Zach Powers

He was a little gray moon. Small enough to be held in the palm of one’s hand. But a moon is too heavy for that. He would center his orbit on the object of his attention. He orbited Nancy most of all. That’s how she knew the moon was in love with her. She imagined that her head was a planet. She worried which of the craters in the moon’s chalky skin counted as eyes. But for all the attention he gave her, he would tolerate none in return. Even a glance, which for Nancy was hard to avoid with the little gray moon always passing in front of her face, sent the poor fellow skittering away. He would find some object, a lamp perhaps, and revolve around it, casting the circle of his shadow across the paisley-papered walls of Nancy’s living room. She followed his shadow, turning in place, until dizziness overwhelmed her. She flopped back onto the carpet and watched the ceiling seem to spin, wondering if that was how the little gray moon felt all the time, and realizing that while it was very much like love, it was something altogether different.

Zach Powers lives and writes in Savannah, Georgia. His debut story collection, Gravity Changes, won the BOA Editions Short Fiction Prize, and will be published in spring 2017. His work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Forklift, Ohio, PANK, Caketrain, and elsewhere. He is the founder of the literary arts nonprofit Seersucker Live (SeersuckerLive.com). He leads the writers’ workshop at the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home. His writing for television won an Emmy, and he is a columnist for Savannah Morning News. Get to know him at ZachPowers.com.