Michael O'Neill
Confluence
If we’re ever free to love again, we will find each other in
happenstance, in a small moment in West Virginia, in that
antique store on Randolph, the one with all the rooster
ornaments, and we will know what to say, but we will not
say it, for the drift of memories made and unmade will beckon
so loudly as to silence any apology or vindication we had
each rehearsed these past 35 years, and the lady behind the
register will ask us not to touch the glass cases, our fingerprints
leaving tiny radials of friction, those splotchy flecks of us that
future anthropologists will use to reproduce the particulars of love.
Michael O'Neill writes fiction and poetry in Chicago. His work has appeared in Maudlin House, Ghost City Press, WhiskeyPaper, Literary Orphans, Unbroken Journal and Great Lakes Review, among others.
Return to March 2020 Edition
If we’re ever free to love again, we will find each other in
happenstance, in a small moment in West Virginia, in that
antique store on Randolph, the one with all the rooster
ornaments, and we will know what to say, but we will not
say it, for the drift of memories made and unmade will beckon
so loudly as to silence any apology or vindication we had
each rehearsed these past 35 years, and the lady behind the
register will ask us not to touch the glass cases, our fingerprints
leaving tiny radials of friction, those splotchy flecks of us that
future anthropologists will use to reproduce the particulars of love.
Michael O'Neill writes fiction and poetry in Chicago. His work has appeared in Maudlin House, Ghost City Press, WhiskeyPaper, Literary Orphans, Unbroken Journal and Great Lakes Review, among others.
Return to March 2020 Edition