Christmas Without Miracles

It was back in ’95 when his summers were still long and Ben Gordon was out on the ledge, 2,000 feet above the city. The small iron buttress extended horizontally twelve feet out from the peak of the Stivyakino TV Tower. He had walked the five-inch-wide beam to the very edge.

Nobody seemed truly sorry for his loss. The words drifted into the lad’s ears and they held neither weight or resonance. The funeral, his first, had rolled along with a strange, dream-like autonomy. People came, readings were read and then a coffin went behind a curtain.

The dreamless man awoke as the aeroplane banked into its descent, the aching groan of the engines a caressing alarm. Sharp, foreign light cut through the cabin in parallax to the roll of the plane. It was severe and unexpected.