Not Pregnant. She shook the digital stick and the extraneous word held steady. Blink. Still there. Christopher! Shocking green tape hid shattered glass, evidence of Monday’s departure. He ignored her messages, thinning now after five days of reality.

He had laughed, at first, stretching his naked toes through the wooly bathroom rug. Fingers perfected each glistening strand before he glimpsed her tearful reflection, and called her a liar. She produced the stick with the blue lines, then the package instructions.

Their lives juggled sizzling into a vanilla bathroom baggie, tied and tied and bagged again as his acid words stripped raw her dewy skin. Words from walls on needle-strewn streets found canvas on sweating suburban marble as he dressed without missing a button. She bled for comfort but did not bleed. The bag jiggled limp in his purpling fist as he crashed the door open, splintering lead and antique glass.

She touched her tearless eye now and crouched on the foyer steps, frozen at the turning lock. “Peaches! I’m back,” came the comforting voice she craved, “what the heck happened to the door?”

They met at the gazebo behind the old elementary school. Glynnis spread tiptoes and watched him clomp up the hill, his fists stretching knit jacket pockets. A confident moon hid any insecurity, his posture straight, not stiff. A joyful shiver tickled her soul, delight in knowing she was wanted. She couldn’t see his face, but it didn’t matter. This was about connection, not attraction.

They met online in a community activism forum. Evan amused himself reading her passionate battles with experts, until he realized he was on her side, even when she was wrong. He stood up for her once, and she wrote to thank him. She sounded innocent, irresistible, so unlike the others.

They met in second grade in Mr. Westley’s class, before he was fired for reading Bible stories. Glynnis knew all the stories and corrected Mr. Westley when he missed a moral. Evan adored the tales, more horrific than his brother’s comics, terror dripping from frameless watercolor pages. He knew she didn’t remember him.

They stepped together as he entered the gazebo, her backward move instinctive. The moment paused as avatars unmoving they sought inhuman reflex. Pixels to pores and breezing tendrils, she pinched a stray curl from glossy lips, his fantasy in living clay. Words and symbols, eloquence and poise, months of careful construction reduced to scaffold this instant as his fingers unfurled.

They stepped together toward the view they could not see, subtle squints at moonlight licks on twisting river tails. Evan grasped rotting wood, shooting electric sins to ground in timeless earth. Her pudding voice slid over familiar words, soothing repetition in mumbling bubbles that floated beyond reach and popped with moonbeam needles.

They stepped together and melted in first touch as he exhausted her words in wet acquiescence. Life was only his fingers on her waist, seeking spine and releasing energy he no longer claimed as his own. He pressed harder, sending his past into her forgiving bones, praying for a future without lies. Glynnis opened to his gifts, his firm pressure burying her secrets in layers of hope and acceptance. At once they both existed, and were no more, present instant by instant.

Knowing warmth parted them in morning ignorance. Their final touch on shadowed path spoke nothing. They stepped away together, private icons revealed through foggy beams, the dust of missing generations. He teased away her curl in fluttery fingertips, exploring his new lightness in her butterfly laugh. This time he would not sever the connection.

There is a cracked painting on the wall. It is not cracked. It is not a painting. There is an abstract print on the wall. The glass is cracked by the shadow of a line. The glass is not cracked. If you are not afraid of the crushing frame, you can stand under the print.

Did the artist see the crack? Whose life lies under glass, inside cracks and outside smudges out of reach? Every angle shadows a flaw, reveals imperfection and hides reality. If the frame should fall, the shatters will still never match the crack in the painting.

Pansy was 18 months old the day Mama slithered the blue ribbon from her drifting hair and tied Pansy’s wrist to the suitcase on the back porch. Mama almost blew away with the curls, until Papa took his hands from his hips and raised his palms in submission. The ribbon released its bite on the chubby little wrist and tamed the curls back in place. Mama scooped her up and gusted back inside, leaving the suitcase for Papa.

The next day Papa began to build the fence that would protect Pansy from the vicious licks of Hidden Lake. Neighbors stopped by to hammer and saw and soon the lake was cut in half as Pansy scooted to the edge of the window for a one-eyed view of the fading blue. Mama bustled about, serving food and drinks, while Grandpa kept Pansy busy telling her stories of sharp things and little fingers.

That was when Pansy found out about the scar. Grandpa told her an apple fell on her head while she and Mama were napping under the tree last summer. She touched her head and then the window, where her finger covered the last of the lake. When she pulled it away, the fence was complete and Mama stood behind her and cried.

Pansy was 14 when Papa told her that Mama was sad because she couldn’t see the water; that all she ever wanted was a cottage near the water and a beautiful baby to hold. She didn’t realize the baby would awaken all her fears and an ugly scar wouldn’t let her forget her mistakes. Pansy asked why they didn’t take down the fence when she grew older. Papa told her it kept her safe from men.

Upstairs in Grandpa’s room, the only one with a view of the lake, Pansy learned of Clara. He told her Clara could take away the scar and end her mother’s pain, so Pansy set out right away for the shack at the end of the lake. She used one of Mama’s ribbons over the gate latch, so she could reach it when she returned.

Clara told Pansy to take three eyeless potatoes and bury them under the apple tree on the South side during the next half-moon. Pansy searched the cellar and every potato was covered in eyes. She carried three she liked best and carefully removed the eyes with Grandpa’s fishing knife before she buried them under the tree. She checked the mirror every day and the scar remained the same.

Mama stayed in her room with a view of Prisoner’s Hill, while Pansy crept away each afternoon to play with the neighborhood boys. She soon forgot the spell and was captured in the eyes of Christian Heath. He called her Johnny Jump-up and said she too petite to be a real Pansy. She thought she might drown in his eyes until she discovered his mouth could stop her heart.

Papa promised the fence would come down when she turned sixteen, but then he discovered Mama’s ribbon. He stormed past Grandpa and Pansy playing checkers on the porch, and banged right up to Mama’s room. Pansy stood to follow, and Grandpa captured her fragile wrist and nodded his head for her to sit. The shouting didn’t last long, and soon the screen door clanked open and Mama emerged with her suitcase and a smile that chased away the years. She walked through the open gate and Papa stood firm, hands on hips. He glanced at the board and asked, “Who’s winning?”

This story was written after requesting writing prompts on Twitter.

I scraped the last of Keddy’s rot from my driveway and dumped the sour skins. Late autumn beams gave warmth for sandals and sun hats. In three years I had never bitten a fallen apple. That would be stealing. I stripped wet gloves to prepare for my task.

Seventeen would not make it serial. Each act was unique and, though compelled, I knew that I had changed. An antique bag concealed my tools and I scavenged for new additions. Dirty paper outlined details dripped in blue, with no expected confirmation of closure. The leather mouth consumed twine and scissors, a wonder I hadn’t needed them before.

I walked in humility without my early resentment at obligations. This body shed cells of regret a thousand times these three years. I was new. There was no moral of conversion. Tonight the work would be complete, but I would not.

A sweet bonfire wind tickled porch chimes, baritone verse in tousled wood. The empty hook winked me a shiver and I dreamt the final token. Maybe Zoe wouldn’t pounce the fence to bat at chimes if I carved the yew in delicate treble. I pocketed the dull blade and slipped into my rubber boots.