Lessons On Electricity

by Laurie Kuntz

Who is culpable? The lights left burning when we’re no longer in rooms that we share together or alone. Who left it on? No cat or dog to blame, and our son is long gone to his own lighted place. When admonished for this faux pas, I don’t need the lecture on wattage and currents, or the waste of power. All I need to hear are three words, Lights off please, or maybe those other three words we should be saying more often in our lighted and darkened places.

Two Elderly Men with Dementia

by Chung-Suk Yu

Charlie and Bob are elderly roommates in a two-person room in the lockdown unit at the nursing home. Neither of them recognizes that they are roommates. At night these two men are trying to protect their shoes. When Charlie goes to sleep, he either hides his shoes under the bed or sleeps with the shoes on the bed. On the other hand, Bob carries his shoes to the living room where he used to sleep. The residents in the unit at the nursing home do not wear shoes but wear socks since they forgot how to put their shoes on.

Icy Heart

by Amber Weinar

You can tell it’s almost winter when it starts to rain, and the water crystalizes on impact. All it takes is one drop expanding. Your heartburn was similar. All it took was the pain to expand before the worrying struck. By then, it was too late. Initially undetectable, The spread was inevitable. Like a sheet of black ice you couldn’t prevent and had to drive over. The doctor asks why you didn’t come sooner. It’s hard to say when you felt fine yesterday. Maybe the doctors were wrong? The heart was overtaken by ice, and yet only my hope remained.

Business as Usual

by David M Wallace

Dusk in September after a rain. Street lamps spread their white steeples of light around the wooded park. Here is where the flying termites convene, as reckless as early aviators in close quarters combat.

Supper is done. An hour of liberty. Children charge down porches armed with corn brooms. In this vespering hour, they knock all those stars from the sky and pluck out their silver veined wings.

And this is a skill that will come in handy later in life. In the real world. Where the mighty will thrive and the vulnerable will need a bit of a trimming.

Whack

by Rachel Weinhaus

I was too young to attend the funeral, too young to understand grief. I remember watching my older brother through a window. Mark and Andrew, sixteen, had been best friends. After Andrew killed himself, Mark went outside to hit rocks with a wiffle ball bat. He’d scour the ground for the perfect-sized rock, pick it up, and toss it in the air. Then, with all his might, he swung the bat. Over and over again. Scour the ground. Pick up a rock. Toss it in the air. Swing the bat. I remember the sound; it cracked the sky in half.