from crackling within
                                          innumerable neurons
                                          this very brief poem

My intense intents indent the bubbles
of possibles, at times a severe pop
reports a part of the future is dropped,
or its dilatory delivery
retreats with reproach from my untimely
approach, hissing away escapadely.

When I was a young man, Dad lost everything to the bank: Jet Cleaners, a marriage, our home on Glenn Road, our predictable, idyllic, suburban routine. When we moved to town, my little sister and I were decrepit, worn out after the catastrophe. Now everyone was too close together.  We staggered up the broken, treacherously icy stairs, careening like Laurel and Hardy in winter to the apartment, the sagging, exhausted house on West Gambier Street. Jo’s Chateau of Beauty was in the back, Hyle’s Typewriter Repair in the front, Kenyon and civilization five miles east, the flat, monotonous Midwest five miles west. It was there I became acquainted with Old Clyde and Mrs. Hill, though I failed them both.

Clyde was “Old Clyde” as we only knew him as old, and we never wondered if he was ever young. Clyde rarely drove his long, wide, black Oldsmobile he named “The Machine.” We worried for him and pedestrians in general when he fired up its engine on cold mornings. Clyde was a frail, pale but dignified gentleman (neither “spry” nor “geezer” applied) who shuffled alone through his white house. Once Victorian, once modestly grand with a little gingerbread embellishment, the porch leaned as if it said, “Give me a minute.” His wife loved the view out the kitchen window.

Clyde looked forward to saying “howdy,” though half his resources for the day were expended in one greeting. As Clyde was essentially deaf, the entire neighborhood knew his narrative. We were never sure if his volume was for our benefit or his. When Clyde wanted to accomplish one last home improvement, he hired me to paint his dining room ceiling. I wondered who there was to entertain. But brittle wallpaper peeled beneath the new, white coat, rolling with the roller, the task a disaster. I gave up on it. After forty years, the image remains crisp: Clyde’s crestfallen expression, the defeat in his shoulders. Dad offered no wisdom for me when I failed Clyde, when I refused to take his money.

Mrs. Hill was the only old black woman I knew in our town in 1978. We never knew her first name, but imagined Esther, Agnes or Helen. Mrs. Hill lived in the faded, green house, a hideous pea green of army fatigues, one particular patch of jungle camouflage, but surely a left-over, unwanted hue. She was next to where we tore down the garage for more parking. Tools still hung there. Clyde must have borrowed hammer, pliers or saw from the previous owner. They might have been friends, their wives gossiping and cooking together. Both widowed, Old Clyde and Mrs. Hill shared a fence.

Mrs. Hill sat in her house dress in her lawn chair on her concrete stoop, waiting for her sons to stop by and looking out for my sister circling the block on her bike. There was nothing there but Mrs. Hill and her stoop. Mrs. Hill was missing a few teeth and seemed unconcerned and un-self-conscious with their whereabouts. She was balding a little on one side, and her voice rasped and wheezed from long, luxurious drags on cigarettes. But her laugh was easy, generous, and frequent, though it cost her a spasm of coughing. Her whole body shook. I thought she would topple out of her chair, and I noted the location of the nearest telephone for an ambulance. I’m sure, when she was a silly girl, young men were taken by her bright laugh and fell in love.

My identity was nebulous at nineteen, under construction; still, Mrs. Hill listened to me. She relished my youth, my impatient plans. So why did I frequently avoid her porch and walk a different street? I wish I’d noticed Mrs. Hill listening to me and paused at her stoop to fill and shorten her afternoons just a little more. However unlikely, I wish I’d somehow finished painting Clyde’s impossible ceiling.

“We can’t help you, sir.”

The smartly-dressed paralegal’s smile was fixed as she rose to show the conversation was over.

Kemp resignedly gathered up his files and walked out past a sign reading “Discount Divorces.  Egress for Less!!”

Inside, he fretted.

How difficult could it be?

It was an uncontested divorce, no custody disputes. . .

“And, heaven knows,” said Jillian, ever mischievous, “we won’t be fighting over the furniture.”

Kemp ignored her and kept turning the matter over in his mind.

Nothing hard.  Just one unusual factor.

“Oh, yes. Just that itty-bitty bump in the legal road.” 

Kemp pressed his lips together, twisting away at his wedding band.  He’d found a miserably spelled and pornographic love letter from Chuck Henderson in Jillian’s desk.  Enough was enough.

He kept walking, hitting every divorce mill along the way, talking to anyone who would listen.

Responses varied, and Jillian had a cherry-on-top snark for every one of them:

“But it isn’t necessary.”

“Oh, but it is,” whispered Jillian.

“Is this a joke?” 

“Obviously, she doesn’t know you,” said Jillian.

“Go away,”

“Now you know how it feels.” 

Kemp roamed downtown streets until he caught sight of a handwritten sign in a narrow window.

“We do divorces.  All kinds.  Even yours.”

It was the one true word.  The half-hidden door led Kemp into an old record store.  The long space was currently filled with para-professionals in matching blue jackets, toiling away at mismatched desks. 

