Day 1 Winner AND Overall Winner of Quarto’s Thunderdome Fiction Contest. View the Day 1 prompt here.
Illustration by Charlie Blodnieks
an U-Bahn ride to our transfer station, we got onto an above-ground train packed — still and
tired and let my eyes focus — filtered the sunlight, made fluid patterns on the interior of our car.
I felt as though I were in my childhood backyard swimming pool, below the surface, looking up.
For hours, I used to try to float upside down, touch my feet to the water’s surface, and pretend I
was walking — flickered across faces of total strangers. The spotlight’s on — was transfixed,
watching the curve of the train down a hallway of connected cars.
felt more — stood in line at the gates — laughed as we poured fresh beers from their bottles into
my Nalgene — was our turn to pay a handful of — each and — who couldn’t have been more
than fourteen flaunted and posed, newly self-aware in their black bikinis, nails painted neon and
mouths loudly smacking gum. They fiddled clumsily with cigarettes and dug through each
other’s purses — restaurant tables that sat young, tattooed couples with parked strollers and
unleashed dogs — lower in the sky.
— alone but for a mother in a hijab watching her toddler, who waddled — the swing-set — a
low, ringing trumpet — finally, a voice like molasses, like Nina Simone’s, uninhibited and —
standing in the rain, and — began again from the beginning — bookshelf, I found a letter I wrote
to him during — blue sweatshirt and sandals and sat in a train seat next to the