Eric Roe
Infinite Flow
Autumn proposed to Winter. Winter ditched Autumn and melted into Spring, but Spring was swept off her feet by Summer, who took his sweet time before he finally started eyeing Autumn. Autumn gave Summer a dance, the two of them spinning breezy through the leaves. But Winter was Autumn’s true love. She blazed for him, drew him close from where he shivered. Later, Winter grew embarrassed by Autumn’s nakedness. He covered her in snow and resolved to go it alone. He marked her as the past tense of infinite flow.
As if she would never come around again.
Gathering
Because it was going to rain. Because I had not gone out to clear the drainage ditch and I knew the water would flood the yard. Because the tree had rotted and would drop its limbs at the first gusts of wind. There is no shelter here. That's what I tried to tell them. And Dad? Dad just stood there, smoking a cigarette, and he said, “Some things you just can't save, son.”
Eric Roe’s stories have won the Chautauqua’s Editors Prize and The Bellingham Review’s Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction, have been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes, and have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies, including Story, Redivider, december, and Best American Fantasy. The writer lives in Chapel Hill, NC, and serves as the editorial assistant at UNC's Marsico Lung Institute.
