101 Words

I told him to stop eating in bed. Baguettes were the worst. Crumbs stuck beneath my breasts, latched onto my belly. I put up with it—without him, I was nothing.

The night he left, I followed a sourdough trail from the kitchen to the bedroom. Crumbs snaked across the bedspread, out the open window. A line drifted through rail yards, beside empty fields.

He’s gone, but I still wait.

Outside, birds have eaten his trail. Inside, I keep the remnants in a silver box. The box, on the window sill, shines in the moonlight.

I want him to see it.

The impact followed a shrill whistle at 2:00 a.m. Car alarms on Peddle Avenue blared. Dogs howled. People switched on their porch lights throughout the neighborhood.

Carmela Perkins approached the smoking crater in her backyard, flashlight flickering in her trembling hand. Was it a meteorite? Maybe an alien visitor?

She could be famous.

She scrambled into the crater and emerged with an empty metal container covered in cryptic symbols. “Fate just works in strange ways sometimes,” she told reporters. Her story made the front page.

High above Earth, a tentacled police officer pulled over a space cruiser for littering.

The man in handcuffs watched intently as the forensics team dug up the area he had led them to in exchange for a life sentence rather than the death penalty.

“We found something!” an investigator called out. She held up a dirty, rotting ballerina slipper from the little girl’s Halloween costume. Five years had passed since she disappeared from the neighborhood party at the rec center.

“We got her,” said Detective Castillo. “At least the family will have closure.”

Detective Harrison yanked the prisoner’s arm. “Come on, asshole.”

The suspect pulled away. “Wait!”

“What?”

“I want to touch it,” he whispered.

When I looked up, our eyes locked and he smiled.

“Last stop,” yelled the conductor.

I lost my guy in the crush of exiting commuters but found him hovering around the rusting newspaper stand.

We headed towards the sprawling parking lot.

“Beautiful sky.”

“It certainly is.”

Our hands brushed, then pulled apart.

I fantasized about pushing him up against the closest car and kissing madly under an expanse of faraway nebulas.

But I didn’t. Nor did he.

Just one of us needed enough courage to whip around and yell, “Wait!”

Instead, we trudged away from each other into the darkening loneliness.

Curry struggled to secure my lips on hers. The kiss was cold, lifeless, but I wasn’t going to deny her whatever modicum of passion she’d desperately wanted to come over her. The last chemo session had left her fatigued and pale.

“Do you remember when Garcia put a funny-looking tomato instead of a cherry on our first-anniversary cake?”

I laughed at this; she laughed too. A hollow laugh.

“Don’t laugh too hard,” I said.

Her eyes were now glossy like clear quartz stones, but the tears wouldn’t fall.

She attempted a fairly spirited smile. “What else is there left to do?”

“Fine,” she whispers. “Let’s do it.”

“Don’t sound so excited.” He fiddles with his tie. “It’s only the 17th time I’ve asked.”

“I was married the first time.”

He shrugs.

“The second time, you were married.”

He grins. “Can’t do for better or worse without you.”

The organ squeals. They march up the aisle.

“Honestly,” she hisses, “I thought you were toying with me.”

“I’ve always been dead serious.”

Together, they lay a wreath on the coffin. “She’ll haunt me—us—forever if I say yes today!”

He takes off his gold band. “If your sister objects, she should speak now.”

I spent my last dollar on the crescent moon, carved my initials on its ivory sickle, the color of spoiled milk, and left it on your doorstep last night. Once she’s born, once she’s bigger, use it for the baby’s backyard seesaw. Forget about the moon we used to rhyme about, giddy with almost happiness. No more rash, moonlit love. Now that it’s gone, the tides will cease to spin, the oceans turning treacherous. Now when you look up, the stars mock the place where our moon was pinned to midnight like a brooch to black velvet, unblinking, unrepentant, glittery cold.