Ian M. Anderson

Eck sat at his desk. He noted just then how a beam of sun had passed, shading his blue typewriter a darker blue. The chatter of his son weaved child’s talk into his reverie about light and shadow, dust columns and wrinkled paper. He lifted his hand and let it travel through the slanted division of morning and afternoon. “Da!” The red-faced child crawled around the corner. “I’m sorry, Honey.” Eck’s wife swept the baby off the floor, whispering something about Daddy’s work. Until the stars wheeled into view, he toyed with this phrase: The passage of time is loss.

At 7:00 Warren George woke up and sneezed for ten minutes. In the bathroom, he splashed water on his face until his eyes stopped tearing. He then proceeded to empty his sinuses. Three minutes later, as he looked at himself in the mirror and thought all was well, he began to choke and spit in the sink. It was 7:25 when Warren popped the cap off the first pill bottle. He filled the paper cup to the brim with each handful: levocetirizine, diphenhydramine, odansetron, oxymetazoline, naproxen. Sable, Warren's young bride, sighed and smiled to herself at his cute morning routine.