The Things We Do

by Quin Browne

Draped in black, we stood huddled around the hole dug in the semi-frozen earth, the beauty of the first warm day of the year too bright for the occasion we were there to attend. The velvet lined box looked minute so far below, the first bits of dirt hitting it were muffled, more like dust motes landing on a table. Connie's voice lifted into a hymn, with the ceaseless wind picking up the pure tones, bringing them skyward, where they lingered for a moment before they, too, died. My daughter stepped forward, her voice was clear and strong as she gave the eulogy for her childhood friend, Irik... and her eyes filled with tears that painted the words with sorrow. It was over... we left the spot to go back to the house... to do those things one does after a funeral; chat, eat, move forward with life. I stopped for a moment, and lifted my face to the sun, giving thanks for the warmth that had thawed the earth enough to get that mangy little hamster corpse out of my freezer at last; then I, too, hurried to get out of the wind.

6S

Quin Browne's full catalog is here, which includes anything mentioning her name, and that video. (She places all the blame on the director who shall remain nameless *coughROBcough*.) Her time in New York has been grand, letting her find her voice, her stride, and Six Sentences, all of which she is eternally grateful for... the last most of all. ("So many of us first spread our wings here," she said. A message for Quin, whose wings helped put 6S on the map: THANK YOU and BEST OF LUCK in your new life!)

1935

by Quin Browne

He lay still, keeping his breathing even, listening to his parents on the other side of the bed curtain. The train moved south, carrying his family home; his parents, himself ill from scarlet fever and his older brother, who lay not in the lower bunk as usual, but, in a casket in the freight car. He heard them as they mourned, asking each other why God had not listened to their prayers. Their voices angry, sorrowful, puzzled wondering why in all His wisdom, this decision... choosing to grant the miracle of recovery to the wrong boy. He lay still, keeping his breathing even, understanding now what his life had become. He was six years old, an only child, and would never know their love again.

6S

Quin Browne has dedicated this piece to Stephanie Burton, who encouraged her to send her first six back in June of 2007. (From Quin: "Stephanie's a smart, savvy writer, who will go far in the world not because she is a smart, savvy writer, but because she's sassy, witty and loyal. Rock on, Bee, rock on.")

The Question

by Quin

"What did you think when you first saw me?" he asked, his voice moving over a thousand miles of time and space. "Your coat, I wanted to pour lighter fluid over it and set it on fire, it was that ugly," I replied lightly, desperate to not disclose how my soul had flown to his. Bold and brave in my first try out in this world after so long blocked by betrayal and fear, I sped though my question to him, "What did you think, when you saw me?" He paused, causing me to feel as if that one sentence had completely emotionally eviscerated me, wanting to pull back the words, sick to my stomach, trying to find a way to make it a joke, while over the pulse of the phone line, I could hear the whisper of his breathing, the intake before he spoke, and my heart waited to break. "I stared, thinking if I look at her long enough, will she know how much I need her?" We were both silent, overcome by the knowledge we'd found home.

6S

Quin, author of Innocent Statements, is the nom de plume of a woman born and raised in New Orleans, who spent time in Colorado and later in Utah (where theater was discovered and taken to heart). Her children are loved forever, a terrier sleeps at her feet, and words ache to escape onto paper. Her version of life in New York is here.

Words

by Quin

I've words to say. You've written something painful, something searing, something that hurt, something not meant to hurt, which hurts more in the end because it was so thoughtless, so throwaway in its manner, typed with partial attention as a reply with a click of "send," it shows how little I meant. To all the words written and as importantly, the words not written. Fuck you. Yes, you. Oh, and have a nice day.

6S

Quin, author of The Question, is the nom de plume of a woman born and raised in New Orleans, who spent time in Colorado and later in Utah (where theater was discovered and taken to heart). Her children are loved forever, a terrier sleeps at her feet, and words ache to escape onto paper. Her version of life in New York is here.

