Matt Flintoff

"Describe the #pain on a scale of 1 to 10."

He almost laughed. She'd slept on his left for thirty-one years. He'd awoken one morning and reached for a warmth that wasn't there.

"Seven."

The physio nodded. February rain streaked the clinic window. He watched it fall and said nothing more. #vss365

They'd said it had no provenance. She bought it anyway. Winding it before bed, she listened in the dark.

That tune.

How?

He'd hummed it while cooking, standing over the stove in a threadbare robe. Some objects carry a #soul, her grandmother once told her. She wound it again. And again. #vss365

A #thrum of brass and laughter filled the dance hall. Cigarette smoke hung blue beneath chandeliers. She stood by the far wall, turning a glass in her hand, deciding something. He crossed the floor not knowing why.

Sixty years. He reached for her hand over starched sheets and shut his eyes. #vss365

Thank you former Daniel Cummings!

Bold lines mapped their future, laying out walls and floorplans. On the final page, the pencil had barely pressed the paper. There were only faint, trembling marks like fox trails across snow. A cloud seemed to #obfuscate his mind, he wrote in the margin, letters buckling into one another.
#vss365

Sometimes, late at night when sleep refused her, she'd press play. His laugh filled the empty apartment. "Hey, it's me. Just calling to say—" The recording would #quiver then, static bleeding through his voice, crackling into something softer. In three years, she'd never heard the rest.
#vss365

Steam curled up, jasmine tea leaves unfurling slow in the clouded glass. Mei lifted the cup, breathing it in; honey and summer gardens and something else, not quite there. His chair sat empty across from her, as it had for eleven months now. Neon flickered to life as daylight began to #wane.
#vss365