This is the Last Stop: Winter Stories Part Two

A Meeting

Her letter arrived just before sundown, a slim cream colored envelope with navy ink scrawling her name cross the flap, pushed through the mail slot and landing squarely on the tile of the front hall.

"I'll meet you where your Chicago meets my Chicago. I'll meet you where glass meets limestone and starts to crumble under the weight of every stretch of skin that gets reflected back at us on the sidewalk. I think the gargoyles know we are not long for this world so we'll give that clay hell, if only for this night."



Seeing Red

I want to know.
I need to know if when you close your eyes at night and you shut them so tight and focus so hard that every string holding your words in your head is straining so hard that all the strings might break- if then and only then, you see those tiny red dots parading across your field of vision.
 I don't want to be the only one. 
Sometimes I get so scared of those little red dots. 
If I look away, I'll forget what you looked like. 
So I keep looking and everything hurts and I still don't really remember what you look like anymore.



The Scully Effect 

In sixth grade there was a Women in Science conference at school. I was in Life Science at the time and I liked it enough. There was a mold experiment I had to sit out of because of my allergies though.
I wrote my entry essay on Bill Nye and my mother told me I didn't care enough to be selected.
We took the train into the city and went to the aquarium. We saw the divers feeding the fish. 

They served tuna salad at the luncheon, which we all thought was a little weird.



Did You Hear the News?

On the day the ocean disappeared, she forgot to go grocery shopping. She really meant to but it just slipped her mind. She didn't immediately realize that the ocean was gone. If she had made it on the subway, she might have heard people talking about it on the subway. The house on the water had been sold three years ago.They had stopped paying for cable at the start of the summer so that morning, it was just yesterday's newspaper and a cup of coffee that she had to microwave by the end of the arts section. If she had known, she might have missed it.


I'm Dead Serious About This

You don't get to love me until you stop commenting on how much sugar I put in my coffee, even if you're just doing it under your breath. 
You don't get to love me until you stop messing up the sock drawer. The short ones don't go with the long ones. You know that. 
You don't get to love me until you realize that my love for Abba is not ironic. 
I don't see why that's such a hard one. 
Love me like I love Abba: unapologetically and earnestly.