The night is cool. The blaze illuminates your face orange. Her vehicle is an inferno. You warm yourself before it. A minute ago, you set it on fire. Surprised it went up that quick, you think. Gluttonous flames devour her car. A breeze caresses your back. Hot air singes your face. You step away, flip off the once blue hybrid. Taking a drag from a cigarette, you cough. It was years since you smoked. Why now? you wonder. You shrug. The flames sound like a waterfall. A finger flick; the butt shoots into the blaze. It is instantly consumed. You stroll into the night. Your unhurried footfalls are loud. The heat on your face dissipates. There are no police, no fire trucks, no ambulances, and no sirens. No one confronts you. Am I petty? you wonder. That morning: You wake early on your day off, a day for chores. Sighing, you crawl from bed. Lots to do, you think. # With an armful of bags you exit the market. You plod to your car. Why …

She thinks, I could drink the colours of this city until my throat swells like a kaleidoscope. Purple jacarandas. Pink mimosas. Balconies dripping yellow lemons. And azure—a word that sits long and full on the tongue—azure everywhere. She helps her daughter down the slide. The baby trots and she lets her roam, like the French parents do. They aren’t always cloyed to their children like chicken feet. There is a woman with long eyelashes, also following her trotting child. She decides: this woman and her would be friends. This would be the park they would come to every day. Their children would play under the fig trees. She wonders what it’s like to grow up here, somewhere with peaches plump as fleshy fists. Not mealy peaches or hard peaches packed on supermarket shelves but soft peaches, jubilant amid the cherries, the fresh-cut watermelon shimmering on the street vendor’s stall. She also wonders what this woman—her new friend—would think of her home. Of the housing estates that spread and spread until the little white houses fall …

It was definitely a rat. They couldn’t actually see it, only heard it scrabbling and scratching in the bathroom ceiling. The mother heard it first. She said nothing, hoping it would go away. She lay awake for an hour, praying for it to stop. She could see the rat clearly in her mind’s eye. It looked like the one she saw most workday mornings at the downtown garage, skittering past her feet into the storm drain. The children heard it next. They wandered into the bathroom, one at a time, wondering if it was about to jump out at them. They could see the rat clearly in their mind’s eye. It looked like the dead one that had lain under the stairs in the courtyard for weeks before someone, a maintenance person probably, had picked it up with a shovel and put it in the dumpster. The boyfriend heard it last, when the mother roused him from his sleep. The scrabbling and scratching had stopped for a moment then, so he told the children to …

It was so hot even the birds quit singing. I sat in front of the window fan drinking iced ginger ale and watching the bubbles rise while my dear Doyle thrashed around his old trunk in the spare room. Ugly, God, he was ugly. He ranted about Alan being the liar supreme and cursed Alan so bad I knew he feared him. “I hate that bastard, Annie,” Doyle said. “I hate everything about him from his pointy toed boots to his goddamned hat.” I set my glass on the maple table, heedless of the water ring it would leave and went to Doyle and closed his trunk. “The shotgun’s not in there,” I said. “You’ve got yourself all worked up.” I lay a quiet hand on his, but with his other he yanked open the trunk. “Why isn’t it?” he yelled. Alan and his big hat barged in and yelled just as loud as Doyle. “Thief!” He brandished a bayonet. I slipped through the doorway to the porch and peeked through the window above the …

The rusted-out pickup rumbles down Main Street. A girl, all of five and all smiles, rides shotgun. The air is warm, the summer sun bright. The girl leans out the window the way her golden retriever, Lottie, often does. The wind twists and tangles the girl’s long, sandy hair and— The passenger door flies open. The girl drops to the asphalt and tumbles to a stop. Faulty door latch. No seatbelt. No broken bones! No stitches! The girl is lucky to be alive. Had she landed on her head and not the backside of her corduroys, she surely would have died. Or so the story goes. The bank teller, the barber, and the barmaid of Main Street will recount it for years to come, along with every eyewitness at Auchenbach’s Laundromat and Vi’s five and dime. Always they will tell the tale in the astonished, reverent tone reserved for the proclamations of miracles—the boy who walked away from the plane crash! the face of Jesus that appeared in a bowl of chowder! “Happened right in …

Instead of circling the rows of parked cars by the entrance, Wren settled for a spot near the back of the lot. When she began running errands, the early spring sun was just above the horizon; presently, it cast short shadows. She slipped off her jacket and tossed it onto the passenger seat before stepping out of her vehicle and walking toward the big-box retailer. From inside the store, an elderly gentleman watched the automatic doors pull apart and recognized the change in Wren’s expression as she entered. In his line of work, he had grown accustomed to this phenomenon. He greeted her, but his words failed to register. She stood perplexed, partially blocking the store’s entrance. Other customers politely slipped around her, like water in a stream, redirected by a protruding rock. “Something I can help with, ma’am?” the old man tried. She looked at him, nonplussed by his question. “No, thanks. I, uh—sorry,” she sputtered. “Forget why you’re here?” His close-lipped smile revealed a hint of satisfaction. Wren’s mouth opened, then closed again. …

Smell He draws me closer; I take a breath. I love his earthy smell and want to store more of it deep inside my lungs, for nostalgia and motivation. I linger. I smell foliage. It is soothing and relaxing. No wonder he is falling asleep. Hearing He yawns, and a quiet huff escapes into the air. I want to kiss him, so I bring my lips to his, but he is so peaceful, I freeze and listen to his calm, steady exhales. Like wind whispering through tall grass. Sight He is handsome; it is getting harder to suppress the urge to kiss. His face is expressive, powerful and strong, and I am curious if he is already seeing the dreams. Or if he ever does. He lies still, then hugs me. It is warm here, and soft. Taste I cannot resist anymore – I peck his nose, not sure if he notices. It is salty; now, my mouth is too. I lick my lips and swallow; I can taste the waters of a brine lake. …

It began as a hobby over lockdown. The sourdough starter was a gift from his watchful neighbour, Marge. Before that, David had no interest in baking. He’d always been perfectly content with his shop bought pan. But soon he found himself setting four-a.m. alarms, getting up to feed the culture with the attentiveness of a new father. He liked that the starter needed him. A living being under the same roof. He could talk to it, like you might a dog or a houseplant. The starter was pallid and frothy, like cottage cheese that had got a little too excited. Its smell: acerbic, eye-watering if he leaned in too close. Soon David found he was making more bread than he could eat. He gave fresh loaves to neighbours and visited soup kitchens and shelters with his surplus goods. The more he fed the starter, the greedier it got. He couldn’t say exactly when it happened, but soon he was up four or five times a night, sleepwalking to the kitchen to feed his growing charge. …