A Tidings of Magpies

By Amanda Strand The wedding ring I took off myself, his wife wasn’t up to it. I brought the nurse into the room in case he jumped or anything. “Can we turn his head? He looks so uncomfortable.” She looked straight at me, patiently waiting for it to sink in. The snow fell. His truck in the barn, his boots by the door, flagpoles empty. It took a long time for the taxi to come. “Where to?” he said. “My father just died,” I said. As if it were a destination.

Fireflies by Cecilia Woloch And these are my vices: impatience, bad temper, wine, the more than occasional cigarette, an almost unquenchable thirst to be kissed, a hunger that isn't hunger but something like fear, a staunching of dread and a taste for bitter gossip of those who've wronged me—for bitterness— and flirting with strangers and saying sweetheart to children whose names I don't even know and driving too fast and not being Buddhist enough to let insects live in my house or those cute little toylike mice whose soft grey bodies in sticky traps I carry, lifeless, out to the trash and that I sometimes prefer the company of a book to a human being, and humming and living inside my head and how as a girl I trailed a slow-hipped aunt at twilight across the lawn and learned to catch fireflies in my hands, to smear their sticky, still-pulsing flickering onto my fingers and earlobes like jewels. please note: photo by Lila Byrd