They would go for walks, but their attention never seemed to stray toward each other. Even when they spoke it was more like a phone message had been left. They noticed this occasionally and each was relieved to think that the other didn’t. It was the noise of the waves, they told themselves. Or the distraction caused by busy birds and waving limbs. Sometimes, on rocky patches, it was foot placement that managed their attention. The summits of hills produced mostly a sense of philosophical dualism. The only moment they would have that hinted of connection was when they would both spontaneously decide it was time to turn back. Later, each of them would see those moments as an accomplishment, when it was never that at all. It was more like two people with the same lung capacity had held their breath until they couldn’t anymore. Direction would change, and nothing on the way back would seem new, even when a different route was taken to house, to motel, to car.

And when she died after a sudden illness, he had never felt so alone. He made a shrine of their home. Didn’t move or touch any of the things that had been hers.

Daryl Scroggins

has taught creative writing and literature at The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of North Texas, and the Writer’s Garret, in Dallas. He now lives in Marfa, Texas. He is the author of This Is Not the Way We Came In, a collection of flash fiction and a flash novel (Ravenna Press), Winter Investments: Stories (Trilobite Press), and Prairie Shapes: A Flash Novel (winner of the 2004 Robert J. DeMott Prose Contest). His poems, short stories, and creative nonfictions have appeared in magazines and anthologies across the country, including Blink Ink, Cutbank, Eastern Iowa Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Star 82 Review, and Third Wednesday, among others.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Suitcase Full of Clay: An Ekphrastic e-Collection in MacQueen’s Quinterly, aka MacQ (Issue 18, April 2023)

⚡ Roadshow, microfiction by Daryl Scroggins in MacQ (Issue 15, September 2022); one of three pieces by Scroggins selected as Finalists in “The Question of Questions” Ekphrastic Writing Challenge

⚡ Spring, microfiction by Scroggins in MacQ (Issue 12, March 2022)

⚡ Writer Boy, microfiction in MacQ (Issue 4, July 2020); nominated by MacQ for Best Microfiction 2021

⚡ Field Trips, flash fiction by Scroggins in KYSO Flash (Issue 12, Summer 2019)

⚡ New to School, microfiction in Eclectica (Jan/Feb 2018)

⚡ Two Fictions: “Almost Baptized” and “Against the Current” in New Flash Fiction Review (Issue 10, January 2018)

⚡ Eight Stories: A Mini-Chapbook by Daryl Scroggins at Web del Sol