Suitor

(Part one here. Part two here.)

At the end of the arm, the gone arm, the burned-up arm, the not-really-at-all-there-except-a-crusted-flipper-of-bone arm, there was still a finger. A phantom finger.

At the end of his invisible arm, a phantom finger. He felt it. He understood the edges of it. He "used" it.

He ran the phantom finger over the ledges of his doorways, and felt the ripples in the painted wood, and the gathering dust that had accumulated there. He'd pull his arm away, and the dust the his phantom finger had stirred up would trail after and hover down.

He pointed at people with his phantom finger, and they would feel the gesture, and turn to him, respond to him. They would, counter people at sandwich shops turned to their magazines on back counters, know the gesture had occurred and greet him and make his sandwich. Bank tellers with all there attention on their cell phones would feel the phantom finger tap them on their foreheads—in their foreheads sometimes—and look up and turn his loose change into folding paper money.

He wore rings on his phantom finger.

He beat drumbeats on his table with his phantom finger.

He flipped coins.

He changed people's analog clocks.

The enormity of it all. Really.

***

This is done. Young Revolutionaries by Catherine Lacey, Chelsea Martin, and Ellen Kennedy is there to be downloaded. TOUGH! by Matthew Savoca is there to read online.

My book, Creation Stories, is there to be downloaded, too.

Next up is either a) a book by Blake Butler and Justin Dobbs or b) a book by Kendra Malone and Tao Lin. The B book will also feature four songs written by The Way It Is.

Links to all these people are available in the right hand column.