It's A Strange Love:

In an unblemished cyan sky hung a scrap of white moon on a warm day in January. I ran through town dragging my gaze along historic rooflines, staring at the past. My shadow danced across a saltbox's crooked stoop and melting glass panes. I loved that old home.

I had once touched the smooth stones framing its fireplace where men and women cooked, kept warm, sat by its light, and lived and died to the rhythms of sunrise.

---------

He asked if I ever got mad at my dogs.

I love those dogs, but it's a strange love that often starts with yelling and ends in exasperation.

---------

Every morning I stare at Ann's house sitting next door on its plaster and stones, painted siding fading and chipping.

I wrote a letter to her a few weeks ago and can picture her, an old woman shuffled off to a daughter's house, staring at an unfamiliar Florida morning filled with rippling heat.

I hate the heat, Ann had said over the phone. It's boring here and there are no kids. No one on bikes or playing. It's boring and I can't go anywhere.

Muzzle, I Said:

So, I'll take you up on your idea, he said.

Short stories? I asked.

Yes.

He was having a beer at closing time while a few friends stretched the night's last moments and a drunk slumped and drooled in a booth.

A short story's sentences swing on iron strands carrying concise meaning, like a needle. Constructed of imagination, glimpses, and suggestion, the story crowds a mind where phantoms and demons jump from shadows and dance.

The story's impressions remain after staring at the sun.

I told my friend I would find him some. And I will.

-----

Lily went berserk when another dog entered the vet's office today.

I stood to face the receptionist.

Muzzle, I said.

------

The idea of a short story, I suppose, is to say everything without saying everything.

Hello Dali:

It's only a needle, he said, and glanced at her scrubbed skin.

Will it hurt?

Think past the pinch, he said, and it will only burn.

Pushing ripples across a pool of black, he readied.

Tell me, she said.

It's only ink, he answered. It's going to burn.

If dogs could draw more than footprints, I would ask Lily for a tattoo.

A pink scar across twilight was the upturned slice of moon over Oxford's hills, hanging in the sky on a terrible night.

I am the terrible night.

Although sunset's rust stains pale clouds, night drains their color. Heavy tar darkness comes as the thin moon stretches higher -- a broken eggshell in the stars.

I am the terrible night.

Lily whimpers as our voices rage. The other dogs follow her into shadows and small pockets of quiet where they shrink against corners.

I am the terrible night.

Angry from nothing and frustrated from nowhere, I scream against a terrible night. Otherwise happy people slam doors, regret their words, and wish to forget the world until morning.

I am the terrible night.

Said They, On A Saturday

Walking to my truck on damp feet under a dying twilight I listened to a plow scrape by.

Earlier, I had stepped in their footsteps, stopping at huddled hoods, snow-pants, and laughter filled with cinnamon crumbs. Crouched around a box of doughnuts were children in the snow -- sugar on their lips and their sleds' curving lines on the church slope behind them.

Hey, I said.

Hey, said they.

I am from the newspaper. Feel like a photo?

Strawberry sprinkles surged in their hearts.

I snapped and flashed and they were ready to tell me their names.

Hang on, I have to get my ... what is that thing? I returned with my notebook.

I stepped in their footsteps again, just like a kid worried about nothing more than hot chocolate with marshmallows on a Saturday afternoon.

The kids -- a cluster of Americana in the snow -- whispered as I walked away. We are going to be in the newspaper! said they.

Later, I sat in the doughnut shop thinking about spring, which makes me as happy as coffee after a lingering, bright-colored dream.

---------------------

He stutters, but not every time.

He used to visit the bar on Fridays with his rum-n-coke girlfriend. He'd blink hard a few times and stammer over vowels. Lime please, he would say.

He came in alone this week, staring at the taps and trying to form words for his beer. This must be something he wants to do. In the past his date could have said, Blue Point Winter Ale!

But standing there alone in a long winter coat with frustrated fingers tightening around money in his hand, he said, let's see. His whole body relaxed, then bent with the effort to pronounce a beer, and relaxed again as he said, let's see. OK. So, ok, let's see.

With a deep breath and his head tilted back, he said in a burst, Smuttynose!

From the far-left tap I poured a Smuttynose brown ale. Can I help him with this? Can I ask him that? The guy puts himself through hell just for a beer.

Don't we all?

I am cold in the heart of winter's frozen January, and adrift.

Love's a funny thing with a mind of its own, even when it lives in your heart:

I stood there with my feet on crumbling pavement, carrying a heap of worries and a 30 pound bag of dog food. Summer's branches lay dead on the driveway under a black winter sky. Icy stars and the sound of a faraway truck groaning up the long hill on Route 34 greeted me.

I watched Orion shift above bare tree limbs. I had a dream of tattoos in my head -- the needle filled with indelible hues staining me with buds, blooms, and bouquets stretching upward from my fingers and wrists, and decorating my arms.

From one gardener's lips tonight were beautiful words: If you have a good idea, do it. Lifetimes of space and struggle may rest between the thinking and doing. That's why we're here, I guess.

I am not good for too much now. I am tired. January and February walk off with my spirit and make it cold and small, then return it in the weeks before spring so I can bleed and strain a little more to revive it. But then the witch hazel will bloom and sunrises will push an earlier dawn. I really look forward to those ragged strands of yellow blooms.

At 5:15 pm Wednesday:
Wisps of faint blue daylight died on the horizon…

Around 3 pm on a stone bench at the skate park:
Got a cigarette? he asked.
How old are you? I said.
I’m 18. And I’m like, the only Korean hippie kid in Newtown.
Still living at home?
Yeah. Not getting along so well with my parents. It’s the acid. My dad says if I keep doing it, then I can’t live there anymore.
Yeah, I said. I visited home after college and saw the guy who used to be the smartest in my class. He was 20 years old and totally toast.
Really? he said.
Nobody home, I said.
What’s his name?
You wouldn’t know him. I am 39. This was too long ago for you.
Oh. You really don’t look it, he said. I would have said 25.
I glanced at his black hair and thin arms as he grabbed the skateboard and headed for the bowl.
Over his shoulder he said, I am a wishing well of compliments.

Sunlight was flying around the concrete then, throwing up a glare and painting long charcoal shadows behind guys hitting the ramps, clashing with the rails, and swaying through a bowl on tiny wheels. I had made a new friend. I think he was either truthful, or trying to shock me. Probably both.