Noah Evan Wilson

After Sam Allingham's “One Hundred Characters”

For one: your nephew, cry-screaming—it’s his fourth birthday. Then there’s your sister, a mom, so much like your mom, the way she announces, “We’re from out of town!” to the pimpled ticket-taker, the sunburned…

You’re back in the restaurant.

In uniform.

It’s closing time after another long shift. 

Bussing the last four-top, you watch your hands (a habit, now). Piling unclean plates and half-empty glasses, they appear smooth—no callouses, oil burns (or fingernails)—they aren’t…

Danilo found the camera on the beach. It looked expensive, left by one of the wealthy backpackers. He pressed each button, but the screen remained dark. Before he left school to work on his father’s fishing boat, he learned the…

By the time Adam is falling it no longer matters whether it was an accident, whether he was pushed, or pushed himself. All that matters now are the ten stories rushing toward him and the ground. 

How strange, Adam thinks,…

Hunched over the kitchen sink, my son held the point of an unhooked safety pin to a flame, watching it blacken clean. Then, one by one, he opened the blisters on his right index and middle fingertips. Then those on…