Fiction | July 24, 2018
Ordinary Time
Carolyn Ogburn
The parking lot was light by six in the morning, but its streetlights still buzzed and flickered yellow in the gray-green dawn. House wrens flitted across the abandoned asphalt, little gray birds that had nested in the electric curl of the still-lit o’s and a’s, the crook of the G. The ditches hummed with crickets, frogs. In a few hours, Caleb knew, the parking lot would seem quiet again, full of everyday traffic: the occasional rattle of shopping carts bumping along the broken pavement, car doors opening and closing, the sounds of ordinary people doing ordinary things. It would seem quiet, but for the yellow police tape enclosing a broad empty space at the center of the lot, a space that still smelled of gasoline.
This story is not currently available online.
If you are a student, faculty member, or staff member at an institution whose library subscribes to Project Muse, you can read this piece and the full archives of the Missouri Review for free. Check this list to see if your library is a Project Muse subscriber.
Want to read more?
Subscribe TodaySEE THE ISSUE
SUGGESTED CONTENT
Fiction
Jan 08 2024
Eighteen People Every Hour
Eighteen People Every Hour Dennis McFadden The first time he saw her, asleep on the sofa when he came home from work, he honestly thought of an angel. Of… read more
Fiction
Jan 08 2024
Motherlove
Motherlove Elisa Faison “I’m really sorry. No one told me you were here.” That was the first thing Lily ever said to us, that she hadn’t seen us. But now… read more
Fiction
Jan 08 2024
Song Night
Song Night Robert Long Foreman I thought about calling this “What We Do in the Basement,” because there are several things we do in our basement. It’s a good basement.… read more