The Wait

Delays. Train late.

My thoughts wander between reality and what ifs. Our last conversation remembered. Your smiling eyes as well.

Did you pack my favorite chocolates?

Scared to visit the ladies’ room in case we miss each other. Two lovers lock in an embrace beside me. A woman narrowly misses my toes pulling luggage. I rise. Look around. Someone takes my seat. I feel a tug at my side.

“Have you been waiting long?” a voice booms above all.

“Do you have money to pay for parking?" I ask. "My wallet was stolen.”

You tell me you forgot the chocolates.

From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Her work has been published at: Nailpolish Stories, 50-Word Stories, 100 word story, 101 Words, Boston Literary Magazine, From the Depths (Haunted Waters Press), ShortbreadStories, SixWordMemoirs, and Espresso Stories.

Drum

There is one bright dancer among them. Her hands trace the music onto air. The “U” of her hips sways, telling bedroom stories. Melodies float her toward the youngest doumbek player, barely bearded.

She bends to him, smiling, flirting even, to the ululating tongues of all her watching sisters but as the hafla pauses to draw a collective breath, I see the truth: her focus is not the boy drummer. She shines for the pulled-skin drum.

An elderly man leans near me. “It is all that remains of her husband.”

“He played?” I am confused.

He shrugs. “He had enemies.”

From Guest Contributor Laura Lovic-Lindsay

Disembodied

Glassy unseeing eyes stare out from rows of faces. Bloodless lips frame mouths, some closed, some open displaying teeth, some smiling, and some solemn. Disarticulated limbs lie about. Arms and legs in varying degrees of flexion and extension wait, motionless. Hair wigs of different colors and textures, long and short, decorate the windowsills of the dark and silent room. Headless torsos, male and female, some nude, some partially clothed, some prone, some supine, so lifelike yet so inanimate, complete the macabre scene.

On Monday morning, workers arrive to begin another week of readying manikins for the department store’s window display.

From Guest Contributor Judy Salz