“Ah, Mr. Kemp.  Sit down.  You have an unusual case?” 

The man was older, with grey hair and eyes.  His name was Mr. Selwyn.

“Yes.  I’d like to divorce my wife. ”

“Over a semi-illiterate golf pro with a bad moustache,” groused Jillian. “OK. And the pool boy with the limp.”

“But there is an impediment?  To the divorce?”

“Well, yes.  Jillian, you see. . . Jillian is. . . .”

Mr. Selwyn waited patiently.

“Oh, spit it out, willya?”

“Dead.  She’s dead.  Aneurysm.  Last March.”

Mr. Selwyn stared into the distance, tapping his fingers lightly on the desk.

“Your wife is deceased and you wish to divorce her?”

Kemp nodded hopefully.

“Postmortem family law is sticky.  The paperwork is $10 extra, I’m afraid, and you have to meet certain criteria.”

“He’s pulling your leg.  Enjoying himself.”  Suddenly, the voice was less female and playful.

Tired of her, and tired of himself, Kemp handed over the cash.

Mr. Selwyn continued briskly.

They lay on the hood of Joe’s car, Joe and Tom, and stared at the cloudy sky.  Shapes rolled past overhead, spirals and angles of white, words written across the dawning blue.  They read what the sky had to say, content for a time just to lie still.

After a while, Tom spoke up.  The dreams were troubling him again.  Joe was the only one who would even listen.  If Tom didn’t say something, he would burst; if he said something to the wrong person, they’d label him crazy.

“I had more dreams, Joe.”

“Why am I not surprised?  Weird ones, like usual?”

“Not that weird.  Just different.  Almost the same as real life, but with some things changed.”

“That’s what you usually say.  But you have some strange ideas about what’s weird.”

“That’s just it.  It don’t seem weird at all, in the dreams.  Like what’s there is normal, and what’s here is strange.”

“Well, that’s how dreams are.  You have to wake up to know the difference.”

“I dunno.  I wonder sometimes.”

“Wonder what?  Life’s a dream?  I’ve heard that before.”

“No, no, like this life is the dream, and what we see when we’re asleep is the real world.”

Joe laughed.  Not a mean laugh, not a sad humoring laugh, but a real chuckle of good humor.  He was used to his strange friend and didn’t take Tom’s crazy thoughts as anything more than rambling talk.  Still, he sometimes wondered if he was helping by listening or just encouraging more craziness.

He replied, “Lots of people said that before, too.  There’s songs about it.  But that’s it, just words and songs.  You’re real.  I’m real.  Right here is real.  That’s all you need to know.  Anything else will just get you lost in your head.”

Tom wouldn’t be quieted this time.  He went on, “But… think about it.  What if what seems real is all fake… and what I dream is real… or at least, it used to be?  What if we were all put into a dream?  Or else things all got changed around while we were sleeping, and what used to be true isn’t anymore, except when we sleep and remember it again?”

Now Joe got serious.  He rolled onto his side to look at his friend.  “Tom, you’re gonna hurt yourself.  Just look at the clouds and calm down.  Are you afraid of sleeping?  Are the dreams bothering you that much?”

“No!  They don’t bother me at all.  It’s waking up that bothers me.  Listen to me, Joe.  Just think about it.  Doesn’t anything seem strange to you, sometimes, when you’re awake?  Like, it ought to be different?”

“Well, sure.  Lots of things.  I get mad about my job… or about laws that don’t seem right…”

“I’m not talking about being mad.  I mean like, something is really basically wrong.”

“Oh, that’s just being depressed.  You need a doctor, maybe.”

“I’m not depressed!  I’m concerned.  I mean, for example, take sleep itself.  What if people didn’t have to go inside when it got light out?  What if we slept at night and stayed up all day?”

“Some people do, if their jobs need them…”

“I don’t mean some people.  I mean, everyone.  Or almost everyone.  What if the sunlight wasn’t dangerous?  What if we were even scared of the dark, instead?”

“Come on, Tom.  That can’t be real.  The sun’s been deadly since forever.”

“But it isn’t, in my dreams.  I walk around in the light, and it don’t hurt.  It’s not even frightening.  And what about the clouds?  What if they were just puffs and streaks and balls, not symbols and words?  What if we didn’t have to obey the messages written up there?”

“Now look here, Tom.  Don’t go questioning the clouds.  That really will get you in trouble.”

“But what if it didn’t?  I mean, don’t you ever wonder anything, Joe?  Don’t you dream?  I’ve seen it: people ignoring the sky and doing whatever they pleased.  I mean, you work at the hospital nursery, right?  What if people weren’t made by giant slugs?  What if we could make our own babies, like, inside our bodies?  What if we started out as little humans… that could grow up into bigger humans?”

Joe sat up, shaking his head.  “I’m not listening to this anymore.  You may not want to sleep, but I need to get home to bed.  It’s almost dawn.”

