Tragedies

By Vladimiro Vilarino

A little boy jumps off a cliff with dreams to fly. They shatter on the surface of the white ocean. A little girl wanders into a nearby forest to find enchanted beasts. She is never seen again until the midnight news.

A black feathered hen crosses a freeway. It was the most gruesome chicken massacre in all of animal history. Thousands of dollars of insurance, property damage, and funeral bills are such insignificance. Nonsense compared to the death of my hen.

A window washer replays and relives the attack on the towers. He shuts down any offer to clean any building higher than two stories. He petrified at the sight of skyscrapers. He soils his pants at the roars of hovering airplanes. He remains to the ground where he is dragged inside an alley and stabbed by a man demanding to see a purple dragon.