O'Hare

by Colin Bassett

We were in Cooperstown and swimming in the lake in the mornings. Someone drove us one and a half hours to Albany for a flight after beers in a café. Flying made us hungry and grown-up feeling for moments in Chicago waiting. We ate and drank a little and felt crowded boarding in the dark after a shuttle had taken us to the plane. I felt sick and listened to music and you watched people talking in front of us and didn't sleep or say anything. We both noticed the teenage girl across the aisle reading a book we had both read, then watched the storm we were flying around and I felt like the clouds were maybe the opposite of what it felt like to swim so that the shore is behind you and there are just dark lines of waves and a thin horizon and something that feels sad and a little boring, like distance.

6S

Colin Bassett is the editor of the online fiction journal bearcreekfeed. He has published in the Mississippi Review, 3:AM, and Dicey Brown, and has two small chapbooks available here and here.