Small Fictions

Small Fictions

Overheard, dreamt up, and pulled from the air. Here are some of my stories:

  • The Girl with the Bit Part

    What makes her look back? She walks with an open face because she likes when they see. She keeps her hair swept back and keeps a slower pace. Slow, but still purposeful. Her nose stands upturned (from genetics, not from the recent success of the television show on which she has a bit part). It’s…

  • A Ride to the Ballgame

    “Do you know what I’ve come to realize?” The girl spoke like a woman with years of experience and not a college freshman. She was posing the question to her mother, whose baseball cap and blonde ponytail matched her own. “Riding the subway is just like taking an elevator, but horizontally.” The mother smiled. She…

  • Once Fresh and in Season

    He was agitated. You could tell by the way he rubbed his hands together. Kneading one over the other as if he were trying to clean them under a faucet. But they remained soiled, dirt under the nails, darkened around the knuckles. His knees bounced up and down on the seat, nervous dancers framing a…

  • The Bravest

    No matter how big of a cynic you may be, you can’t tell me you don’t feel something when you see a firefighter in his dress uniform. The emotional pull brought on by how shiny his shoes are, how deep the creases in his pants reach, how straight his medals lay pinned to his breast.…

  • A fun game

    A fun game to play at a bar full of older gentlemen is “The last time I got a tetanus shot…”

  • My short flight

    The last row. Two seats. I’m in the aisle. The girl who would be in the window seat came toward me with a cheeseburger and fries and a very expensive handbag. The flight attendant excitedly greeted her and in the process gave me a mean look and said my bag could not go under my…

  • Facetiming

    This couple looked so carefree. They were stopped in traffic and the lady in the passenger seat held up her phone so the guy in the driver’s seat could make faces at the person on the other end. They were doing this thing called FaceTime. They waved their hands and stuck out their tongues and…

  • Not the couch

    “It was a big leather couch. And one by one people came in but no one sat on it. They chose the hard metal chairs next to it instead.” “What’s wrong with people? Metal chairs over a big leather couch?” “And in a waiting room, where they are going to sit and…wait?” “That’s what I…

  • July 11, Mr. Wei 

    Mr. Wei stood near the entrance of the downtown subway. Despite the uncomfortable humidity, he decided it was best to button his white collared shirt all the way to the top. He shuffled a newspaper in his hand, but reading seemed impossible since he could not keep his eyes on the words. Instead, he glanced…

  • Subway Shrugging

    When I got onto the subway, I took a seat across from a couple. He looked like he had eaten two of her, and his indigestion was causing him to regret his lunch. She kept her head turned away from his, so it appeared as an unwanted growth rather than a wife resting on a husband’s shoulder.…

  • Despair Has Its Own Calms

    Nothing cracks me up like watching  a Dracula movie and seeing the Count pop up completely vertical in his coffin. Maybe they filmed it in reverse. It’s like a time lapse of a flower blooming. Hilarious. But I can remember being afraid of Dracula. I was about 4 or 5, and I feared his arrival…

  • Sincerity – if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

    “I can’t get that dog out of my nose.” My mother was making short sniffs of air in and out. The sound was grating on me. We had just left a birthday party full of interesting people and one small, well-intentioned dog. I knew that was the dog she was referring to, but I asked…

  • A Ride for Connie

    “Hey! What are you doing?” His voice was cool. She knew it would be. “I was just looking,” said Connie. The man hardly startled her even though she didn’t see him come up from behind. She had been sitting on the side of a building that housed the saloon where her mother worked, next to a door…

  • Pigeon Q & A: Bird hair

    I just got about 8 pounds of hair cut off and then I went out of town for a few days, so no one around here really saw me until Tuesday. Here’s an excerpt from a conversation I had Tuesday afternoon on the way home from the subway. Pigeon: Haven’t seen you in a few…

  • Golden Retriev-him

    I followed this thin leggy girl up the stairs from the subway. Her legs were much longer than mine so she walked a lot faster, and after a block she was a good 30 paces ahead. I cursed her and her long legs and me and my short legs and thought about how much further…

  • Fun with a corpus

    She looked down at the sleeping baby. He looked so peaceful now in his stroller, smashed in among the other pigeons taking their daily cramped commute into the city. He had spent the entire night awake and crying. Normally, he was not a fussy baby, which is why she wanted to go check on him.…

  • A street is only as gold as its fish

    Living in a city that has buildings on top of buildings and more buildings within those buildings and pigeons living up over around above and below other pigeons…a lot of stuff comes in, but at a certain point it can’t come in unless something comes out. I’ve certainly gotten some good furniture and books (pre bed…

  • “Did i tell you…

    “Did i tell you? She’s obsessed with this skin disorder thing that birds get where they pluck out their own feathers…obsessed…it’s all over her Facebook page.” “Ew. That’s so disturbing and random.” “I know! I’m like what is wrong with you?” “Seriously. Ew.”   I overheard this gem of a conversation while walking to the…

  • A Lady Pigeon’s blue period

    Like it or not, I’ve always been unconsciously drawn to monochromatic color schemes. If I had a dollar for each time I left the house and got to wherever I was going and heard “Oh wow you coordinated your shoes and nails and bag and belt and shirt and pants and underpants and sunglasses!” and…

  • Just to be absolutely sure

    You’ve seen a pigeon walk in a circle. He seems unsure or hesitant and just loops back around, retracing his claw steps. I saw this lady pigeon walk up to a corner with 2 other pigeons. They all kind of mulled around a bit, saying their goodbyes, and while the other 2 pigeons crossed the…

  • past passed

    All pigeons have a past. There are as many pigeon pasts as there are different shades of pigeons in this city. You could be a part of a pigeon’s past and not even know it. For each pigeon you remember, do you wonder if they remember you? A bunch of pigeons got together to talk…

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