Fiction – Page 4 – swamp pink

Mercy

February 27, 2023

The band director was tired. He did not understand why the students couldn’t play the piece correctly. The composer had written “with grave reverence” at the top of the score: fifty-five beats per minute. It was the tempo that tripped them up, a slow, limping adagio. These kids. They did not know how to be...

Sunscald

February 6, 2023

I was raised primarily in solitude in a house upon a mountain, on Camino Sin Nombre, that winding road without a name. From below, jutting out from rock, against the dark of the sky and amid the milky thrum of clouds, our house, resplendent with costly light, glowed like a beacon. My father liked to...

Marquise

February 6, 2023

My boyfriend, Charlie, is a photographer. The real kind, not the broke kind. His studio is on the first floor of our duplex in Manhattan. It’s so big that he gets embarrassed when I bring friends over. “Wow, I didn’t know you’re rich,” they say, even though I always warn them in advance that I...

Damage Control

January 12, 2023

In the months between eleventh and twelfth grade, at the behest of absolutely no one, Leonard Lawrence lost weight. A lot of it. Sixty-nine pounds to be exact, enough to just about make up one ten year old boy or maybe two four year old ones. If you stuck to averages. Which Leonard did. Leonard...

The Yellow Phase

January 12, 2023

I. Mrs. Yew was a widow who lived next door to us in the summer of ‘96, then she moved away or maybe fled—it depends on who you ask. When I knew her, I was an excruciatingly shy, small kid who survived mostly by being unseen. My father wanted me to be tougher, and my...

Landlocked

October 3, 2022

The first sale I made was the amber shirt. I photographed it from every angle in my empty living room, laid out on the hardwood, with the weak sunlight coming through the windows. Then I chose the best pictures and uploaded them to my Dresser. Vintage!!! I wrote in the caption. Bought on France Honeymoon...

Bendiciones

October 3, 2022

This shit was supposed to mean something. It was Abuelita’s new car. It was us inside it, driving to Del Rio so our señora could have this Caddy blessed by her hometown priest. It was Pops at the wheel, blasting the AC with the windows up, pushing his mother and seventeen-year-old daughter to the backseat...

In May

In my junior year of high school, an English teacher, with whom I was in love, had a breakdown and left just before the end of the year. Paul Sorbin was a veteran of Korea, and divorced. This last fact counted as something exotic in a small, New Hampshire town in 1957. The hint of...

Near Strangers

Betsy has a feeling she’ll get a call in the night, but it’s still disorienting when it happens. Four in the morning, pitch black. She had a glass of chardonnay last night, too, which has left her foggy-headed. You aren’t supposed to drink when you’re on call, but she had her neighborhood anti-racism meeting on...

Demonology, or Gratitude

For a while I lived with an older woman. Anyway, that’s what I told people. It would be more accurate to say she stayed with me when she had nowhere else to go. The lease for the tiny house where she came and went as she pleased was in my name, and I was the...

At Your Convenience

November 23, 2021

Old Lien wanted a son so badly she decided to make one. She found a do-it-yourself kit on eBay. Her sisters thought she was crazy for spending a chunk of her savings on a scam, a dream that died because it was wasted. Lien, however, was no fool. The seller had 98 percent positive feedback,...

Hit the Wall

November 23, 2021

March When you arrive at the court, Colin is already there. He’s stretching and chatting up Ricky and Drew, who are laughing. Of course they are, because Colin is so funny. That’s what everyone in the league always says. Colin? He’s so funny! Most people would add that he’s a great player. And some of...