Innocent Statements

by Quin

Sixteen hours of labor and the baby is in fetal distress. Running doctors push my hospital bed into the white, white room; the baby is dying. Needles in my back, my arm, and the drugs flow while I float as they cut my body to pull out my beautiful, pure child. "A blonde haired boy!" the doctor says. "Blonde hair?" I joke in the haze of exhaustion and drugs. Everyone laughs but his dark-haired dad, who stops smiling and instead stares at me with the dead eyes of a shark.

6S

Quin is the nom de plume of a woman born and raised in New Orleans, who spent time in Colorado and later in Utah (where theater was discovered and taken to heart). Her children are loved forever, a terrier sleeps at her feet, and words ache to escape onto paper. Her version of life in New York is here.

If Only She Knew

by Quin

He loved her, he realized, enough to put aside his miserly ways, his penny pinching, all those habits he had to save a penny, save a dime that drove her mad, with the revelation hitting him the day she'd moved and changed her number, his only contact now her email. There he stood in his thrift store furnished flat, polyester pants and shirt, holding the second-hand faux diamond ring with tape wrapped around it to make it fit, as his world collapsed, taking with it all of his need to control life by controlling money. He was a changed man, flinging out the old, bringing in the new, from clothes, to dishes, to the beautiful ring sitting by his elbow. She'd agreed to one meeting, with the understanding if he didn't answer this email in the next ten minutes, it was over, no more tries, and he labored over the reply, pouring out his heart, his love, his need and desire for her, begging her to see her changed Silas Marner. Yes, a new man; with one small exception. He simply couldn't see paying for the internet on his new computer since you could just as easily "borrow" someone else's connection and so it was, as he typed that letter to change his life, to make her his, as his fingers sped their way across the keyboard, five seconds left, his finger moves on the mousepad to place the cursor over send, rises up to tap it and the connecti

6S

Quin, author of One, is the nom de plume of a woman born and raised in New Orleans, who spent time in Colorado and later in Utah (where theater was discovered and taken to heart). Her children are loved forever, a terrier sleeps at her feet, and words ache to escape onto paper. Her version of life in New York is here.

Horizontal Vortex

by Quin Browne

I am awake, heart pounding, lost as to where I am, what the object is I am on, my mind frantic in its search among the flotsam and jetsam of letters and images and words contained there that mean... nothing. The sensation doubly frightening; not only do I flounder while I seek the word for this... this thing, this surge of blood and endorphins that brings me to full, shaking awareness, it's that I am cognizant enough to realize I would not understand the meaning of the word should I find it there among the others. It happens more and more these days; scattered words on my dresser... on the floor... in a box of photos of people whose faces that are as lost to me as the name of the thing that they are. In the middle of a conversation, I am struck dumb seeking... something that has letters and a meaning, and I can't remember it and I'm like this human... eight ball that if I wait long enough, it will pop to the top of my head and suddenly... suddenly... I shout it, relieved and exhausted from the search. Creating my own spoonerism language, laughing at myself as this becomes that, words switch places, sentences flip flop... self-deprecation a weapon in the battle I fight in the hope no one will notice my longer and longer pauses... that their words won't start to whisper around me, slipping and settling in my ears, adding to my own thoughts of fear. I wonder, while I look out the window at things that do not fit a category in my memory, feeling the letters touch the edges of my mind... seeing them with peripheral thought, I wonder... will the words remember me?

6S

Quin Browne, author of Laurence Olivier is My Lover, lives in New York City. She likes it there.

Lullabye

by Quin Browne

It is in those hours before early morning, before light starts, when the room is still dark. I am never sure which of us awakens first, of whose body is aware... if it is you or me that changes from the soft movements of sleep to the focused movements that occur when you are conscious of that person next to you. The sweep of a hand down a stomach, the arch of a back allowing a slumberous murmur to become a welcoming moan. Adjusting to each other with still stretching limb, bodies warm, damp, sliding one into the other; a gasp. Touching your body to map you in my mind, my hands become my eyes... there are deep rumbles of laughter in your chest, my face in your neck, those final sounds you make causing me to close my eyes in deep release. Finally, I struggle to stay in that semi somnolent state... these dreams are far preferable to the naked truth of my solitary existence.

