The Afterword

Tag: short-story

  • Fragments from a Conversation

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    by

    Peter
    in

    Interviews don’t always flow neatly. Sometimes there are long silences, sudden changes of subject, and words that trail into the air like smoke. That’s how it was talking with Wendy. Her story is not linear, not polished. It comes in fragments, broken sentences, and pauses that say as much as the words. What follows is…

  • Just Passing It On

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    by

    Peter
    in

    It wasn’t really my kindness, not in the way people usually mean it. Two years ago, a student from China arrived at our college.Shy, polite, still finding his feet — and his English.One Monday morning he came to see me, agitated and afraid.The story took time to piece together:he’d been caught in an online scam,forced…

  • If You Can’t See Me

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    by

    Peter
    in

    Picture a man at the edge of a crowd. Not trying to stand out, not trying to blend in. He’s the one scanning the space, not nervously, not passively, but like someone looking for a familiar voice. That could be you. You’re the one he’s waiting for. He’s a touch over six feet tall—tall enough…

  • When Everything Happens

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    by

    Peter
    in

    One minute I’m laughing with Kate Bowler, the next I’m quiet. That’s the effect she has—a sharp observer of life’s contradictions, able to name both the absurd and the sacred in the same breath. She grew up in a Mennonite megachurch in Winnipeg—an unlikely mix of pacifism and spectacle. She now teaches at Duke Divinity…

  • The Plinth

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    by

    Peter
    in

    Scene 1: The Plinth (Tuesday) Every Saturday, the crowds came.They spilled from trains and buses, jerseys clinging to skin, faces painted in club colours. At the edge of the plaza, the bronze footballer stood frozen—one leg raised, mid-kick, triumph etched into the sinews of his cast-metal thigh. Children climbed the plinth. Tourists struck poses. On…

  • The Day Mackenzie Scott Emailed Me

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    by

    Peter
    in

    (Or, How I Almost Became a Billionaire in .ru) It was a regular Tuesday. I was sorting through my inbox like a digital archaeologist—sifting through newsletters I don’t remember subscribing to, birthday discounts from cafes I haven’t visited since 2017, and the occasional existential crisis triggered by seeing “Re: Just checking in” from someone I…

  • A Kind of Home

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    by

    Peter
    in

    Sometimes the people we need most are the ones we’ve never met before. There’s something oddly tender about the first conversation you have with a stranger—especially when it happens in a room full of strangers, where no one yet knows how the story will go. That first confession, “I’ve never done this before,” offered by…