Whenever I stare down a flight of stairs, I feel closest to death. When I was five, I almost tumbled downstairs. Death would have been easiest then, but my balance worked out that day; my daddy said, I didn’t push you, when I turned to face him. Forty years later, and I think of him still whenever I look down. My vision swims every time. Never mind that I feel eyes on my back every time I climb. Never mind that I drift from my husband for any railing. Never mind, they all said the past stands behind me now.
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Ross Showalter’s work appears or is forthcoming in Strange Horizons, F(r)iction, Sequestrum, Portland Review, Hobart, Cape Cod Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
Rejection Letters 