Here’s a short story vignette that I had posted on a private blog but I wanted to locate them all in one place. I don’t plan on developing the story further than I’ve brought it. It’s a sampling of life, a taste of a fictional happening. I’m reserving rights to this for myself so I would rather you link to it than copy any portion of it.

Hovering through the diner, face lined by the years and brow perpetually furrowed, is what may have been a man in days long gone. The memory of a man, bent over, never seeing its companions, never looking further than the hands folded before it.

And yet…and yet the wind outside cascades over quiet hills, past empty roads, through the Diner’s crack-laden parking lot, up it’s faded façade and into the establishment dangerously tugging at the ephemeral man. The wind paws with the edge of his shirt, playing with it, calling him to attention and asking.

What made him alight in this fading place, where the patrons were few, the ovens cooling and the hours long? What almost forms a smile as he now turns and stands by the window, eyes glazed over, and a wayward sunbeam makes a constellation of dust sparkle.

As his lips move silently and his shaking hand hovers over the sill is he whispering words of comfort to a love long gone yet never forgotten? What stories do the crevices on his face tell of soft reaching fingers and whispered words waving away?

The constellation of dust swirls as the sun and wind repel him from the sill and he’s carried away, twirling through the faded old diner once more, face lined by the years and brow perpetually furrowed.