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His mother regretted him, never wanted him, even tried to terminate him, but, at his most sought-after, he was both the second and the eighth most wanted men in the jurisdiction where he practiced his trade. He will stand trial as just one activist, all his aliases merged, but, until his arrest, he performed as several. Two women died in the recent daytime blast he executed, both of them pregnant with babies who doctors tried in vain to deliver (a detail he calls ironic justice) but whose bodies he refuses to tally as hits. A nurse, surprised by shrapnel during her coffee break, lost one eye and the use of her right arm. Do I look scared to you? she will ask him from the witness stand, left hand raised. His ascent through the ranks of the wanted was ingenious. When he was only tenth most wanted, he earned a number eight spot for an alias by planting stolen ID at the scene of a clinic bombing. Since then, he’s conducted workbench surgeries on his cheekbones and jaw, unremarkable features even before he went into the abortion dissuasion business, now half swollen half erased to further frustrate mug book matching, like challenging parents to select their fetus’s image from a random batch of sonograms. Meanwhile, he’s promoted alternate identities in other towns, with unrecognizable faces and aspects, while agents in pursuit go chasing mustaches he’s since shaved or eyeglasses he stole only to be seen in them once. When he is ultimately apprehended, poking around the remnants of an explosion, then interrogated, identified, identified repeatedly, repeatedly convicted, and slapped around with the name his mother gave him, the law will conspire to keep him alive for life, for all of his sacred lives in fact, to be served concurrently.
Original Copyright © January 24, 2007
Revised Copyright © January 30, 2026
You’re not picking up. Of the dozen simple explanations for your rudeness, I select: you’ve died. That you could be that cruel. One blink later I wonder if you ever lived, whether in fact any of us exist or existed. We’re just so much empty space for so little stuff, like a smell in the wind. Walk into the Astrodome with hot water and a teabag. Yes I’m going somewhere with this. Set the water on a rail, dunk the teabag once, squeeze it dry, and take it when you leave. Later, under that dome, I smell something I can’t place, a tea as weak as the breeze we make walking through someone’s life, but which is all I know of you, but which I say I recognize. Cobwebs of scent. So how do you hurt me so effortlessly? You’re probably shopping or walking the dog or napping with the covers pulled up and the phone off. I’d like to be there. Or do you know it’s me and you’re dodging The Conversation? At the atomic level, we don’t touch, and it’s not skin we feel. The particles aren’t reliably anywhere. The haze at your perimeter repels the haze at mine, and the bending we feel, of our own skins, measures the resistance we face. It’s no surprise we have to slap each other to get a reaction. How much closer do I dare get to the woman I love before you disperse into motes of dust? Already if I look too long, the parts of you I recognize go neutral. An inch too near and we cease to be. I promise if you answer the phone I’ll never question what makes us want to share rooms. Oh there you are. It’s me. Just wanted to hear your voice.
Original Copyright © January 21, 2007
Revised Copyright © January 27, 2026
Very Short Novels 