More short stores
Adam Stemple When a wood stove’s your only source of heat, it seems like there’s not a woodpile in all of creation that’ll last the whole of a northern New Hampshire winter. Out the window, even through the fogged up glass, I can see my woodpile is low….
I cut my toe
for the first time
watched blood spill from my body
proof that I could break
I’m dashing through the snow to catch the thief who grabbed my iPhone from my hand when I trip, slip, and slam face first against the door of an SUV parked curbside. I see stars, not festive red and green stars, but orange bursts that sizzle my eyes, and then, horrors, my tongue pushes my front tooth and my front tooth rocks like a hobby horse. It’s loose! I sit up. Blood is pouring from somewhere—my nose? my forehead?—and candy-stripes down my puffy white jacket.
I agreed to sit for the portrait because Picasso was your favorite. I assumed you’d paint fractured planes, a body in distortions and angles. I wanted anonymity with my fifteen dollars per hour.
Abby said you were kind, not creepy like some others in her life drawing class. Posing nude was never on my bucket list but rent needed to be paid and my ex was slow with the alimony. He told my lawyer he couldn’t stay organized without a woman. I tucked my feelings about that under my tongue.