local library to browse job opportunities. Online tutoring wasn’t an option without an internet connection at home. And face to face teaching… he’d lost all taste for that. But he delayed applying for the bottom-dweller jobs. He perused zero qualification entry positions that made his soul quiver with fear. It seemed there remained a part of himself to lose.
Eleanor smirked and swung her legs around to leave their table.
I wonder when was the first time I knew I existed. Watching over the self-checkout in Price Mart, I’m wondering if this even counts as existence. What does one have to do in order to count as a life-form?
The urn is shaped like a wide-angle lens. Leona can’t help but chuckle when the undertaker’s assistant places the alabaster thing on the spotless counter top. It’s exactly one week after the funeral ceremony. She already knew about her dad’s choice of urn, having seen the picture in the catalogue. Yet it looks more ridiculous than she had anticipated. A prop instead of the real thing.
Before landing a fresh job and quitting the service industry altogether, Mary’s life revolved around shelf talkers, the diligent tallying of registers, and stock replenishment. Clocking-in-and-clocking-out.
Lance loved this neighborhood from the moment we drove through the gates twelve years ago. The ancient trees. The big lots. A fantastic K-8th grade school. The award-winning golf course didn’t hurt. It felt elegant but grounded. West coast country, as described by our real estate agent. If you bought a house here, you had the kind of wealth that didn’t need proving. Women wore high-fashioned brands like Chanel and Hermes but not the crap with the logos – the real stuff from the Paris runways.