There was a golden light deep within the house, speckled from the rain that had frozen onto the windowpane. It was so cold. My breath lifted away from me, rising and twisting before evaporating into the air above my head. Snow crunched under my boots. I’d been away a long time. I had no idea what awaited me inside. I stayed for a long time out by the window before going around the house to the back door. 

HELP I’M BEING HELD HOSTAGE

The old man got up on a chair and looked out through the top corner of the window pane where the glass wasn’t painted over. He could hear the girl lying on the floor below him, crying and pounding her fists and kicking her feet. Something made of glass fell and shattered. There was no sound for a time. Then the girl started in banging around again. The old man thought the world was looking grainier today. It was probably just his glasses failing him. He would not get a new pair of glasses now before he died. 

Sometimes

Sometimes it doesn’t seem possible to accomplish what I want to accomplish without touching things I wouldn’t normally agree to touch. Which leads me to believe that accomplishing what I want to accomplish might require a degree of insanity on my part. I mean insanity in the sense of ecstasy. Ecstatic. I mean, I would have to be in the throes of passion so overwhelming that it resembled insanity. In order for me to touch the things I have to touch in order to accomplish what I want to accomplish, I mean. 

My mother wanted Christmas coasters

My father was on his hands and knees on the floor behind me. I was at the kitchen table. My father fell sideways onto the floor. He groaned. “My back just spasmed,” he said. He groaned again. “Can I do anything?” I asked. “No,” he said. I could hear him panting behind me, but I didn’t turn around. I was cutting out a stencil of a snowflake and it was intricate work. 

I could hear when Dad went back to work on the freezer. He had melted all the ice before his back spasmed. Now he was putting the freezer back together. Every now and again as he worked he groaned at a fresh spasm of pain. “Do you need help, Dad?” I asked, still working on my snowflake stencil. “It’s okay,” Dad said. “I’m almost done here.”

Story

She was eating something when she came back. Something in Styrofoam. She was wearing the same black leather jacket she came home in the last time she went away. I had the TV on. The door opened. We looked at each other. I wanted to go and hug her. I wanted to smell that smell of leather mixed with her juices. That stuff that comes out of her armpits, her pores. But I was afraid. I wasn’t sure what she was doing back. She always came back. I never understood why. I felt thin, like the bristles on a broom after it’s been used too many times.    She picked one of the fried things out of the Styrofoam, put it in her mouth. 

   “What is that?” I asked. It felt good to say something. I didn’t care if she answered or not.

   “Want one?” she asked. She held one out. I looked at her arm. 

   I stood up. Walked. I took the thing she was holding in her hand. I didn’t want it. It looked like something deep-fried. I didn’t feel like eating anything. But I wanted to get out of the chair. 

   I held it up. I looked at it. “Thanks,” I said. 

   “Sure.” She had a little black purse hanging off her shoulder. It was Saturday. 

   She went in the kitchen. I watched her legs. Like two pumps. I walked. Sat in my chair. I could hear her in the kitchen. “Got any gum?” she called. 

   She came back into the living room. Looked at me. I saw the way her eyes fell closed when she blinked. I wanted to open my mouth and rest my lips on her face. “You gonna eat that thing?” she asked. I still had the fried thing in my hand. I raised it to my mouth. Put it in. I held it on my tongue. I looked out the window. Clouds rushed over the world like they had someplace to go.