It darkens. The sun drowns in the horizon and never resurfaces, leaving us to our hands and lips beneath a charcoaled sketch of sky. Azaleas in white for the occasion, wine humming in our glasses whenever the wind casts a careless hand. For the versions of each other we can’t understand, we offer small mercies— a moon in full bloom, the hollows of your cheekbones…
Noah’s Wife by Marianne Kunkel
But with thee I will establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons’ wives with thee.—Genesis 6:18 Butter knife still clenched in one hand, she presses her other palm into a sandwich made of Wonder bread. Red jelly oozes out onto the counter. She knows if she doesn’t clean it before her short…
Keep Away by Marianne Kunkel
It was a rare family vacation at the beach and we hadn’t brought surfboards, bucket or shovel. My kid brother, who’d vowed to his friends he’d come home with a tan, dropped his t-shirt in the sand. I grabbed it. Because I could, because it’d been ages since our parents cared to intervene, I chucked his shirt into the ocean. It bobbed like a fish…
To Pee or not to Pee by Marianne Kunkel
I’m a master at holding it—in movie theaters, when I’m in a center seat of an elbow-to-elbow row and on screen is outer space or an underground tomb, an image so dark I can’t see the empty, trophy-size Pepsi in my hand, nor my crossed legs clenching my full bladder, I never rise and stumble out. Same goes even when nobody’s around— one night I…
Snake by Amanda Hempel
It happened so fast, the time between strikes the rock so near I don’t remember how it found its way to my hand. My dog yelped, his blood on your mouth. You refused to die, all wild muscle, and wound clockwise to a stop so much stiller than I’d imagined. Image by: Zen Sutherland