Youth in Its Splendor

The old woman once looked outside, through the high windows of her foyer, and saw that it was raining little rocks. She could hear them clattering. She saw people pressing their gray faces to kitchen window

David Connerley Nahm

The old woman once looked outside, through the high windows of her foyer, and saw that it was raining little rocks. She could hear them clattering. She saw people pressing their gray faces to kitchen windows one morning, rolling their eyes and moving their mouths without a sound. Sometimes a young girl in a blue dress would climb out of the maple in the back corner of her backyard and walk along the back fences in the moonlight. The woman stood at her bathroom window and looked out on the pale light in the yard and watched the girl walk. Sometimes there were birds in the house, roosting in the sconces, singing their songs. Sometimes books flew off shelves for no reason. She could hear her boys upstairs, running in the hallway, but when she stormed up to scold them, they were gone, their rooms were empty, their beds perfectly made.

The attorney nodded, looked at his watch and passed the documents over for her to sign.

 
 
 


David Connerley Nahm lives in Virginia, where he practices law and teaches college. His work has appeared in, or is forthcoming from, Little Fiction, B O D Y, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Trunk Stories, and Eyeshot. His first novel, Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky, will be published in August of 2014 by Two Dollar Radio.

 

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