8: Dinner Table

At dinner you said I could never keep it short. You wanna bet, I said. Your eyes over a glass of wine: your postcards are letters, your letters novels. The clock on the wall hadn’t worked since Halloween.

7: Donuts

He’s at the donut shop eating a piping hot donut dripping with cinnamon sugar and honey glaze. Pre-dawn, sipping coffee. He stares at the guy working at the counter, thinking, I know this guy, he looks so familiar. For weeks now. It’ll come to him, as the door’s bells clang, a cold wind slipping inside like a forlorn stranger.

6: A Story About Glass

You didn’t know this but I walked by your house everyday and I would stop and listen to the music coming from within. Your windows open. The sound of a strumming guitar. Wasn’t sure if it was live or from the stereo. Then I heard your singing one day. Words about healing broken hearts of poor children living in rusted tenements. That day I was going to write a story about glass but instead stopped and listened, leaves rustling on a day it didn’t rain.

5: Earth-Two

Just a short note letting you know we’re alive and well here on Earth-Two (though that term is not used). We still have our own Flash, Wonder Woman, Superman, though you’d probably see them as outlet-store imperfections. They pound the concept of parallel lines into us from pre-school. Perpendicular means jail time. Multiverse is dirty talk. We’re all slightly off. This is a short note. Too bad you will never get this note.

4: Hubble

He died, felt an upward swoosh, a bullet’s journey. Soon he realized he was in the Hubble Telescope. Swirls of galaxies, stars born in dusty light. The auroras of planets, burning balls spinning in cold. Jill always wondered, was the universe expanding or contracting? Now he had the answer.

3: Rooftop

I brought you out on the rooftop not to jump but to stare. Here’s the city, in all it’s everything. Neat cornrows of brick houses. The jagged Lego of office buildings. Right there is where I lived when I was five. The walls were paper, I was afraid of the neighborhood kids, and my dad broke the tv during the World Series. Over there’s a cloud of smoke that billows. There’s no fire and it dies. Come back tomorrow and we can fly kites, pretend the end places of roads.

2: Leviathan

A marine biologist journeyed to the Cook Islands. At sea, he and his crew detected something large moving on sonar. 1,100 meters depth, moving at 11 knots. Suddenly, down to 1,700 meters, speed at 16 knots, moving south-southwest, disappearing, out of range. They look at each other: what the hell was that? Several hours waiting for a return, but nothing. At dinner that night they needed more wine. Free flow the syrah. That night he feel asleep not thinking gas pockets, new submarine technology, school of fish but rather unknown, prehistoric, biblical.

1: Zugzwang

When he reached zugzwang, he resisted the urge to upend the chess board. The bishop, the king—any move and it’s checkmate. Fracturing a morning of raspberry scones, Sumatra blend coffee. He looked across the board at his opponent, grey beard but younger, biting his upper lip waiting. There’s a new Grandmaster of Wharf Street, he thought. To his left, a trash truck moved, revealing egg yolk sun peaking over oily water.