Flash Fiction Project

The announcer says the train’s late. Figures. I knew we shouldn’t have come early. Now we’re here for... what? another hour? maybe two?
Becka says, “I’m getting some more smokes, you want?”
“I haven’t smoked in three years,” I say.
“Well,” she huffs, “I was just asking. Given the circumstances and all.”
I wave her off. I want the cigarette, but the craving will pass.
I shift my position on the bench, sink lower until my back hurts, watch the German couple respond to the announcement. I hate them on sight. She sits on her luggage, her long limbs stretched out, head resting on her hands. He drapes his arm around her shoulders, stares out with his chiseled jaw. They look so healthy, blonde, and young.
Becka comes back, a lit cigarette between her fingers.
“This sucks,” she says.
“You got that right,” I say.
We look down the track, as if staring will make the train come faster. Then, as if tied together, we both turn to the German couple.
“I hate them,” she says. “Fucking cute couple.”
I smile at this. We are in solidarity, she and I.
“Do you think mom would have come?” she asks me.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“I think mom would have come,” she says, more certain.
“I don’t know,” I say again.
She takes a drag on the cigarette, blows the smoke out in the direction of the German couple.
“I mean, mom made him whatever he wanted for dinner. He’d say, ‘I want a BLT,’ and she’d just make it like that. Frying bacon and everything. And a beer. She’d get him a beer.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You don’t know. You don’t know,” Becca repeats. “What the hell do you know?”
“I don’t want to think about it,” I say. “I don’t know. That’s it.”
“I’m freaking out,” she says, “Aren’t you freaking out?”
I shrug. I am still thinking about that cigarette. I haven’t had a cigarette in 3 years, 5 months, and 4 days. I could count the hours. I wonder what he’ll look like when he comes.
“You got that hotel for him,” she asks me, “You booked it right?”
“I booked it,” I say.
“I don’t want him staying with me,” she says, “I’m not ready.”
“I double checked the reservation,” I say, “He’s in the Howard Johnsons.”
“I’m not ready for him to stay with me,” she says again.
“Mom would be here,” I say.
“I think so,” she says. “Mom would take him to the hotel.”
She drags on the cigarette again.
“I don’t mind you staying with me,” she says, “I’m glad you’re here. I want you staying with me.”
“That fucking couple makes me nauseous,” I say. The man is ruffling the girl’s hair as she leafs through a Lonely Planet. She looks up at him and he looks down at her. It churns my stomach.
“I don’t know why they’re here. You’d think they’d be in the city or something,” she says. “Or why aren’t they making little Aryan babies?”
I fake a German accent, “Your cockenspiel it is so big. Fuck me like Arnie.”
Becka starts to laugh. She throws the remains of her cigarette down on the ground and grinds it with the toe of her shoe. I scream, “Noooooooooooo,” in my head, but maybe now the craving will go away.
“At least you came,” Becka says. “I couldn’t do this otherwise. At least you’re here.”
“I think you’d be okay without me,” I say, but I’m not certain.
The couple looks at us. Then the German man walks in our direction. Becka and I look at each other. What is he doing?
“Excuse me,” he says, accent Aryan. “I am sorry to interrupt. I have a question.”
Guidebook English.
“Yeah?” Becka says.
“We look for the a restaurant. Do you have familiarity with the a restaurant?”
Becka looks at me. I haven’t lived in this town for ten years.
“The diner,” I say, “You can try the diner in town. They make good all-day breakfast. You know, eggs and bacon.”
“Thank you,” he says, “Where is the a restaurant?”
“It’s the restaurant, not the a restaurant,” Becka says.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “My English is not very good.”
“You got that right,” Becka says, lighting another cigarette. He doesn’t understand her anyway.
“Where are you from?” he asks Becka.
“Here,” she says, “This shit hole.”
He laughs at the word “shit hole.” Apparently, a word he knows.
“Thank you,” he says, “We are from the Hague. Do you know the Hague?”
We don’t. We say nothing.
“It is in the Netherlands. The Hague is beautiful city.”
Becka nods. I look away.
“Thank you. We go to the restaurant now.”
He leaves. The girl gets up from the luggage and the two of them leave the platform, the luggage trailing behind them like a large, dumb dog on a lead.
“I can’t believe they talked to us,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say.
She pulls out a cigarette and offers it to me unthinkingly. I take it and hold it in my hands.
Those are the last things we say to each other before the train comes, nearly three hours later.

Flash Fiction of the Day

If there’s one thing you hate about romance novels, it’s that the characters never have yeast infections. He ripped her bodice from her trembling form, her breasts still round and eager, her stomach taught from two hundred sit-ups each day, beads of dew just above her bellybutton and felt the tingle between her legs. The sight of his shirtless, muscular body, his work hat lain atop the pneumatic drill. His manhood pressed against his pants and he took her in his arms.
“Wait,” she said.
“I can’t wait any longer,” he said.
“You must,” she said, “I have a yeast infection.”

Flash Fiction for The Day

It’s a first date. You hear the conversation, or parts of it. He’s just been promoted at work. She’s still a student. He’s older, maybe by five or ten years. It’s hard to tell in his industry, they all dress like they’re 19 and too cool for new clothes. She’s not someone you would sleep with. Nice body, too bad about the face. Mainly the eyebrows, but also the forehead and chin. He’ll wake up and say, “I never should have broken up with Molly. I should have tried harder.” Molly is with a kayak instructor now and is learning to climb cliff faces. He stays late at work on Thursdays and Fridays and is learning how to tweet discretely in meetings. You wonder how they met. On-line, probably.

flash fiction Mammoth Horse and Feilne

Mammoth, Horse, and Feline sculpted in mammoth ivory. 35,000 BC.  She puckers to the camera, holding up the Leaning tower of Pisa.  A garbage can in Montmartre. Fra Angelico with his finger to his lips. Quiet. We’re in a monastery. A library, actually, and I am watching her laptop. The screensaver flashes for a minute at a time. She has been to Germany and Thailand, Montreal and San Francisco. “Can you watch this?” she asks me. She takes only her wallet, Louis Vuitton. Could be fake, what do I know? Standing atop an anonymous mountain with a crowd, crooked smile, sunglasses, wearing someone else’s jacket judging from the size. Sculptures of Saint Thomas on a Florentine church.  Graffiti in Amsterdam. Holding up an enormous plastic mug in a Biergarten. On her desk, her sunglasses, large, tortoise-shell, Gucchi logo rest atop a stack. The Art of Vase Painting in Greece. Phintias. Red Figure Vase Painting in the Archaic Period. I eat Ramen noodles. When she describes me, “Asian, black hair, about 5’7”, wearing jeans and a maroon hoodie"

Shams we are a writer now

Shams, we are a writer now,
You and I, I and you,
Someone out there is laughing
at our manu (script).
And we are happy Shams because
we give only beauty,
only positive light,
and this is what we want most.

twitter poem of the day

stacks o'grading, 
unmoved and waiting,
begging for eyes and A pluses, 
but few give so much as 
that.

the seamstress

the seamstress and the song maker
are drinking cinnamon tea
on lace tablettes.

The seamstress pulls a thread
that never ends
and the song maker
sings an epic.

twitter poem of the day

Once upon a time, I wrote a rhyme, I thought way back and hit delete, erasing forever clever and sweet sentiments.

two years

two years
in my house
more, now.
when i want to remember
how to be happy
i remember the day
i got my house.