NOVEMBER 2009

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Once in the Night
By Lydia Copeland, Sep 26, 2009

I drove through many expanses of pine shadows and white lines, through cities tall and shining, where everyone was in for the evening and the road construction gleamed in the light.

I was open as an afternoon to you, a soft glow of pink and yellow in your kitchen. You were more surprised than I’d pretended in my head, and you carried me up the wood stairs to sit on the roof outside your room. Under dark maples, I took the picture of you kissing my cheek.

You had been with relatives who never loved you. You called me on the phone with a little whiskey in your voice. It had been raining where I was, and all the people in my house awakened to booms. I slipped on my shoes, found my keys and drove through the downed trees, through the pieces of my neighbor’s homes, through mailbox flags and bits of paper.

Once in the night we sat on the porch, coughing into our elbows and eating lozenges. You carried a cup of dirt and rocks, and made on the table between us a nest of pebbles. You were showing me what you’d found as a child, describing the eggs, small and speckled brown. How you’d brought them inside and laid them on a dish towel on the kitchen table for your family to see. Your mother was never home, just your father alone, in his bedroom, asleep on the phone.

Lydia Copeland’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Quick Fiction, Glimmer Train, NOÖ, DOGZPLOT, elimae, FRiGG, Pindeldyboz, Twelve Stories, SmokeLong Quarterly, and others. Her chapbook, Haircut Stories, is available from the Achilles Chapbook Series, as well as part of the chapbook collective Fox Force 5 from Paper Hero Press. She works in Manhattan and lives in New Jersey with her husband and son.

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