Breakage

The repairman had such a rigid posture it startled people. It alarmed his mother the first time he stood. He saw the interiors of many houses. He avoided chat. He asked only about the offending appliance. Then, one morning, as he was maneuvering a stove, his elbow grazed a vase, toppling it. There were no flowers to cushion the fall. Hurrying nervously for a dustpan, the owner of the house, a man who seemed ashamed to require such help, said, “What a relief it must be for a vase to break.” The repairman said, “It sounded like a burst of laughter.” He laughed like that right after waking, and for the rest of the day, he did not feel compelled to speak. “Weeds don’t know the pleasure of snapping,” said the homeowner. Imagining weeds in water, the repairman said he had once dated someone who wanted a hornet’s nest for decoration. He found one abandoned and disintegrating near a river. He waded into the swiftest part and held the nest under water until the current stripped it away. He let his hands float on the white water.

Jordan Sanderson is originally from Hattiesburg, MS, and earned a PhD from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. His work has appeared in NANO Fiction, Caketrain, and burntdistrict, among other journals, and he has published two chapbooks, Abattoir (Slash Pine Press, 2014) and The Formulas (ELJ Publications, 2014). Jordan currently lives in Escatawpa, MS, near the Gulf of Mexico.