a triptych
[1] A party went into the night and well into the next morning and proceeded to overtake many days and nights until the host of the party was nothing but a party host so he wore the hat and packed the cakes and ordered more hors d'oeuvres and ignored calls from his former corporate job because he was only employed as the party host and even after he became a ghost this was what he continued to do.
[2] “You were talking in your sleep last night,” my wife told me over breakfast. “What did I say,” I asked her. She stirred her cinnamon into her porridge. “Something about how the graves are out of order.” I quickly turned to look through our front window. The stones were little in their alignment, hardly visible from our kitchen table. Moss was beginning to form, a porous witness to the beginning sickness beginning to ravage us all.
[3] We stayed the night. Had dinner. Put it on the room. We walked to the nearby plaza and had a snack. Put it on the room. We drove an hour to a golf course and feasted near hole seven, the country club offering no objection when we put it on the room. While we were swimming in the manmade lake, we were asked if we wanted to put it on our room. Put what on our room, we asked. The lake, they said. Of course, we said. Of course. On our way home upon checking out of the hotel and saying farewell, we stopped at the toll booth and asked if we could put it on the room. “What are you talking about,” the tollbooth worker said.
Benjamin Niespodziany is a writer whose work has appeared in Indiana Review, Fence, Booth, Conduit, Bennington Review, and elsewhere. His writing has been featured in the Wigleaf Top 50 and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, and Best of the Net. The host of a bi-monthly reading series in Chicago (Neon Night Mic), he is also the publisher of Piżama Press.
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