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carried his plate to the sink. By the time she returned to the table
he’d stopped talking and his eyes were closed.
Do you want to go to bed she asked, and he shook his
head.
It’s nice talking like this, he said. Let’s talk like this awhile.
He told her about star flares and feeling weightless
and horizons that never saw a sunset. He told her about flying
through nebulas and eclipses you couldn’t look in the eye and
terraformed moons that looked exactly like home. After a while
he closed his eyes again but went on talking. She closed her eyes,
too, and tried to conjure up images to fit his words. She couldn’t
do it. Inside her head was all blackness.
She didn’t mind very much, figuring that, after all, most
of the universe was blackness anyway, a series of gulfs between
two bright points, a suburban night closing in on a dim upstairs
window.
Rob Andwood is a fiction writer from the Pine Barrens of
southern New Jersey. He currently resides in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, although he returns home at least once every
year to continue his prolonged hunt for the elusive Jersey
Devil. He is obsessed with rap music and superheroes.
40 Writing Tomorrow Magazine