Until I Looked

I zipped my fly, buttoned my jeans, and stared at that stupid plant. It was short, plain, and hadn’t had any flowers in the entire time it’d been there. It seemed like the kind of plant grown for the sole purpose of sitting on bathroom countertops like ours. Well, mine.

A Portrait

I wasn’t sure what I expected to find when I went into my grandmother’s old house. She’d only been dead a month, barely enough time for a very thin layer of dust to be visible on her ornate wooden furniture. It was so quiet inside, the dust almost like the delicate flurries that floated down outside. I lifted some blinds. The silence devoured the sound instantly. The luster of the wood still somehow shone through by more than just a trick of the light—I got the feeling my grandmother polished it more often than dust motes were able to find steady relationships, let alone settle down.