Two Fictions
Matthew Salesses

Curve

We pass through Witchita and Karen says it will be colder this year than the last. When I ask her how she knows this, she doesn't respond. I keep driving. The next day, and the next, and the next, I'll wake up before her, no matter how early, and put my hand on the curve of her back. We'll keep driving.



Donuts

Late at night the teenagers do donuts in my field. It's a full moon. I follow them to the university track. There are eight of them, four boys, four girls. They get onto a crash mat, and I watch them play tackle football, still too innocent to copulate. None of them are my kids. My kids have long left home. I watch their young bodies crash into each other again and again, and pray.

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