The Fountain

She found the mirror in the attic where the dust hung like tiny stars and the light came in slow and golden through slats in the roof. It wasn’t just a mirror—it was a whisper from another world, silvered and soft-edged, rimmed in old wood carved with vines and faces half-remembered. She touched it lightly, curious, and the glass gave way like warm rain. She stepped through without a sound. Inside, the air shimmered like a held breath. Mirrors stretched in every direction, each one showing a different version of her: laughing, crying, running, flying. She wandered through the corridors of maybe, her footsteps making no echo. The reflections called her name, though not always kindly. Some begged. Some warned. All were her, and none were her. Time, if it existed there, drifted like fog. She searched for the mirror home, the one she came from, but the path was lost in the glittering maze. The glass no longer bent for her. Her voice, when she cried out, vanished into the silver hush. Somew...

The old man sat beneath the willow tree where the river bent and the breeze knew his name. His hands, rough with time, held a faded photograph—edges curled, color nearly gone—but the smile in it still lit something deep in his chest. Children passed him now without knowing, lovers kissed nearby unaware, but he remembered everything. Every summer laugh, every letter unopened, every promise that time forgot but he did not. Each day, just before the sun dropped behind the hills, he’d whisper her name. Not loudly. Just enough for the wind to carry it back to wherever she waited. People thought he was just another quiet soul in the park, feeding ducks or napping in the shade. But in truth, he was keeping vigil. Not mourning. Remembering. And in that remembering, she remained alive—not haunting, but humming gently beneath the surface of the world. When the man finally didn’t come one day, no one noticed—except the willow, which sighed a little heavier. But somewhere, in some mystery only the...

The tree had stood long enough. It leaned like an old man against the edge of the clearing, half shadow, half memory, bark worn thin by squirrels and summers. The man circled it twice with the ax on his shoulder, like a dancer sizing up a reluctant partner, muttering to no one in particular, “You’ve had a good run.” The dog sat nearby in judgment, as dogs do, ears twitching at every creak of the wind. The first swing rang like a dinner bell. The second thunked low and solid. Chips flew, his breath came out in bursts, and he felt every year in his back and every boyhood afternoon in his swing. Halfway through, he paused, leaned on the handle, and looked up. “You could still win,” he told the tree. But it didn’t. One last crack, and down it came with the slow, reluctant grace of something proud. The crash echoed down the hollow like applause in an empty theater. By sundown, the rounds were stacked like cannonballs beside the porch. He peeled off his gloves, took a deep breath of woodsmok...

She was the kind of girl who noticed things—like the bent wing of a butterfly, or when the old man at the grocery store dropped his change and tried to pretend it didn’t matter. Her world was small, just the town square and the worn sidewalks around her house, but her kindness stretched beyond fences and seasons. People said she had a heart of gold, though she never thought of herself that way. She just did what needed doing. She sat with the lonely, fetched warm bread for the sick, and fed the stray dog that growled at everyone else. When the river spilled over its banks one spring, she was there barefoot in the mud, lifting sandbags twice her size with a smile like sunlight breaking through storm clouds. Her goodness was quiet, never announced. It grew like wildflowers—without permission, without applause. And in time, her kindness became part of the place itself. Children told stories about her under blankets, and the mayor named a bench for her that she never sat on because she was...

They didn’t have much left, not really. The crops had dried, and the well wasn’t more than a memory with cracked stones and a faint smell of rust. The boy watched his father bow over the ground like a man praying to something buried beneath it. Not asking for rain, not anymore. Just digging a little trench around the roots of the tomato plant, whispering something the boy couldn't hear. At night, the boy listened as his mother lit the oil lamp and read from a cracked old Bible, the binding held with twine. She didn’t speak loudly or with urgency. Just slow and calm, as if every word was a seed that might bloom if you gave it enough light. The boy didn’t understand all the words, but he felt them settle into the soft places of his chest. And every evening, he poured the last cup of water from the clay jug onto the plant, the one with the pale green stem and the tiny yellow bloom. Then one morning, the world changed. Not with thunder or fire, but with three small red tomatoes hanging...

