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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
I hate whoever my dog hates, not just the mailman, though he’s a fine example. And not by arrangement. We naturally agree on who’s despicable. Who we love is a different story. I’ve watched Baxter gaze at other men we meet, men who don’t resemble me, as if he were thinking: If I had to be human, I’d be a standup guy, a good earner, and a generous lover, like you. For all their supposed loyalty, my dogs have always hedged their bets. Baxter loves my ex-wife, perhaps for the same reasons I do, but he also flirts with her new boyfriend, the lawyer in our endless divorce case. That’s them pulling into the driveway now. Baxter bounds to the door, knocks over the umbrella stand, whimpers, squeals. He wants them both, in his house, for a threeway. Umbrellas be damned. It’s my fault. I’ve been avoiding the mail, again, so the statute of limitations on their willingness to unmolest me has expired, again. They’ve come for signatures. Ink must be spilled, clauses initialed. We’re sitting without refreshment at a shaky card table on shakier chairs. My formerly betrothed signs papers her boyfriend wrote that codify terms he negotiated to unrelate and nullify us to her benefit. With her other hand, her fingers are making promises to Baxter’s favorite scratchy spots. How well I know those spots, fingers, promises! The boyfriend witnesses everything and embosses the stack of lies with his notary seal, press, thing. Is there nothing the law prohibits him from being? She’s gazing at him like Baxter does. I bare my fangs each time his little seal squeaks. And though he knows better than to speak now, he speaks. And when he says the words “sole custody of the pet,” I lunge, they’ll say without warning.
Original Copyright © January 19, 2007
Revised Copyright © January 25, 2026
Very Short Novels 