Kathryn Kulpa

Answered Prayers 

I save the weather up to tell him. How the breeze flutters cherry blossoms. It’s always warm in his room so I like rain, when I can bring that, or hints of frost. Maybe he wants to remember what it feels like to come inside from the cold. He blinks once, yes. We’re polite now. It’s what we have.

After the accident, when they thought he would die, the nurse told me to keep talking. Hearing is the last to go, she said, and I sat by his bed and talked for thirty-six hours. I stitched him to the world with my voice. Don’t even think about leaving me, I said. Tough and bitchy, the way he liked me once.

CP

Kathryn Kulpa's fiction has appeared in Monkeybicycle, Metazen, decomP, Hayden's Ferry Review, and other fine places.