Still seeking absolution everywhere.
I want a tall, grassy hill to roll down
someone/something benevolent
waiting at the bottom,
arms stained green

The future smells like wet paint.

Although he had been dead for at least five years, the supervisor's body had been left lounging at his desk chair for motivational purposes.

After many left turns, there was a door that opened directly to the outside of the house, four stories up.

You are a planet of unbearable weight.

With shaking hands,

she pushed the cup that contained more dust than tea across the table.

The thin blanket of gray

covering the drink tickled my upper lip but not wanting to offend,

I drank.

More than any person I've encountered,

before or since,

she was an unending source of both tear drops and dust.

Even her voice

seemed wrapped in a warm woolen layer of duress and static,

a voice that was continually cracking on the edge of emotion,

receiving interference from some unknown

source.

I think she was probably catching signals from deep space.

Some said that she saved her many tear drops

and served them to guests in their drinks.

I held my breath with each swallow,

dreading the discovery of a hint of salt

at the end of every sip.

He had been amazed when she had agreed to go on the first in what would become (to his continued amazement) a considerable number of dates. He had been amazed further still when she began to spend hours at a time with him in his small apartment, which, for the last fifteen years, had held only himself and, for the last ten, his increasingly obese dog—except for occasional visits from his elderly mother who came primarily to make dire comments about his failure to produce grandchildren. Perhaps most amazing of all was the moment he realized that she was not opposed to the idea of him making love to her, which he did, like a clumsy, asthmatic turtle. So when he found the note on his kitchen counter, folded neatly and initialed in her flowery script, he was expecting anything but the message he found inside, which read simply:

It’s just not working out. I’m sorry.

-K

The note delivered a blow straight to his argyle-checked stomach. He sank to the floor, where his dog trotted over and watched him nervously. He buried his face into the soft dog tummy and cried. Cried like an infant with his round shoulders squared forward and shaking with sobs. The dog, mildly interested, lifted its nose to snuffle wetly against his sweater, leaving an abstract dark blot as evidence.