The boy smoothed the collar of his shirt twice before ringing the doorbell. His palms were damp, his voice rehearsed. Inside, the smell of roast chicken and warm bread drifted through the open windows, a signal of welcome or trial. Her father shook hands with a grip that tested, her mother offered a smile that judged softly, and her little brother stared with the frankness only children possess. He sat up straight, answered questions with care, and laughed when her grandfather told a story that wasn’t quite funny. There was a moment at dinner when he dropped his fork. It clattered loud as a warning bell. Conversation paused. He blushed, reached for it, and her hand found his under the table, light and sure. After that, everything softened. He asked about the old photos on the wall and listened closely. The brother showed him a trick with cards, and the grandfather nodded once, slow and approving, like he’d seen this before and understood how it was going. When the night ended, and they...

The rain came hard that spring, beating down on the fields until the cotton drowned. Folks cursed the sky, shook their fists at the clouds, and prayed louder than before. The preacher said it was a test. The old men on the porch said it was just weather. But the boy, barefoot in the mud, saw the green shoots that came after—stronger, fewer, stubborn in the wind. In the weeks that followed, neighbors shared tools and hands. Fences got mended, and so did hearts. People learned the sound of each other's footsteps again. The boy’s mother planted marigolds beside the ruins of the garden, and they bloomed like fire, as if daring the storm to come again. “Sometimes,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron, “God doesn’t stop the bad thing. He teaches us how to stand in it.” Years later, when sorrow came again—quieter this time, like fog instead of thunder—the boy remembered. He stood still. He breathed deep. And he helped someone else carry their weight, not with answers, but with presenc...

There was a wooden fence at the edge of a small town, and behind it lived a boy who believed the world was bigger than what his eyes could see. Each morning, he’d climb onto the middle rail, just high enough to glimpse the road that curled away like a ribbon toward the blue hills. Sometimes he’d wait there for hours, hoping for a sign—dust rising, a stranger passing, anything to tell him that the stories he whispered to himself might be true. His mother called him for supper before the sun slipped below the sycamores. He’d jump down, brush off his knees, and run inside where biscuits waited in a basket and the radio played softly in the corner. But his thoughts were always half a mile ahead, past the bend in the road, where adventure surely waited in a beat-up truck or the shadow of a cloud. And then one day, it happened—a girl with a suitcase and scuffed shoes came walking up the road. She stopped at the fence, smiled like she already knew him, and said, “You’ve been waiting for a lon...

In the evening, just after the sun folded itself into the trees, the family gathered in the front room. The house was small—clapboard walls washed in soft grays, the floor scuffed pine, the ceiling bead board, white and plain. The smell of supper still lingered faintly—beans, cornbread, something boiled. Outside, the cicadas had started their hum. The father came in from work with the quiet weight of routine. He placed his cap on the small hook by the door and washed his hands in the kitchen sink. The children, already barefoot and in clean clothes, moved into place without a word. The mother lit a single candle on the low table, then knelt beside the others. They all crossed themselves together. The rosary began slow, a litany of sound rising and falling like breath. “Hail Mary, full of grace…”—the repetition worn into their bones like the pattern of rain on the roof. The children stumbled now and then, the smallest one mouthing the words more than speaking them, eyes darting toward t...

She stood high above the square, hand lifted to brow, as if forever searching for something just beyond the horizon. The sculptor had caught her in a moment of stillness, though all who looked upon her imagined wind in her stone-swept dress and the ache of distance in her eyes. They call her by many names, though no plaque named her, and no history claimed her. She simply was—perched in silence against the churn of sky. Old men on benches said she looked for a lost love, a soldier who never returned. Children whispered she could see the future. Pigeons didn’t dare perch on her shoulder, and rain rolled off her like memory. On foggy mornings, the mist clung to her like a shawl, and in the last light of day, she seemed to lean forward ever so slightly, as if the thing she waited for had finally come into view. And perhaps it had. Or perhaps the waiting was the whole of her story—etched not in marble, but in longing. A sentinel not for what had passed, but for what might still arrive. The...

