
OLD ENOUGH by Isabelle Hughes
There hadn’t been this much excitement since the boys came home from war with their uniforms and their little triangular hats. They’d been shipped off again.

There hadn’t been this much excitement since the boys came home from war with their uniforms and their little triangular hats. They’d been shipped off again.

I pull up hard and dredge out a congealed braid of hair the length of an arm. Horrified, I keep pulling and it just keeps coming.

My mother is bursting at the seams and I am watching her stitching begin to give.

For now he made his home in men. Or rather, for a time, they lodged in him while he saved up seed money.

For one heartbeat, I wanted it to be true. I wanted to see my own father facedown on the tile, spattered in his own blood.

Clostromonia was beautiful. She was big-breasted and a fine cook. Epsilon’s fellow noblemen regularly begged for slices of her bimbleberry pie. “Ay, Epsilon,” they’d say, “I’m going to snatch the pie from your maiden’s windowsill along with the big-breasted beauty who made it!” In these moments, Epsilon felt proud.

2:00 A.M. Tonight’s crowd is mostly gone. Good tips. No grabs. I did alright.

When the man from 10C did not say hello to Carmen in the elevator, it barely bothered her at all; she was decorated to her chin with packages—housewarming gifts from one friend or another—and probably looked too compromised for conversation

In you, the beating of wings, the ticking of clocks, a heart that’s limped through another day. In you, the swirl of a thousand words you’ve said and ten thousand you haven’t.

I just work here, okay, so it weren’t my job to speak up when I dug the ring out of Prince’s hoof with my pick, packed into the groove there with the mud and manure. I stuck it in my pocket and said nothing cause they’d only take it away from me and they got no right. Anyhow it’s just a plain wedding band, but solid gold I reckon, so it’s gonna be worth something.