Flash Frog

By the time I reach my brother’s apartment, the sun is already low, slanting across the row of houses. I park behind his truck. He opens the door before I knock, like he’s been listening for my footsteps. “You made good time,” he says,…

Today, Carol is glum. I bring her a hot coffee from the machine, two creams one sugar. “What’s wrong, queen?” I ask. We have this kind of relationship, ascribing to each other royal titles we haven’t earned. “Birds are cowards,” she says. Her face…

The piles of paper have become mountains in Betty’s house. Some of the papers are stacked into bags that look like boulders, and often they erode and turn into spilled valleys. But they are always with her, these shifting geologies of envelopes and notes…