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"In County": A new six-word story by Robert Olen Butler.

“Can’t you see Hemingway’s having breakfast with his grandson?”

Another year another almanac, a washed-out castle in the sand.

Divorced. Wife living with someone else. Pregnant with his child.

Some longings appear so frequently they must be instinct.

I decide it’s as good a place as any to stop, pant & smell the roses—

The old-timer outside the guard station was knifing his own tires.

A knife left by an untraced foot marks where to lay the body—fácil.

I roll lactic bubbles under my face with rose quartz, fuck a pillow in sleep.

I realized you were my fourth love, and the system was always doomed.

This box is full of wires, energy that moves in ways I can hardly fathom.

He thought about kissing her. Then he decided that she was just lonely.

She looked over through the falling snow. “Jack?” she said. “Is that you?”

It is February in Ukraine. Juliana tells the reporter she just wants to live in her country.

We know that we were lied to, the disaster was worse than we feared.

The doctor said your life will never be the same before she said hello.

At nineteen I lived for three months as an earnest cocaine addict.

The room barely fit a bed, a chest of drawers, and a rocker, all not hers.

We say America you are magnificent and we meant we are heartbroken.

Everything white is a white spider. The spider spins regardless of color.

There’s something about traveling by plane. People tell their secrets.

I put my hand on my stomach and had an image of the melting snowman.

The irreversible ink stain breaking the face of whatever we skate on.

He drew on time, and space, he drew on his powers, and their sleep.

I made him love me. To feel abandonment—again.

What a noise it must have made long ago. It’s not just me saying this.

Napoleon, who can say you don’t deserve my allegiance?

There was one lease Homer Young wanted above all others.

First a mother puts her child to sleep, then the other way around.

I know it’s a problem, that I prefer to think instead of live.