6S

Quin Browne keeps an online journal, where she rambles about nothing. Her 6S body of work is something she's proud of creating.

Athens, Georgia

by Quin Browne

So entwined they resembled some mutant crab, two young men scuttle across the mat, each contributing to the illusion of wrestling. Their object was to not allow anyone to grasp the slight physical nuances that made it the lover's tryst it had become for them. Smokescreen in place, they were school rivals who took turns winning, no one the wiser. Touching, grunting, hands sliding over each other in sweeping caresses, bodies pressed together... the sport allowed them the freedom of movement over each other they sought. Locked in a hold, face to face, lips near ears, heavy exhalations of breath bracketed sighed love words. Cheers and smack talk are later exchanged from the windows of filled cars as they conga line from the parking lot, the combatants surrounded by supporters while they, themselves, sit in a quiet bubble; their silence put down to loss or exhaustion - never to a rending heart who has left its beloved behind.

6S

Quin Browne is a writer who has yet to find that beloved who is "home." She blogs here.

Google Isn't My Friend

by Quin Browne

Frustrated after reading conflicting opinions, I used bowls of hot and cold water; not like I'd be around to discuss the results. In my mirror, my Doppelgänger; hazel eyes, cropped hair, lips pressed firmly together, she stared back. She blinked, not breaking eye contact, accepting her responsibility... this way, God would punish her... not me. Her blade went deep... one side, then the other. This is about us... we're weary and the possible pain of others was inconsequential. Amazement flared briefly as we discovered cold water worked as effectively as hot when you're bleeding out... definitely proof Google didn't know everything.

6S

Quin Browne misses New York, and wonders if it misses her.

Sex, Lies and Closed Captiona

by Quin

It took a multitude of dates, of fumbled gropings in her bed or theirs, of that uncomfortable dash for a taxi whose driver would glance at you knowingly before she realized she was happier with faux sex. She became an artiste, the phonefuck her canvas, something as unreal as the pleather that covered her furniture. The pleather soothed her vegetarian sensibilities because the material allowed her the look of leather without the guilt and the phonefuck allowed her to have sex under her control. It was on that pleather sofa that she reclined, a veritable Scheherazade, dressed not in silks, but in her sensible cotton pajamas, headset in place, weaving her tales of girls in school uniforms and dominatrix mistresses and women in rubber girdles for her select clientele who passed the rigorous selection process necessary to receive a call. She used her honey coated throaty voice to bring them to their moaning end, swearing they were with her in person, grateful to pay the exorbitant prices she charged, not knowing she watched her television with the sound off, cheating on occasion by stealing ideas from the multitude of porn channels there for one's viewing pleasure, allowing her to remain distanced from what she did or said. It was only when she was met by silence after passionately uttering the words "Fick me in my cubt!" that she realized spelling and accuracy in typing weren't necessary job requirements for the person who worked the closed caption desk.

6S

Quin isn't the real name. But, it'll do. Born and raised in New Orleans; that place will always be home. Time spent in Denver and Utah, where theater became a passion. Children are loved always; a terrier travels New York City with her; life is still to be discovered in many ways. She is the author of The Golden Child.

Six Days a Week

by Quin Browne

Open publication - Free publishing - More six sentences

6S

Quin Browne keeps an online journal, where she rambles about nothing. Her 6S body of work is something she's proud of creating.

The Golden Child

by Quin

She asked for a puppy when she was six, instead, they brought a baby boy home and said, "Look! A little brother for you to love!" Over the years, she played with him, and looked over him, and was always there for him, crooning when he had his accidents. The fall from the tree that broke his collarbone, the time the car hit him when he was playing with his trucks in the middle of their suburban street, everyone so thankful it was a small car, who had heeded the sign saying "CHILDREN PLAYING," although the driver hadn't actually expected to see a CHILD PLAYING. The time he was found blocks away, in a strange neighborhood, sitting in someone's garden, she was the one who scooped him up to carry him home when they'd searched for him all night long. She was the one who pointed out exactly where he went under when he decided to swim the lake to win his Boy Scout badge, and huddled over everyone while CPR was administered, the one who sat next to him in the hospital after the tragic accident that took the life of his new wife, holding his hand, telling him he would survive, there had been a bleed in the brakes, not to worry, she was there, she was there. When he died, she mourned and howled at the funeral, not in grief, but in anger, because cancer had taken his life before she finally managed to accomplish the job.

