In the morning she would wrap her arms around me and apologize, but it would happen again, the next night. I didn’t know what to do. I was running out of ways to comfort her. One morning, almost two weeks after what happened, I kissed her and asked, “Is there somewhere you’d feel safer?”
The Fallen Man
A man is on all fours feeling his way gingerly on the ground.
Marilyn’s Wig (1999)
These last few days, I’ve been living off the oranges growing in the front yard of our bungalow. They hang heavy on the trees before littering the ground, like fallen worlds.
The Stray
His one-time girlfriend Leyla Santiago stood in the misting rain with Dr. Nancy from the Best Pal Clinic. The two of them wore face coverings, and he had the car windows up, so everything they said was like mock, mock, mock. A little while ago, one of the vet techs took inside the carrier holding Leyla’s cat, Darla. She might’ve been around sixteen years old and weighed 4 ½ pounds.
Love Passing
She asked if she could show him something on her phone and moved over to sit next to him. He didn’t seem uncomfortable with wisps of her red hair touching his shoulder, or her light green jeans rubbing against his black ones as she made herself comfortable in the booth.
It was an image of one her paintings, a portrait of a middle-aged Black woman on a park bench. It looked like late afternoon – the subject cast a long shadow on an asphalt walkway. The woman’s expression seemed to show both strength and sadness; weariness and defiance.
Chibbed
Out of the taxi and into the bitter early morning air we got. As I stood there watching the group head into the flat, a horrible realisation hit me. I only had a couple of fags left. The garage was only a five-minute walk from Mary’s, so I set off down the road, and, as I did do, I contemplated doing a runner. ‘This night is going to end in tears’, I thought. They usually do. But the lure of a session was, once again, and regrettably, too much.