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The Minimalist
Al Griffin

The cold tore away his humanity. His fingers were numb all the way to his shoulders. Plastic garbage bags full of clothes tumbled around him like a child’s pillow fort on the living room floor.

The city bus hissed to a stop where he slumped on the bench. He didn’t get up. He was not a passenger so much as a resident of the 5th street bus stop. Eight years of wondering the streets, begging at the corners, eating behind restaurants, had not sucked him dry like the 3:00 AM cold.

The last job ended six months before his marriage. The mortgage killed his car and then his house. His wife remarried; his kids graduated; his world shrunk to a bag of rags and a bus-stop bench. He talked to himself. Listened to himself. He mostly lived in his own head. Told himself things better left unsaid. Told himself keep waking, keep walking, keep surviving till it got better. People around all the time. Some looked at him. Some looked through him. A few saw themselves.

When the shadows climbed the brick wall across the street, he stood up and shouldered his heavy bags. Miss-matched shoes stopped hurting his feet when his mind went numb. After half an hour of labored breathing he turned into the ally behind a shuttered café. A ragged wool blanket over him, dirty cardboard under him, he drifted between sleep and death.
Traffic noise and sunlight brought him back to his brutal world. Nothing had changed.

Freedom
Zac Middlebrook

In my mind, we visit one another each night,
To free ourselves of our days.
Seeking comfort in each other’s skin. And hushed words
across a wrinkled duvet.
We spread out, on the bed, after colliding in the doorway.
You waited, and wanted.
And I brought tension down upon you.
A hundred kisses followed by a thousand frantic
heartbeats.
A crescendo, with arched back and stifled breath,
You move and I follow.
Paired.
Unyielding.
Sharing the chaos that follows us from room to room.
From floor to bed.
Each night, we free ourselves.