by Heather Bourbeau

He saw how the thinness of her calves was exaggerated by the large shapeless overcoat in camel—a color that seemed sophisticated twenty years ago. Here, however, the construction and her practical low pumps echoed mid-century European immigrant. He wondered what her native tongue was, what brought her joy. Staring but not seeing, he missed the small clues announcing she was from here, poor but on the upswing, and wearing her lover’s coat—his leftover musk warming her with each deep breath. She, however, noticed the middle-aged man looking through her, unaware that his nose slowly was beginning to bleed.

Heather Bourbeau’s fiction and poetry have been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cleaver, Eleven Eleven, Francis Ford Coppola Winery’s Chalkboard, Open City, The Stockholm Review of Literature, and the anthology Nothing Short Of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story. She has written in Madagascar, read in Tunisia, worked in Liberia, and wonders where she will explore next.