Broken

by Angela Carlton

Hung-over, on my way to a dreadful sales job, a homeless woman is trying to cross three lanes of traffic. Weathered, broken and she’s dragging the weight of a dirty suitcase behind her. She clutches a vodka bottle in the other hand, as I quickly divert my attention to a puny naked tree. Still, I think about things. I think-think-think about all of the things that separate us, the two of us, she and I. Nothing.

6S

Angela Carlton's fiction has appeared in Fiction at Work, Camroc Press Review, Burst, Every Day Fiction, Long Story Short, Pedestal Magazine, Pindeldyboz, Storyglossia and elsewhere. She won the Reader's Choice Award in 2006 with Pedestal Magazine.