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These entries all seem to be moments in time, vignettes: descriptions of scenes not still but full of life, of movement. I imagine everything happening in slow motion, “bullet-time” without the bullets. The limitations of length I think enhance these tales; they remind me of those moments when time seems to all but disappear – those moments that don’t last for more than a second or so where our minds move so quickly the memory becomes cemented, becomes the foundation of the story.
The memory becomes the story.
~
130 Tales
# 101 through 110
101. Her hand ran the pad across her face. He wanted to tell her she didn’t need it but he was scared to break the gap of anonymity.
102. It surged up his arms and legs, all the way up through his heart and throat. It came out like a train’s bellow, echoing all above.
103. He kept a firm hand on the back of his pants, not to keep them up (that’s what he wanted people to think) but to distract them.
104. Her face always grabbed the eyes of those she didn’t want, as if walking through a burr patch in a field of dandelions.
105. His question rang too loud, cutting through black winter coats and a slushed subway platform. To a tired mob an old man lay lost.
106. He could feel it, dampness beneath the zipper of his hoodie, the itchy sting in each fold but he couldn’t stop running this early.
107. Laughter by the entrance – he swore he saw three girls whispering near the gravestones, cautious about going in. Where are they?
108. He couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes – he kept thinking about what his must have looked like: half full brown cartoon waves of beer.
109. She didn’t know what it meant when it fell, but as it lay there, inches from her face, she became lost amidst its icy veins.
110. An alarm sounds. The grey sedan sheds its feathers. The beating of wings turns a witness’ head.
Past Decades:
a field of crowns 