It was the winter I spent with a gun in my mouth. The snow unmanageable. The drifts up to the windows. It was like peering out a ship’s portholes. I wondered if the boat next door was coincidentally passing or if we belonged to a fleet of pathological dreamers. The floor swayed beneath my feet. Support beams creaked. Plates slid off the hutch and crashed into shards. It wasn’t until the sea calmed, the windows still in their frames, I realized the gun was a candy cane, and the bullets did little more than turn my tongue a brighter red.
Joshua Michael Stewart is the author of Break Every String, The Bastard Children of Dharma Bums, and Love Something. His work has appeared in the Massachusetts Review, Salamander, Plainsongs, Brilliant Corners, South Dakota Review, Permafrost, and many others. He lives in Ware, Massachusetts. joshuamichaelstewart.com.
The Centifictionist 
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