A magazine is open on an end table which bisects a row of uncomfortable black chairs lined against a wall, opposite the front desk, which is white, the color of cleanliness, and juts very slightly into the space between it and the two rows of seats that set back to back in the room’s center.…
Tag: Shaun Rouser
Dorothea
Dear, darling Dorothea, the world deserves no less than truth, a transparent portrait of our relationship, though I doubt its essence will be apprehended by most. Not amid today’s din of cynicism will many hear nor among the cloudbursts of vapid images will they see. In spite of this, I shall try. You merit no…
A Mood of Homelessness
For as long as I can recall, I have never been very interested in local news. Aside from spasms of voracious news consumption—which included national and international events—this has always been the case. It’s not difficult to imagine what my college journalism professors would think of this disclosure if by some stranger-than-fiction circumstance they read…
One-Year Reunion
Weeks beforehand he could only think of the last time he had seen her, Noelle—luggage in tow, shouldering a door, and refusing (he assured myself) herself a glance backwards. It was the most predictable, and cheerless, moment of their relationship but, as often happens, also the most ineradicable. In their parting were the sinews of…
The Champion
On a makeshift dais that had been constructed at the front of the restaurant, a single room shack whose entirety could be seen from its entrance, set four square dining tables, placed side by side and covered with an immaculate, white, plastic table cloth. The ceiling fans, too few to matter and gilded with dust,…
The Blessing
Richard B. was a brilliant child, a smart adolescent, and is a mediocre adult. His mother, a waitress, a pleasant, long-faced woman with unremitting cigarette breath whose intelligence has always been what Richard B.’s is today, birthed the boy, her only child, in a park sitting under an Oak tree. “When he was ready, he…