So I sit.
The yard hums with the people I built a family out of without ever once saying that was what I was doing. Soucy comes back with two plates and folds down onto the arm of the chair against my good side. Somewhere Berger is rating the sunset. Baz is photographing a kitten.
I do the thing I have never in my life let myself do at one of these.
Nothing. I hold nothing up. I fix nothing.
I sit in the middle of the loud warm wreck of everything I love. A plate I did not make in my hands. A cat that is not mine in my lap. A man who came after me when I was worth the least I have ever been worth pressed warm against my side.
For the first time in twenty-nine years I let the family I built do the holding.
It holds.
Five Hole Fiction #4
Thompson
okay. last one. everybody actually finish it
Davis
finished it
Marchetti
finished it on the flight home from the parade route
Hájek
i finished. i have been sitting with the ending for three days
Berger
i finished
Kowalski
you did not
Berger
i finished it DURING the cookout. in the bathroom. with the Cup in the next room. that's the most dedicated reader you have ever had
Mäkinen
done
Jensen
i finished
Davis
Jensen finished a book
Jensen
i finished TWO books this year. i'm a different man