6S

Quin, author of If Only She Knew, is the nom de plume of a woman born and raised in New Orleans, who spent time in Colorado and later in Utah (where theater was discovered and taken to heart). Her children are loved forever, a terrier sleeps at her feet, and words ache to escape onto paper. Her version of life in New York is here.

Internal Combustion

by Thom Gabrukiewicz and Quin Browne

I do not sleep; there is no shut-eye, no tuck-you-in, sweet dreams, don't let the bedbugs bite – because this is the brand of insomnia that can't be touched with valerian root, melatonin, Lunesta, Xanax, Vicodin, Valium (I know, since I've tried every alternative, in every combination). Nighttime is killing me, so, I counterattack by killing time — driving endlessly with no radio, only the noise of the wind slipping through the cracked window, the hiss of the tires on the macadam road's frosting of rain and oil and my suddenly hypersensitive hearing that is causing the sound of my heart and the blinking of my grit-filled eyelids to join the Chevy's orchestra in a perfect rhythmic counter-point in my head. It's this hippy-hop thump-thump, blink-blink that catches in my throat, catches up; the tears start as wells in my eyes and turn into a cascading fury that makes oncoming headlights stretch light like florescent taffy. There should be a space, a place... a time for all of this to have rhyme and reason in my world, yet, that space, that place, that... time, are as lost to me as my sense of reality is right now. The two-lane blacktop is dark and desolate; I flick the lights off and join the darkness – and with seething, teeth-clenched rage, stand on the brake pedal with both feet and squeal to a lurching stop. I imagined it was just like this for Paul, that night, the decision to drive for miles, speed increasing, turning the lights off as he hit the curve - and putting my head on the steering wheel, I finally gave myself over to the rage of my grief.

6S

Thom Gabrukiewicz and Quin Browne, as members of a mutual admiration society (and seeking a new challenge), decided to take 6S to a new level: alternating sentences without first deciding on a plot. They now throw down the gauntlet to their fellow writers - see what you (and a partner) can do with this same format...

T-Shirt

by Quin

He gave me the t-shirt, still damp from his body, wearing his scent, it was to tide me over until we saw each other again, he said. Letters filled with promises of phone calls that never materialized and the phrase "no time just now" answered my notes that fluctuated between chatty gossip and words of longing, and finally an admission of love, an admission met with a brief response, "you've put a burden on my shoulders." The t-shirt was washed, and became wrapped in my scent, covering the gaping hole in my being, an enormous wound that caused me to stop in the middle of the street, struggling to catch my breath, my bearing. Small steps taken, and a new lover, one I didn't think would be more than a breathing version of the shirt, one taken to ease the pain, rose from my bed and casually pulled it on, having left his fingerprints on my skin, proudly wearing mine on his own. Although physically it dwarfed him, I realized it was far too small for him after he turned to me, kissed me and asked what did I need, what did I want, and I knew his scent was the one that should be the one in the air around me. The man and his t-shirt are both in closets now of different kinds; both of them are dusty, sad, locked away, and longing for the sound of my laughter, the feel of my skin, the security of my love.

6S

Quin isn't the real name. But, it'll do. Born and raised in New Orleans; that place will always be home. Time spent in Denver and Utah, where theater became a passion. Children are loved always; a terrier travels New York City with her; life is still to be discovered in many ways. She is the author of Love Letters.