They came from a place where stars were born in fire and dust, where the sky cracked open with soundless thunder. Before names, before maps, before even time itself had learned to walk in a straight line, there was only the churning. Oceans of heat, rivers of shadow, and the slow, aching crawl toward shape. From that chaos, a breath. From that breath, a spark. And from that spark—us. We carry the echo in our blood. Even now, under skies stitched with satellites and silence, something ancient stirs behind our ribs. A memory not quite our own—a flicker of heat, a pulse of wild, impossible light. We speak in sentences, walk in lines, draw boxes around our days, but in the quiet moments, when the world forgets to hum, we feel the pull. A reminder that order is a thin frost on the deep, molten core of being. Still, we build. We love, we weep, we hope. We press handprints into soft concrete and call it permanence, though the stars laugh. And yet—perhaps that is the grace of it. Not that we e...

In the deep stillness of late afternoon, the hummingbirds came like thoughts—quick, bright, and gone before one could name them. They hovered at the edge of the porch, their wings a hum lost in the breathless heat, feeding from the red-glass feeder that swayed gently on its hook. The woman watched from her rocker, a cold glass sweating beside her, the only sound the ticking of the ceiling fan above and the distant creak of cicadas leaning into their own kind of hymn. Each bird was a flash of color, a stroke from a celestial paintbrush—emerald, ruby, a whisper of blue. They darted with purpose, but there was a kind of wild joy in it too, a dance choreographed by instinct and sunlight. She imagined the world they saw: the garden mapped in nectar, the air a series of invisible trails and sparks. She didn’t move, not wanting to disturb their rhythm, as if their presence was a fragile thing that might slip away if acknowledged too directly. And then they vanished, all at once, like the endi...

The old man sat on the porch with a mason jar of sweet tea, its sides slick with July. A fan spun slow behind the screen door, barely shifting the heat. He wore overalls, one strap undone, and a hat that had seen years of sun. When the boy asked him about the scar on his hand, the man didn’t answer right away. He just looked out toward the field and waited until the silence got good and deep. “It’s from a fence,” he finally said. “One that wasn’t supposed to be there.” The boy frowned. “Did you jump it?” The old man smiled, small and crooked. “I tore it down.” And that was all he said. Later, they walked through the barn, past rusted tools and the smell of hay. The man showed the boy how to hammer a nail straight and told him the name of every bird that lived in the rafters. No stories, just facts, like the kind that build things strong. But that night, under the stars, the boy asked again. “Was it really just a fence?” The old man rocked slow in his chair, eyes half-shut. “Boy,” he sa...

The bat was no bigger than a plum and clung like a scrap of dusk to the bark of the pecan tree. The boys found it just after breakfast, when the air was already warming and the leaves whispered about summer. One of the boys spotted it first. The younger one, quicker with his hands, brought the jar. It was one of those old peanut butter jars with a silver lid punched through with a kitchen nail. They worked carefully, gently, talking soft and low, as if their voices might frighten the tiny thing to death. Its wings were folded tight as secrets, and its face looked like a crumpled raisin, eyes barely open, heart ticking fast beneath velvet fur. Inside the house, they laid a blanket on the living room floor. The TV was off. The ceiling fan spun above them like a slow planet. They placed the jar between them and lay belly-down, elbows pressing into the soft fabric, watching. Waiting. For movement, for a stretch, for some sign of life. The bat did not move. They whispered questions, theorie...

