Egg-and-Spoon Life Marathon
By Charlie M. Case
“—but then it turned into this school I used to go to when I lived in Iowa, or a place I understood to be the school even though it didn’t look a thing like real life, and while I was walking through I was still holding the glass bulb so carefully, not really looking up—oh, thank you!”
“Thanks—a little more? Yeah, thanks. Okay, you were saying?”
“Yeah, so I was holding it, and in the school hallways there was this tall, fine grass growing. It was really soft, and while I walked I was kind of wading through it like water. I don’t remember if there was a breeze, but the grass was definitely moving as if there was? Like, the light was blowing across it, like when it’s windy on a prairie. And out of the corners of my eyes I could tell there were things moving in the grass.”
“Things?”
“I don’t know, like, animals or shadows or something. Things. I knew they were there, I was curious about them, but I didn’t turn to look because I had to focus on the bulb. I think there was wind, actually, because I was afraid it would blow right out of my hands and into the grass. And it’d either break or I’d never find it again.”
“Did you actually end up dropping it?”
“No. I never did. I was still walking, staring down at it in my hands when I woke up.”
Charlie M. Case is a fiction author and incidental poet with roots in both U.S. coasts, and as such is never free of longing. Case has prior been published in Apricity Press, Major 7th Magazine, and Long River Review, and holds a B.A. in English from the University of Connecticut. More of Case’s work can be found at https://cmcase.org/.