A Letter for Nathan
Winner of The Headlight Review Featured Fiction Contest!
It has been years now since I thought of the night I buried my nephew in an unmarked grave just under the oak tree. I fear years is both too long and too short to have revisited this nightmarish period of my life but now as I write this letter I recognize it is not my hands guiding me but his, the boy buried beneath the oak. Why he has waited all these years for me to tell his story is beyond me. - Stephen Arnold
Mama’s Hair
She lies on the couch, propping
her head with a pillow, tossing her hair,
a million points splaying like nerves over the arm.
I start to brush through the thicket with the grain—
the ends first, carefully teasing them out
so not to stir up her aching tangled inside.