He must be a neighbor, the stranger you watch from your upstairs bedroom window at 3 AM as he walks, almost marches, down the sidewalk, the streetlight revealing a thick bathrobe though it’s July, and as he completes his next circuit ‘round the block you wonder if he, like you, is a war insomniac and so give yourself orders to abandon the building and get out there to provide some emotional back-up but, halt, it could startle him if you show up beside him like it’s an ambush, and he might carry a gun like you would because it’s night, so the next time he passes you yank up the window and give a heads-up, “Hey, I’ll be right down!” which sounds like a damn threat, causing him to run before even looking up, giving you a second reason to reach him—to apologize, so you throw on your robe, rumble down stairs, whip the front door open, and find yourself bare-footing it down the sidewalk, night-patrolling, searching forward, glancing back, and looking up at second story windows for him, and as you near a full circuit and approach your house, your occupancy in the night feels displaced, chaotic like a winter thunderstorm, sheets of lightning, raising the fear you’ll look up and see yourself in your bedroom window, and as you chatter how that’s impossible, it strikes you that it was a mistake to bring the loaded gun nestled in your robe’s pocket, because if you see yourself up there you’ll desperately want to fire.   

Paul (he/him) has been writing for many years, but only recently discovered the single-sentence hybrid form. He encourages others to experiment with it. He writes from the margins and lives between Milwaukee and St. Louis.