“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.” “Oh,” she said. “Oh.” “You can read, Kya. There will never be a time again when you can’t read.” “It ain’t just that.” She spoke almost in a whisper. “I wadn’t aware that words could hold so much. […]
Browsing Category: Short Story
Short Story
WHEN LOVE DIED
It was the autumn love died; when late summer drought browned the pastures premature and early frost killed the leaves of the woods that fell without color or splendor in transition. Bleak winter followed: colorless and dry until late snows fell and stayed heavy on the earth. Beneath, the world was changing. […]
Journal Pages / Short Story
MORNING GUEST
He sat again with his angel again, resting at kitchen table with steam of coffee rising as sign and incense between vision of the two. “I’ve been reading Deuteronomy,” he shared. “I don’t think I’ve ever read it before, but the review and words of Moses at his end; his reiteration to honor […]
Journal Pages / Short Story
WITH MORNING SUN
He sat with the morning sun, with the cricket songs of late summer season that played day and night within surrounding fields. He sat with the vines, wet in after-rain, as droplets traced, beaded and fell downward from low tendrils and once-trumpet lily blooms brought to fruit by bees and beaks of hummingbirds drawn […]
Short Story
MAGIC
“Life needs a little Magic, don’t you think? Maybe It isn’t real, all imagined; or maybe there’s something to It. Maybe we manifest It, or maybe we sense and allow It to show and live through us. Whatever It is, even if It’s nothing, I’d rather live in belief in Its possibility than a […]
Short Story
OASIS IN THE SKY
They climbed a switchback trail ascending through stands of aspen and lodgepole pines until line where trees stunted then gave way to snow and lichen spread over rock scree and solid granite slopes. They set camp beside an alpine lake within a cradle of surrounding peaks that shone grey in day and changed […]
Short Story
IN THE SHALLOWS
“Ada wondered that herons could tolerate each other close enough to breed. She had seen a scant number in her life, and those so lonesome as to make the heart sting on their behalf. Everywhere they were seemed far from home.”—Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain The heron held in the shadows, her long legs […]
Short Story
LATE
He watched as she readied her children for church, the attention and care she put into their dress, hair, presentability; licking her fingers and smoothing wildness in son’s hair by combing it with touch back to cultivated order. Her studied her, in her own dismissing of self in service to her children, another […]
Short Story
PURIFIED SOUL
“…the whole framework of the universe does homage and service to him who thus purifies and sanctifies his senses.”—Saint Bonaventure, The Life of St. Francis of Assisi They read the quote beneath a sky of stars, the Milky Way as backdrop shadow-light behind nearer stars arranged into near dreams and constellations shaped with accompanied […]
Short Story
DROUGHT
The sky shone blue but in the fire of summer sun, too long since rain, burned hot and harsh without wind. Ryan was already sweating, and staring on the world, all he could see were sign of settling drought as the means to a livelihood went dormant or outright died. It was all […]