I turn forty one today. For the second year in a row, I’ve crafted myself a birthday present in the form of a story, written from the POV of a character who shares my same birthday. Most of my characters are loosely based on people I know in […]
Today is my fortieth birthday. Apparently, this is something of a benchmark. I’m fortunate to have a couple undisturbed hours to craft a fortieth birthday gift for myself.ย This is a small slice of life that’s rattled in the back of my head for awhile now. Like the narrator, […]
The following is a work of fiction. We’d been dating for three months when Carla broke up with me. This is confusing to describe, because I’m saying we broke up, though we never technically said, to each other or to others, that we were dating in the first […]
The following is a work of fiction. Frankie used to refer to the Shady Acres as The Short Timers club. Each person there was not far from a game-ending heart attack or stroke. Frankie had developed an uncanny ability to foresee who was on the verge. Or maybe […]
The following is a work of fiction My first kiss with Carla happened at the State Fair. The whole thing looked like something a guy might plan ahead to do, just so he’d have a moving story to tell his kids someday, maybe even his grandkids. “We were […]
The following is a work of fiction. I only once saw Frankie emotionally shaken, and it didn’t alter my respect for him; in fact, it reinforced it. We got to talking about a friend of his he’d lost during the war. The guy’s name was Joe Stern, a […]
The following is a work of fiction. The first time I went to church with Carla, I went, of course, because I loved her. I wasn’t used to attending church; my family never went, except maybe at Easter time. I’d been invited in the past; some guy from […]
The following is a work of fiction. Part 1 here Part 2 here World War II History was the first class I circled on my community college enrollment form. While I was growing up, Dad watched countless films on the subject. When I was a kid, it annoyed […]
The following is a work of fiction. Part 1 here “…for there are other passions, deeper passions; you know this. You saw fit to sow them there. Sometimes I wish I was not so aware of their presence–beneath the crude folds of my temporal flesh, beneath even the […]
The following is a work of fiction It was long after the media had stopped glamorizing the daily numbers of wounded or killed in action that my dad suffered the injury that changed his world and mine. He was mentioned briefly in the news, but only on the […]