Tom growled in frustration.  “You weren’t listening in the first place.  And I do want to sleep.  I want to see more.  You’re the one who’s afraid.  You just do your job, tend the slugs, obey the clouds, and don’t ask questions.  Well, someday I’ll find people who believe me.  We’ll find out what’s real and what isn’t.”

“Whatever.  Get in the car.  I’m tired of this crap.”

“Screw you.  I’ll fly home by myself.”

The cold wind was unexpected. After all, it was the middle of July, and this was the Caribbean. The church of Los Corales was cemented into the side of a mango-covered mountain just west of Santiago. It was not nestled like most mountainside churches; rather, it was cemented. A new building for an old generation. White painted cement, a slate porch, and frosted white doors. Around the church, there were a few strikingly new houses owned by returning Americans, and a bodega that filled at eleven in the morning and was empty again soon after. 

On that day it was raining. A heavy downpour that tinged on the new tin roof like angles playing marbles. The rain had brought the cold wind, and it swirled through the packed church through every open window. But no one seemed the notice. The abuelas continued to fan themselves. The teenage girls adjusted their white H&M dresses bought by their American cousins, and their American cousins were counting the days before they could go home and only go to church on Christmas. But abuela was watching now. The cousins exchanged glances and continued reciting prayers they only half-remembered.

The real action was not in the church, but on the porch. A group of primos were gathered, snapchatting and teasing each other. It was too crowded inside, they reasoned, so they might as well stay outside. An old uncle stood by the door and every once and awhile would send them a disapproving look, but it was only half-meant. The whole family had not come home for a long time.

The rain picked up, but there was no attempt to close the windows. No move to close the door. The priest remained at the altar, praying, the abuelas continued fanning, the girls checked their makeup in the window reflection, and the boys were now discussing quadding on the porch. The wind whirled around Los Corales, a church cemented into the mountainside.

To him it was always about the next dream. One night we got to hang out and all my friends were jealous but we talked a lot about dreams mostly about his but before we were going to kiss goodnight, I remembered a dream. I think it was him. Then I understood next when he said, “See ya, next dream later.”

This flash fiction project was born from a meditative state. There was no planning involved. As an exercise, Natalie began creating ideas from her typewriter on note cards. The words served as a way to capture ideas that were flowing from her brain. The ideas were just meant for reference and inspiration. As they sat collecting dust, Gen rescued them and gave them visuals. Each card is made the day it is posted. The purpose of this exercise is to consistently post work to inspire the creators and their audience. The Flash Fiction Project can be found online: daily updates (http://flashfictionok.tumblr.com/) and the archive (http://genevieveokupniak.com/flashfiction/).

Sorry about the bed being out of order. That guy, the one with the fur and paws, he refused to move much. He stared at me, his look calling me an idiot for making something look nice just to mess it up again later.

This flash fiction project was born from a meditative state. There was no planning involved. As an exercise, Natalie began creating ideas from her typewriter on note cards. The words served as a way to capture ideas that were flowing from her brain. The ideas were just meant for reference and inspiration. As they sat collecting dust, Gen rescued them and gave them visuals. Each card is made the day it is posted. The purpose of this exercise is to consistently post work to inspire the creators and their audience. The Flash Fiction Project can be found online: daily updates (http://flashfictionok.tumblr.com/) and the archive (http://genevieveokupniak.com/flashfiction/).

Next time you think about going on a visit to your aunts house please dont forget to bring that damn cat. She thinks she can just leave it at this house but she is terribly wrong. Mom gave her this stupid fur ball when they first moved to the suburbs. I have no part in this and strongly suggest that this thing just go away. Thank you.

This flash fiction project was born from a meditative state. There was no planning involved. As an exercise, Natalie began creating ideas from her typewriter on note cards. The words served as a way to capture ideas that were flowing from her brain. The ideas were just meant for reference and inspiration. As they sat collecting dust, Gen rescued them and gave them visuals. Each card is made the day it is posted. The purpose of this exercise is to consistently post work to inspire the creators and their audience. The Flash Fiction Project can be found online: daily updates (http://flashfictionok.tumblr.com/) and the archive (http://genevieveokupniak.com/flashfiction/).

“It smells like a real book.”
There aren’t such things as real books any more. There are just e-books. You know. those. Uh. Internet books. Oh wait you don’t have a computer. You sent me this paper typewritten. Well I believe this is why we exchan excuse me, I meant to say, I believe this is why we exchange our business. Typewriters. We both love the type. We are both writers.

This flash fiction project was born from a meditative state. There was no planning involved. As an exercise, Natalie began creating ideas from her typewriter on note cards. The words served as a way to capture ideas that were flowing from her brain. The ideas were just meant for reference and inspiration. As they sat collecting dust, Gen rescued them and gave them visuals. Each card is made the day it is posted. The purpose of this exercise is to consistently post work to inspire the creators and their audience. The Flash Fiction Project can be found online: daily updates (http://flashfictionok.tumblr.com/) and the archive (http://genevieveokupniak.com/flashfiction/).