Meeting at Night

It's hot, boiling, a standard day in a Texas summer. My Bugle Boy slacks and OshKosh button down feel damp the moment I step out of my grandma's Cadillac, the newest one out: every five years for the rest of her life, my grandma will always buy the newest Cadillac. The tombstones sticking out of the freshest dirt, surrounded by green-yellow grass, look to me like unfamiliar things you might find at a playground, next to the jungle gym, near the curly slide. Just as strange to me, every bit as foreign as the idea of dumping macaroni shells into a bowl of milk and calling it cereal, are all these people. They all know me, or my name at least, 'cause they keep saying it, patting my head as my grandma leads me from one patch of people to another, holding my hand, even though I've been able to walk on my own for quite some time. She says she'll stop holding my hand in public when I'm ten. I always say, Isn't eight old enough? Other boys and girls here, t...

Free Flash Fiction has released their first anthology of flash fiction pieces titled The Flashing Type . One of the stories included is a scribbling of yours truly: "Kind Alice." I am very happy to have had my work selected for this anthology. It is the first time anything of mine has been published in this format. Along with my story, there are 49 other pieces by very talented flash fiction authors. The best part: the whole thing only costs $0.99! It can be downloaded as a Kindle Edition here .

Today is the day I do it. I will say something to Tall Coffee, Black.     I will tell him something. That he's cute. That I like his choice. That he smells like home.     Something to start a dialogue. To show him I exist. To make myself an option for him.     It will happen today.     Okay, he's walking up. Do this, do this, do this, he's only one man, one guy is all he is, one guy with divine brown hair expertly parted to one side and held by just a touch of gel, one male with a voice smoother than vanilla ice cream on your throat in summer, one man with the smile I see every restless night when I can't sleep, he's only that man, the one.     “Morning. Tall coffee, black, please.”     “Yes sir, coming right up.”     I get his coffee, look at his face while he looks somewhere else, hand him the cup, and, again, for the 56th day in a row, I am silent, saying nothing o...

Alice was always very kind to me.     She and granny shared a house together for as long as I can remember. She had been friends with my granny since they were in grade school. They even went to college together in the late '60s. When we learned about bra-burning protests in history class, I thought of them.     Alice didn't come from money, but her husband had made quite a bit before he died. He had invented one of those things that no one knows about, but is used in half of the stuff we buy, some space-age polymer or revolutionary chemical protein.     So Alice did things for me.     She knew what my favorite candy was, Sour Patch Kids, and since I was nine she'd always have a bag for me when I came over. When I was twelve, she bought me a new bike, shiny and red with 18 gears, and she even bought me a new, soft, silicone bike-seat -- “That seat that came with it looks like a pain in the butt.” When I was fifteen, A...

My eyes don’t lie, and they say you’ve never been here before but my vision feels you all around me all the time, like you live inside me everywhere I go these days a passenger I will never drop off my couch. I smell memories of sex that never occurred here or did we, did you come out of my mind while I slept and have your way with me on top? My ears pick up the echo of a scream, an argument we had once, but never really, about me wanting you to leave with me for the other place where we do all things easy every night, where we love without any ties, where we cry only together for sad films. My fingers find you on me when I wake from short naps and your skin presses me down into my sheets of sweat so thick as you do me in waves of slow then fast in stages of love and regret in licks of no then yes and you never stop me when I pull you down with me into the salt water where we can’t drink at all but live forever submerged into one thing found when ...

The Reason I Hate The Shining Another night of fear Just like the last, just like the next Another gulp slides down her hatch Impossible to count how many there have been Another bottle hits the wall I hop, skip, and jump through the brown glass Escaping her fumbled attempt at capture A little soldier in a minefield, Running from the enemy My feet, somehow, are uncut I run, faster than when I'm on the playground I slam the bathroom door Booms, bangs, and bad words demand entrance I hide, curled up in the corner of the bathtub It feels weird here being dry, un-wet Like an empty throat waiting to be fed I wait It has been calm for a while I think I slip out of the tub, away from my refuge And tread across the the dirty tile towards the door As my arm extends for the knob, it happens The thick, shiny blade pushes into the door, almost all the way through I, aged eight, return to my cold tub and tease it with tears while my Mother tries to chop the doo...

Mary liked the song. It was slow and brooding, like something Clapton might’ve done in the sixties, before cocaine became his master. Outside the hip little bar, people were sipping wine under big umbrellas even though it was dark out. Inside, there was no haze of cigarette smoke, and Mary didn't like that. She had seen all the old Bogart movies where the bars billowed with gray clouds.  Mary sat at a table near the small stage, alone, drinking. Nothing girly for her: tall glass of scotch, no ice. She fidgeted with her black, curly hair, but made sure not to touch the green bandana she had very carefully woven in to make her hair look messy. Before leaving the house that night, she’d looked in the mirror. Low-cut black shirt, skin-tight jeans, a touch of eyeliner, a dab of lip gloss, and cowgirl boots from a trendy thrift store where the clothes cost more than new ones. The word that came to mind when she looked at herself was “compromise,” but she wasn't sure anymore what ...