I take a mid-day meal to her, and she looks out through her glass door, terrified. Her baby-bird hair is electric with worry. She fumbles with the lock, and failing, knocks on her side of the door.

She tries again. The bolt slides free and she opens. I smile and place the box in her hands. “What is this?” she asks, looking at it. I remind her that it’s her lunch, the lunch we bring each day. She looks up at me with her eyes of sky. “Will you tell me again,” she asks, “why anybody wants anything?”

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