6SV3: 04/10: Homebound

There is a blog devoted to the six sentence story. It is, somehow or other, also a social networking site. I don't pretend to understand, but I do enjoy constraints like that. I submitted a six-sentence story earlier this year for a book-length collection of such stories, and was pleasantly surprised when my story was chosen for publication. Something about being printed in real-life, paper-and-ink, seems somehow more legitimate to me, despite the fact that eBooks seem all the rage right now and also the fact that I am currently writing in a very digital format. Still. It was exciting.

Homebound

That so much space and serenity could be packed into a second would have been impossible for anyone but Harold Berglund to see.  He had walked this route – church, pharmacy, grocery store, home – for some thirty years, and his feet knew well the angle and integrity of every sidewalk paver.  Today, though, in the wake of a January thaw turned freeze, Harold Berglund’s boots found a slick patch, sending him into the air.  His arthritic body was in flight, and he let his mind drift as well, to all the times he almost moved to warmer climes – Palm Springs, Tucson, he’d even thought at one time about Costa Rica.  But he’d stayed, ever the dutiful Midwesterner, for his wife, now gone, and their children, whom he never saw.  He saw it all as he flew through the smallest space in his neighborhood, speeding towards the ground he knew so well, where he would break his hip and go to sleep forever.