For Her The girl sat beneath the sagging crepe myrtle, her back pressed to the warm brick of the house. The petals had begun to fall, pink like something too tender, like a secret she hadn’t meant to keep. Her knees were pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped tight. From inside came the faint clatter of dishes, voices rising and falling like music she couldn’t quite dance to. Across the street, a woman walked her dog. A car idled in a driveway. Lights came on in houses where people were laughing or arguing or calling each other to dinner. But none of that touched her. She looked at it all with a stillness that came from knowing how to disappear without going anywhere. And somewhere in the quiet, she imagined another girl, far away, sitting just the same—under a tree, on a step, in a small room no one bothered to knock on. They didn’t know each other, these two girls. But they would’ve recognized the weight in each other’s shoulders, the way the light bends a little when you feel forgotte...

The house sat quietly in the green hush of morning, tucked beneath a veil of trees and mist like a secret someone had kept just long enough. Its red door—bright as a berry—waited with the patience of old souls and well-worn shoes, while flowerbeds leaned in close to hear the rustle of memory brushing against time. She had lived there for years—she collected wind chimes and talked to birds as though they were old friends returning from long voyages. The porch had been her stage and sanctuary, where morning tea met hummingbirds and the afternoon sun drew lazy lines across her journal. Behind the house, the path climbed through wild rosemary and soft moss, up the steps where prayer flags fluttered like whispered hopes. No one ever took them down. They faded in the wind, grew tattered in the rain, and somehow became more beautiful for it. Visitors said it felt like a dream—like something half-remembered from childhood. And maybe that’s what it was: not a house, not really, but a place wher...

Squirrel had the brush and a plan. “It’ll be easy,” she said, hopping in place beside the bathroom door. “We tape the edges, we roll the walls, we’re done by lunch.” Rabbit adjusted his blue jacket—already blotched with something suspiciously green from last week’s garden adventure—and nodded like he’d done this before. He hadn’t. The bathroom was small and bright, morning light slanting through the window. The can of paint was “Cloud Whisper,” which sounded calm but looked suspiciously like toothpaste. Rabbit, trying to be helpful, dipped the roller too deep. It slapped the wall, then dripped on the floor, his paw, and somehow, the ceiling. “Oh dear,” he muttered. Squirrel shrieked. She had a streak of Cloud Whisper down her tail. Rabbit turned, startled, and knocked over the tray. Paint poured like milk across the tile. They both jumped. Rabbit slipped. His back leg landed in the trash can. Squirrel, trying to rescue him, grabbed the towel bar—which snapped clean off. By noon, the mi...

The moon was a bowl tipped slightly above the trees, spilling silver across the grove. The fire between them was no more than a sigh now, a hush of coals breathing faint light onto their faces. One looked like dawn remembered. The other like a shadow trying not to fall. “You knew,” the first man said. His voice carried the weight of stars—not blame, not anger. Just the ache of knowing too much. The other man didn’t answer at first. He held a stone in his hand as if it had been placed there by the night itself. “I did,” he said, barely above a whisper. “Since the beginning.” The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was crowded with memories, with laughter from other fires, sandals kicked off near wells, crumbs of bread left on plates, names spoken gently in sleep. “You could have turned back,” said the first. “I did,” said the second, “in my mind. A thousand times.” “And yet…” “And yet.” The wind moved through the olive branches like a woman brushing out her hair. Time stretched, yawn...

This is about a boy, maybe six, maybe younger. And a time when summer had settled deep into the skin of the world, and the night air pressed against the house like a warm hand. The boy remembered the shouts first—sharp, strange, not like the usual neighbor sounds. Then the sirens, wild and rising. His father pulled the blinds back in the upstairs room, and the boy stood beside him, barefoot on the hardwood floor, the hem of his pajamas clinging to his legs. The alley that ran between the houses had become a glowing river. Flames curled high above the roofline next door, red and gold and loud as hell. The boy pressed his palm to the window and jerked it back. The glass was hot. He thought it might melt. The firemen came fast, all clatter and hoses and purpose. They moved like dancers in the chaos, shadows lit from behind by a blaze that wouldn't stop growing. The boy watched one of them swing an axe into the side of the porch, smoke pouring around him like some dragon had woken up i...