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I once wept onto bound blank pages and called the result The Book of Tears. I strangled and drowned that soggy volume and titled it Mercy, but this actual knife, here in her daughter’s bed where it was planted by god-knows-who, tells a more urgent story than any on paper. Only a book with a pulse, a temperature, a heft for leverage, and a handle for wielding as a weapon could compete with a butcher’s blade lurking in the bed of a child I don’t dislike. She and her mother had just begun to feel safe after weeks of squatting on a wornout mattress in a corner of Auntie Panty’s studio between a noisy radiator and a litter box. Before that, they’d spent two nights fidgeting in a rented bed at an unaffordable local hotel. Before that, they’d come home from mercy errands to a home that had been their refuge. The bastards hadn’t stolen much, but they’d splintered the front door and run their bleeding hands over everything that was hers, then crapped in the hallway and turned her home against her. She politely informed the police, enlisted me in the reclamation, fled with her daughter to anyplace safe, and languished in exile while I cleaned up. We’re staring now at what stabbed her beneath the covers as she was putting her daughter into bed, as sinister as a turd on the floor but more pointed. I touch her lightly. What chance does language have to blunt such objects or sheathe them, and how can we live without intimacy when items out of place can make the world and not the objects seem so reckless? She extends her arms; I anticipate an embrace, but she’s showing me her wounds. She’s starting a sentence with Since you moved out
Original Copyright © March 08, 2007
Revised Copyright © March 12, 2026
For blankety-five years Dad and his heirlooms have transitioned from chic to shabby, and now a trickle of bargain hunters clutching Penny-Savers are picking through a houseful of incongruous clothing and furniture “priced to move” on little red stickers like drops of blood with penciled numbers, the fours shaped like sailboats, the sevens slashed through as the nuns taught him. It’s Dad’s first and only downsize, a milestone as heavy as the English oak sideboard, $95 OBO you haul it. He wouldn’t hire a service or let me organize the sale, so I worry. I woke this morning from a dream of Dad pirouetting down a catwalk with his walker, doffing his toupee and catching his heels in the cuffs of his old dress pants. His price on every item is ludicrous but appropriate to the year he bought it. Of all the tongue-cluckers, one couple seems motivated, or the wife does. She’s looking for faults in the bedroom furniture while her husband stands, neck broken, scanning the titles in the bookcase. She doesn’t know what to say to Dad, so she lets him spin his yarn. He’s describing the “bedroom suit” and how he and Mom shattered the boxspring with newlywed acrobatics here in the only house they ever owned. A sly grin follows, then a chuckle, then a sob, then silence. She says “I know, I know” and touches his arm, then produces cash from a very tight purse and starts peeling off bill after bill. I don’t think she’s counting. She calls to her husband to bring the truck, then wipes her cheek and sighs and starts removing the wardrobe drawers. I watch Dad’s face to see if he’s all right. He catches my eye and winks, and fans his face with a handful of hundreds.
Original Copyright © March 01, 2007
Revised Copyright © March 06, 2026
Very Short Novels 
This Very Short Novel is a close relative of Monkey at the Piano from almost 20 years ago. I'm certain…