March
by Fred Muratori
Two of my colleagues whispered in the stairwell as I was on my way out for coffee. They glanced at me then looked away, fidgeting at their hair, their collars. I watched them for several seconds, intending to make them feel as uncomfortable as I did. With a snort, one began whispering again, keeping an eye on me the entire time. I continued with my business, exiting the building and attempting to walk as closely as I could to the street side of the pavement. I heard a siren up ahead as I passed a man in thick glasses selling plastic bottles filled with red liquid, quoting the Book of Revelation from memory. The large-paned window of the coffee shop bore several jagged cracks, and as I entered everyone sitting at the counter — eight people, hatless and pale — studied me with a concern bordering on anger, their eyes blood-laced, unblinking. I coughed, the same ear-popping cough with which I’d awakened that morning. Looks like rain, the waitress said, scribbling an order I had yet to verbalize. Her upper arms were thin and badly bruised. The day would be a long one and by the end of it I would adopt a set of assumptions for which there was no empirical justification.
Fred Muratori has published three full-length collections of poetry (Despite Repeated Warnings, The Spectra, A Civilization) and one chapbook (The Possible). His prose poems and nanofiction have appeared in 100 Word Story, Boston Review, Redivider, New Flash Fiction Review, The Best of the Prose Poem (White Pine Press) and many others. His reviews of current poetry appear in American Book Review, Manhattan Review, Library Journal and others. A graduate of the Syracuse Creative Writing Program, he lives and works in Ithaca, NY. You can find him online at https://fmuratori.wordpress.com.