Horizon - Issue 01

M A R I A N A
[short story] by Tom Goodyer
Except on Fridays, when the laundry needs doing, there is always an uncorralled
moment of tiny worth at the close of each afternoon. Pouring black coffee into
white cups. Watching the grey plumes of steam fold and wither like fabric or
the damage that linden tree leaves can do to cold sun light with their shadows’
impossible geometry.
Sitting high up on this balcony and maybe reading a book or just watching,
Anoushka feels these moments as more golden than apricots and she is hold ing
a half-bitten apricot now. Bright juice runs down her arm like veins. Sometimes
the smell of the Moroccan family’s cooking reaches out of their window
and gestures of cinnamon and turmeric, feinting eulogies of mint, reach taut
nostrils in grateful goes. Sometimes there are bundling sounds from their floor
at night.
The street below is quiet. Nothing but the consonant scroll of bicycles talking
past each other and sometimes a shout from a middle-distant square, where
kids shunt around a football in worn-out trainers, breach the surface tension.
[41]