Love Letters by Richard R. Barron I stood in the same spot in the wind for what seemed like 30 minutes. It was very cold. Maybe it was the wind and the cold that kept me from moving. That was my excuse, anyway. I had those six letters in my hand, six identical white envelopes,…

Wallpaper by Richard R. Barron “This wall is so plain,” she muttered to herself, staring at the blank, grey facade. “What can I do, what can I do?” she continued, trailing off to a whisper by the last word. She felt a strange, urgent, crushing tension inside her, a need, an overwhelming desire. As quickly…

Walking Away by Richard R. Barron Goodbye is a good cry. There is something about the turn of autumn that hurts us inside. It’s an insane time, when anyone with any artistic or poetic heart feels a sense of loss, or remembrance, or hunger. The hunger is this: when the primary weave of our lives…

Bolt by Richard R. Barron I sat on a folding chair on my balcony, waiting. The black sky all around me was momentarily quiet. A few seconds before, a flash of lightning hit the ground to the south, tripping the breaker on my air conditioner, silencing it as well. I relaxed in the momentary lull. My camera pointed…

Sangre de Christo by Richard R. Barron Sunday As usual, her hands smelled like gasoline. It was unavoidable. To her, though, it was a good smell. It meant that soon she’d be flying again. Standing before her bright white and blue Cessna Skyhawk 172, she pulled on the center of the propeller and the airplane…

Shamrock by Richard R. Barron “Life is like a really expensive cut of beef that you’ve just overcooked.” At 9:30 p.m. Greg was just finishing his shift, and Shelly was about to start hers. He removed his grubby red polyester smock and tossed it in a ball on the floor under the cash register. As it was most nights,…

Wild Horses by Richard R. Barron My tears fall in her hair. She says she’s 5’4″ tall, but in my arms, she felt smaller. We pull away from each other and look at each other through our tears. I smile, and more tears come. This is goodbye. I thought about those tears as I made…

In 1992, some co-worker friends and I created my second iteration of a writing club, a template I used again and again to try, often without success, to get creative minds together. In 1992, the group consisted of Pam Young (later Hudspeth), Frank Rodriguez, Melissa Price (later Davis) and me. I still have contact with…

– Preface – As of the initial publication of this story on October 24, 2013, I have been in Ada, Oklahoma, working at The Ada News, for 25 years. In some ways, this short story, Acme Road Bridge, is the story of how I landed here. This turned into one of the hardest short stories I’ve…

Ice by Richard R. Barron Also see: The Rain Comes Down Long underwear, hiking boots, a wool sweater, a big coat, a yellow rain jacket, and a black ball cap gave me the look of an all weather photographer. I toted a duck-taped, garbage-bag-wrapped 600mm lens as well. Feeling like the emblem of a working professional photographer, I stepped onto the…

Southbound 63 by Richard R. Barron Weary from eight hours on the road but excited to see her, I followed her up the stairs of her non-air-conditioned dorm room at the University of Missouri. Once in her third-floor room, baking in the lingering warmth of campus concrete, I looked out over campus. For a moment…

The Road By Richard R. Barron A gentle August rain fell on us as we drove nowhere for an hour or more, saying nothing. In the distance, lightning danced, decorating the horizon with the shadows of cool grey clouds. Thinking without words in my heart, I listened to the faint complaints of a distant clap of…