pages Micro-Fiction Archives

Writing Another Country Song

Issue No. 234 ~ November, 2016

Jacky says the perfect country song has to be about a truck and someone who’s gotten hurt. It has to have at least one line about beer and talk about the current lives of old high-school friends. “A real country song has to be sad,” …

Thin as Bone

Issue No. 232 ~ September, 2016

It was the year you woke up in ICU with all fifteen of us (against hospital protocol, but then everyone thought you were dying) staring at you and tubes wormed their way down your throat, and you sat up, lay back down, sat up again, waving arms, miming for a pen and when there was none, your fingers danced (Mozart? Picasso?) along the sheet that lay over your atrophied legs, writing questions in invisible ink.

The Sphinx’s Lament

Issue No. 229 ~ June, 2016

What has cold blood, but warm breath? A dragon. Oh, don’t flatter yourself. I wanted you to get that one.

Bring Me the Moon

Issue No. 228 ~ May, 2016

The first time you brought me the moon, I demanded you put it right back where you got it. “People need that, you know!” I said, scooting you out the door while you cradled the moon gingerly in your arms. I pointed up at the …

No Time Hath She

Issue No. 228 ~ May, 2016

Jim Walsh says he has all this stuff to do in town and do I want to go with him, so I tag along. We go to the bank. The post office. Taco Time. After we’ve eaten our burritos he says he needs to stop …

Dirty Death

Issue No. 227 ~ April, 2016

“I’m the traveler. Right here.” I waved my hand, but he didn’t acknowledge. I suppose that was when I started to suspect I was dead, at the train station. People had been ignoring me all day, from the taxi driver on Fifth, to the coffee …

Doppelganger

Issue No. 220 ~ September, 2015

People keep telling you you look exactly like this other person. You realize you must be pretty similar when strangers start walking up to you and continuing conversations you've never had. I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day.

Year of the Sheep

Issue No. 219 ~ August, 2015

She gives me the look, the same one she throws whenever we brush our teeth together late at night at the double sinks. It’s somewhere between tolerance and abject disgust. Disgust because I not only eat meat but wolf it down rare. “Face eater,” she …