The Gone World

by Tom Sweterlitsch

Growing up, Moss thought of her mother as just another Guntown drunk, a wreck, but now she saw her mother was wounded, a perspective that came with age, when everyone settled into the same slew of adulthood, when everyone was wounded and could more easily overlook the wounds of others.

God is a pestilent light ringed with black stars.

“Have you ever lost someone close?” she asked. “I have.” “You forget the bad, your memory tries to heal the past. Years don’t matter either,” said Nicole. “Time just burns. Time burns, and you think the wounds are cauterized, but they open up raw, again and again.”

Nestor went to the bar for drinks while I waited in one of the crescent-shaped booths, the Courtyard Marriott’s lobby bar like an airport lounge, nightclub-sleek but comfortable only for as long as it took to get someplace else.