Construction Equipment by Bill
I feel I must almost throw myself up through that window, to get in there, off this street, out of this open vulnerable air between steepled buildings smelling of incense and a burning, hollow shore lined with drums of fuel. Eyes following me while I have none. I only feel the window, the wind on the panes, the stones under my feet connected to the structure of the frames, the mountings in the wall. Nervous shaking licks of saliva pool on the tip of my tongue and I rub them against the back of my teeth, which I will use to bite them if they come near, the saliva working to keep my teeth cool, from heating up too much while it infects them. I have to get out of the open before I infect them.
***
Through the Never by Beth
A door slamming, the sound of the shot. This kid Hollis, prom committee president, found the body later in a dressing room next to the stage. He got Mr. Harrison and Mr. Harrison saw it too. Months later, Mr. Harrison read us this thing he wrote about it. After that I couldn’t stop picturing the body, slumped against the wall, pale. Veronica said how could we enjoy the prom now, after what happened, but Veronica didn’t know him and neither did I. Neither did Hollis, who smoothed his eyebrows all the time with his fingertips. We could barely even picture him because nobody went to wrestling meets and he didn’t do anything else.
But a lot of kids went to the funeral. They said the casket was plain wood and people wrote messages on it in Sharpie. They said people put bottles of alcohol in there with him, and joints, and Metallica CDs. They said he definitely knew before he did it that they weren’t going to cut the wrestling team after all. But he still did it.
Sometimes the doors slammed like that, made that noise, when it was windy and the language teachers left the windows open. But I think I heard the shot.
***
The Trajectory by Michael
If he is right, then the science, the physics, and the biology will all work themselves out without him having to do anything after initiation. So he sits there and looks up at it from his car, waiting for the right moment, wondering if it will ever come. Maybe later, he'll just drive away, without having done anything. Go back. Except, he realizes, it won't be back anywhere, just a different direction forward; a different initiation. As this idea takes root, and the branches spread in his mind, he places his hand on the ignition key, and leaves it for just a moment, savoring his own indecision and the infinite causes of it. Then he removes the key from the ignition and scratches at his scruff with it. He'll come back tomorrow, and play it again in his mind, and see if this time, it doesn't branch out. He exits the car and stretches. and goddamn it feels good just to stretch out.
***
Window Talk by Alan
“I want to let a little air in.”
“Why?”
“Just because…”
“You realize you’re always doing this.”
“What?”
“Finding ways to subvert the situation…move things around…furniture, books, whatever…feed the plants…you know what I’m talking about.”
“That’s not subversion.”
“Of course it is…”
“I may be doing a little avoiding but definitely not subverting.”
“You’re doing it again.”
“It’s really hot in here.”
“It’s fall in New York. We’re having a warm day. It’s definitely not hot.”
You notice their poising themselves on respective sills, each body a kind of bird - pensive yet remarkably alert.
“Do you realize we’ve known each other for…”
“Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that.”
They shift a bit to get more comfortable, prepare the curtains for intuited vicissitudes of uncertainty and sun.
A bus passes; you lose track of the conversation, move on.
***
Apologies by Lyle
It wasn’t that only two windows hung open, or that the curtains fluttered just so, obscuring a form — you. It was that the glass panes each had a slightly different quality, a different transparency. I knew it was mostly because of the angle — each one a fraction of a degree different from the ones next to it — but I thought maybe there was something in the age of each pane. Maybe some were new and other were older, the glass sagging slightly like an overripe plum (sorry I ate those, by the way). Gravity never loses. Still seeing you wrapped in that fulvous curtain so lightly made me think of birds. I thought you might alight on the thin metal window frame and disappear around the next building before I could get inside to say that I’m sorry. Gravity is just a fancy way of saying death. But still the birds fool gravity for a while — just like our temporary reprieve from it. Maybe reprieve isn’t the right word. We can still feel its weight, only it hasn’t entirely flattened us out yet. You disappear from the window with hardly a disturbance and my reverie is over like that. There is only my self-reflective guilt flowing out of open windows.
***
Open Windows Opening by Forrest
opening one window opens the window opening to the next window now closing by one open hand that opens them or closes them later or sees later that hand seeing the next open window by opening one window with a closing hand not waving above nor waving to a hand below waving above later at the open window it sees which opens next to the closing window closing the open hand closing it and not seeing the next open window below open the one hand closing over to wave and ask the closing hand below which window to enter later and close the opening window as entering they now see waving does not open windows closing nor waves open hands closing them when seeing below the one hand that does not wave above to enter open
