"I Think I Met My Reaper"

 

At one point when I was close to home and almost finished with my walk, I heard the sound of twigs snapping behind me. There was no one else nearby that I could see, so I kept walking. But then I heard a voice, shaky and somewhat distant, say, "Nice night for a walk, isn't it?"

I turned around. A middle-aged man in a t-shirt and shorts was riding a bike in the deepening dark, down the street I had just crossed. He was headed south, traveling from my right to my left, and only tossed me a look as he pedaled.

"It is," I called, even as I imagined walls rising up from the ground to stand between us. "Enjoy it."

The man continued pedaling, so I started to step backwards. Then, once he was almost almost out of sight, I heard him say, "Enjoy it. You never know how long it's going to last." He was gone after that, and I was left to hope that he had been talking about the weather.

"A Hole in My Heart"

 

The tree was sure it knew what the girl was going to do. Through all the years of her climbing on its branches and hiding in its shade, it couldn't help getting to know her a bit. And she had been storing her journals in the hole in its trunk ever since she was six. When she tucked the knife inside one morning, next to all the yellowed notebooks, the tree understood immediately the choice she had made. As soon as she left for school, it began to cry. All that time, it had been so certain that it had kept her safe.

"Plates"

 

The day after Annelise gave birth, two women whom Annelise didn't know came to her hospital room and gave her the plates.

Annelise accepted the box, which also contained four salad bowls to match, and gave the women a long, lean frown. "What are you doing with my mom's dishware?" she asked them.

"Not hers," said one of the women. Her hair was sprayed and pinned into a neat ponytail, and her hands were folded in front of her. "They're actually yours. Your very own set."

"They're affordable, durable, perfect for kids to eat off of," said the other. "My mom used to make me spaghetti all the time. Always with the noodles and sauce separate. I'd mix them together on a plate just like one of those."

"My mother would leave rolls out for me on one of the small plates," the first woman said. "She was usually at work by the time I woke up for school."

"Welcome to the club, Annelise," the second woman said. "Hold on to those plates, and you'll do just fine." The two women exited the room, leaving Annelise to sit back on the hospital bed and think, about cheese and crackers, toaster waffles, all the good things she could remember, and to feel, for the first time since she had seen her daughter's face, a little less afraid.

"Dive In"

 

The drink she poured herself got taller with each night she spent stuck in the long, echoing, after-dinner darkness, until finally she just dived in, and her hair got tangled, and her skin got cold, and she realized despite its depth that the pool she had dug herself to swim in was very small after all.

[Written after reading this amazing poem by James Wright: "In Response to a Rumor That the Oldest Whorehouse in Wheeling, West Virginia Has Been Condemned"]

"Obey All Posted Signs"

 

I stopped the car at the intersection--badly, I know; I felt the seatbelt catch like air in the throat of someone choking--and I looked at my dad, calm in the passenger seat. Again he pointed out the window at the arrow.

"That doesn't look like a real sign," I told him.

He gave a half-smile and let his breath escape slowly, through his nose, a teacher trying to be patient with a bumbling student. "Part of learning how to drive is learning what to look for," he said. "See if this helps." He made a few gestures with his right hand, signs that I had never seen before, and suddenly I saw. I saw everything. Now the air really was caught in my throat. I looked him in the eyes once more, and he nodded. "Same as before, press the gas pedal down, slowly, slowly...." The car's nose lifted, we lurched into the sky in the direction of the arrow, and more than ever before, I felt the enormous weight of moving forward.

"We Now Have Air"

 

You'd think that we all would have run for the store when we saw the sign, but we didn't. We couldn't risk it. Because what if we got there, and there was nothing left on the shelf?

"Bicycle Rider"

 

The other day, a man rode past our house on a bicycle--not an unusual occurrence, except that he was shouting to himself, and waving his hands all around as if trying to shoo away insects. 

This is what I imagine: The man is a mad conductor who views every object in sight as an instrument in his personal orchestra, whose stage--the world--is so large that he needs to travel it on a bicycle to make sure that all the players can see him. "Horns!" he shouts, and car horns blow from a nearby intersection. "Strings!" he yells, and the electrical cables overhead hum lower than a double bass. He loses himself in the music until the song ends in a final tympanic crash that leaves his bicycle a heap of crumpled metallic elements in the middle of the street.