Tag: water

  • bathtime again

    Downstairs, I run a bath for my daughter. I kneel down to check the water. When I rise, the old woman is standing in the doorway. She is hunched over, watching me. “Fuck.” And then she’s gone.

  • stench

    Over the holidays, there were a number of points when I noted a pungent smell in the little hallway at the back of our kitchen — a cloying stench, like rotting fish. (I do not care for this little hallway. It feels off to me, somehow. There is a mirror of it upstairs and the…

  • in the shower

    …as I’m washing my backside, someone peeks in between a seam in the shower curtain — old and wizened, though I cannot tell whether it is a man or a woman. They roll their eyes up at me, almost comical, and purse their mouth in a silent “Oooo…” …and then I wake with a start,…

  • frantic spider

    …the spider struggles against the pull of the water as the tub drains, a thin filament of almost wire-like web cast out like a dark line . . . it clenches like a fist in the water, and I feel the tug of the web and pull my hand away, leaving it to it’s fate…

  • a jar of mud and other fragments

    …gathered around the table, we trade anecdotes and witty replies . . . just a bunch of guys hanging out, who also happen to be famous — all except me, of course. I can’t believe I’m here, can’t believe that everyone just assumes I belong… …he’s lying in the shore, dozing in the early evening…