Train by M. Foote

It was flurrying. Snow days are some of the best for taking pictures because of the light. In photography, the hour after the sun rises and the hour before sun set are called the “golden hours” because the diffusion of light makes everything more colorful and rich without the harshness of direct sunshine. The snow does that too, hiding what it covers but illuminated everything above it.

He was sitting next to me, a million miles away. Starring out the window while the scenery slide by in a white blur. The conductor took our tickets. With two clicks, he punched them.

We were the only ones in our car. Like every Amtrak train the seats were blue with a collection of odd stains. It was very quiet, like a house before alarm clocks start to ring. I could hear him breathe in and out, and I was acutely aware of his chest rising and falling ever so slightly under his sweater. Light poured through the windows, illuminating him. If I had my camera I would have stopped hearts with this image. His hair was just like it always was, a messy pile on top of his head. His freckles were stark against his skin. My eyes strayed to his neck, thick and defined above his collar.

He had no eyes for me, only for the fields out the window. He watched the country as I watched him. He was speeding by, a blur. He was moving so fast I couldn’t quite see him before he was gone.

The snow was falling and each flake was something I wanted to tell him, but it was gone, behind us, in the past before we even had time to see it. Every flake made my heart ache like a veteran’s knee when it rains. This must be, I thought, the beginning and end of all my sorrow.

We had so much in common, he and I. After a while more went unspoken than didn’t. Slowly rules had started to govern each exchange. We sped down the tracks and all the things I wanted to say couldn’t be separated from the things I couldn’t say. We had somehow lost each other in all the conversations we weren’t having. What had brought us together, the ability to let so much go unsaid, was now a silent barrier between us.

I wanted his fascination with the fields to end. I wanted him to look at me. I wanted to lay my head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat instead of the rumble of the tracks. I wanted my camera so I could capture him in this moment, while I still had him.

But instead, the train kept going, the snow kept falling, he kept looking out the window, and I kept wishing that things would go back to the way they never were, the way they were never going to be.

An Impression of the World by Lord Bryan

Henry sat against the wall, seated comfortably in his wooden rocking chair beneath the window. The window lit him from behind, warming his hands, and, more importantly, illuminating the pages of his favorite book. Henry sighed, contented. He liked that rocking chair, that window, that book quite a lot. He spent his time there, and felt it comfortable enough to sit in for an eternity.

Henry is a painting.

He lives in the Guggenheim, in one of the back rooms. Perched over the meeting table, he watches the business side of art twice a week. He loved the dulcet droning of the businessmen, and hung on every last word of Mr. Henderson, the artistic director. And twice a week, Henry would glance up from his book surreptitiously, look across the room to the five or six sleepy attendants or interns. And twice a week they would leave him, turn out the light, and Henry would be alone again. Except for Alice.

Alice was a surrealist that hung on the other side of the conference table. She was a thin, red-faced woman with no legs and a sideways mouth. Even though she was always nice to him, Henry found her annoying. When the businessmen left, she whistled. No tune in particular; she mostly just whistled whatever. Henry couldn’t read when she made noises, and that was annoying. But Henry never said anything. He was an impressionist, and impressionists don’t talk to surrealists.

One day, after a particularly long meeting, Alice called out from across the room. Despite Henry’s most fervent efforts to ignore her, she kept calling, calling him. He ceded her a smile and a wave before returning to his reading.

“Don’t you just love the birds, Henry?” She called from her sideways mouth. He nodded and smiled, just as he always did when she talked to him. She really was a surrealist; the only thing in Henry’s window was sky. “Do you see the birds, Henry? Can you see through that window above you? Look, they’re nesting!”

Henry smiled and nodded. Alice started whistling a sideways tune.

Months passed by in such a manner. Alice obsessed over the fictitious birds. There were three hatchlings, in whose mouths the mother would regurgitate chewed worms. The sustaining worms fostered the hatchlings until they grew big and strong and eventually flew out of the nest.

That upset Alice. She bawled for hours when the little birds she had grown to love abandoned their windowsill home. She cried and cried and asked Henry why he didn’t do the same. Henry kindly asked her to be quiet; he was trying to read. So she sobbed quietly. During the months where Alice created lives for her fine feathered friends, Henry did not get much reading done. She would whistle in feeble imitation of a bird and flap around within her frame. Henry never stooped to her level, though. He stayed, quietly, in his chair, beneath his window, looking up from his book only for a few seconds, and only when Mr. Henderson walked in.

One such day, Alice was whistling right before Mr. Henderson came in. He threw his coat onto the rack and started shouting at his assistant.

“Can’t believe it. Bird shit on my shoulder while I was walking in! Get that jacket dry-cleaned.” He gestured towards the aforementioned rack, then pointed above Henry. “Call up some intern and tell them to get that nest out of that window. No way is that bird going to keep crapping on my Miata.”

He sat down in his regular seat. “While you’re at it, get that piece of shit out of here. I’m sick of looking at it twice a week.”

The assistant grabbed Alice’s frame and took her away. She waved a sideways wave and smiled an upright smile. Henry returned the smile and nodded before going back to reading.

He finished his book later that week.

All Aboard the Blogwagon!

I wish I could call myself original, but alas! the recent creation of Article VIII is indicative not of my personal get-up-and-go, but rather of my desire to be a member of you glorious websters in the blogosphere. Here I am! I have arrived! Will.i.am., don't beat me up!
Anyway, in my desperation to be just like everyone else, I (of course) had to find something to separate myself and the layman. Inspiration hit me like a sack of wood screws in an abandoned warehouse at the hands of merciless loan sharks, brought upon by an ugly addiction to lottery tickets when my sister mentioned the prospect of publishing a magazine for local artists and writers, etc.. Here's the deal: email your short stories (fiction or nonfiction) and poems to ArticleVIII@gmail.com along with a title, category of writing, and either your real or pen name, and I will read it over, edit it if you so desire, and publish it here. It should be a party!