She settled into her aisle seat and smiled at the man next to her. He smiled back. She reached for her buckle and realized the man was sitting on its end. She asked him kindly to reach it for her, and when he did she saw he had painted his nails with pink glitter. “I…

The weather was mild that evening in the neighborhood but there were no other people outside, everyone was inside watching the following on television: the Tony Awards, a rerun of Sanford and Son, a news program with a bookish looking woman, and a show she did not recognize that featured a cop standing in front…

The flight attendant stood at the front of the aisle, gesturing toward the exits with his hands. He was very clean: hair trimmed short around the sides and combed slick and tight on the top; hands looking the right amount of moist and fingernails perfect ovals with none of the white showing. I was sitting…

A man and a woman were sharing a bag of sunflower seeds on a bench. The woman was telling the man about someone she saw earlier who reminded her of him. “You say the man was tall. But tall relative to what, exactly?” The man asked while tossing some seeds in his mouth. The woman…

An elderly woman made her way down the street using a cane in her right hand to steady herself. With her left hand, she pulled a wheeled canvas shopping bag behind her. Despite the cane, she moved at a fast pace and was nearly to the end of the block when she was forced stop.…

She noticed that the button down shirt he wore under his suit jacket was the same blue and white stripe pattern on his socks. This made her wonder whether they were connected underneath his suit. Whether he was dressed like a toddler in footie pajamas under his business suit or whether he went through the…

We were playing never have I ever and I said, “Never have I ever eaten a blue food.” Then, as always happens, we fell into discussing the notion that there are no naturally occurring blue foods. How even blueberries are actually more purple than blue. And then he said, “what about the robin’s eggs?” He…