Oasis

by Quin Browne

It is a ritual - her pliant body's white skin eager to absorb the red pain from his hand. He had thought it a game, not noticing when it slid into something more, something different, something she needed. Absorbed by the intensity of her reactions, he willingly went into that place, feeling his arm vibrate as his hand met her flesh, her moans falling around them. Afterwards, she lies with her head on his stomach, while their breathing slows, her tears dry. Now is when they talk and laugh, when they revert to that which is seen as "normal," what is acceptable to others. Later, she will yank on her jeans, sucking in her breath as they press against the reminder of when, for a short time, she is free of the meltdown of emotions that constitute her internal world... and she gives thanks he is clueless to her duplicity.

6S

Quin Browne, whose full catalog is here, lives in New York City. She likes it there.

Quin Browne's "Oasis"

a 6S Film



6S

Six Sentences is proud to present this short film, adapted from "Oasis" by Quin Browne. This will be the first of many short films based on the works of our authors.

Maelstrom

by Quin Browne

I will never be kissed again. Lips may touch my neck, my breasts, my back... that sensitive skin at the nape of my neck, the crook of my elbow, the inside of my wrist. The soft and delicate tissue just inside your lip will only touch me on my sweat slicked skin as our breathing stills, in joy, in release, in... that moment when we bond. Deep kisses give the promise of emotions surrendered, of soft sun filled places to which I will never go again as I choose now to only swim in the dark, deep maelstrom of physical twists and touches. Do not look for more, this is all I am able to give and this, this is better than nothing. Isn't it?

6S

Quin Browne, author of Horizontal Vortex, lives in New York City. She likes it there.

Bronx Cheer

by Quin Browne

Walking down the street, moving her feet to the beat of the music blaring from cars being washed in the illegally opened fire hydrants, she sees herself as some cultural pioneer in her little Sublet in the Projects. Carrying local market bags, nictitating membrane in place, she nods and smiles to the women sitting outside in order to escape the wall of heat she knows awaits her under the flat tar roof five floors up when she walks past the girls who cast an eye her way, giving measure for measure, moving their attention from her to the text messages on their phones to the toddlers they have given birth to, these children bearing children. They return to their gossip, rubbing newly swollen bellies while they discuss the fathers of these children to be, using the race to describe those boys; one chattering that the newborn will be pale and pretty 'cause "her daddy is white." Unconsciously, her mouth becomes a moue of distaste - a sudden petty thought of does she even know his name? when it strikes her no matter how evolved she thinks she is socially, no matter how much she wants to be able to say "I can do this, I can live in this place so far away from all that I am, all that I know" - she carries her label of middle class whiteness the same way the clothing on Fordham carries the labels of Sean John or Baby Phat. Tucking her head down with the acceptance of what she is unable to be causes her to quicken her feet in counterpoint to the buoyant music, to the laughter of the children playing in those illegally opened fire hydrants that secretly annoy her, to the calls of Mamii! that drift in the evening air. She finds herself dashing up those five flights of stairs to call the landlord, to break the lease on the little Sublet in the Projects - she wants to go home.

6S

Quin Browne, author of Maelstrom, has sublet all over New York City. How else do you find out everything there is to know about your town?

Civics Lesson

by Quin

She spoke through the cigarette smoke, letting it filter her words, her memories. "It was horrible after the fall, when the Government vanished overnight," she said, giving the word a capital letter, making it a person, not a thing. "We stood in line for everything: food, clothing, ration coupons, coupons to get coupons. My parents stood in line for two weeks to get furniture, taking turns in that line just to get furniture for us to live on, and it was bad, ugly furniture that was like our lives, flimsy and handed down, but, it was ours. When we could afford good furniture, my mother made my father keep one piece, so we could remember, as if I would forget going to school in boys underwear." Her words fell to the floor when she stopped talking, reminding me she was only 23, and all of this had happened in a time when I was worried if shoulder pads would stay in fashion another season, and I wept.

6S

Quin, author of Words, is the nom de plume of a woman born and raised in New Orleans, who spent time in Colorado and later in Utah (where theater was discovered and taken to heart). Her children are loved forever, a terrier sleeps at her feet, and words ache to escape onto paper. Her version of life in New York is here.