There Is No Long Distance Now: Very Short Stories Forty Life-Affirming Pieces About Friends Enemies and the Divide Between Life and Death

About this book

A wounded bird. A Chicago taxi ride. A secret in an old coat. Forty sudden stories reveal how closely every human life touches another. In these forty life-altering life-affirming and extremely short short stories the award-winning poet Naomi Shihab Nye proposes that no matter how great the divide between friends siblings life and death classmates enemies happiness and misery war and peace breakfast and lunch parent and child country and city there is in fact no long distance. Not anymore. Shihab Nye charts how quickly casual distance collapses following teenagers who discover unexpected solidarity in hospital rooms airport gates and quiet city streets. These brief narratives linger on concrete turns of daily liferescuing a stunned dove baking fresh beets into cake or carrying a single bullet down a sweltering sidewalk. Coming of Age: Trapped on a flight to Boston beside his sharp-tongued former English teacher a resentful high school graduate impulsively claims he plans to become a weatherman. Family Dynamics: Moving into a vine-covered mansion on Army Boulevard a teenager learns to decipher pill bottles and eavesdrop on her aging grandmothers late-night phone calls with Montana. Grief and Healing: Wandering the restored boulevards of Berlin with fresh stationery a grieving daughter discovers unexpected hope while navigating an unfamiliar language. Sibling Dynamics: Confronting an abandoned zoo pit sixteen-year-old Lola attempts to distract her younger sister from recurring midnight terrors about sewer rodents. Also by This Author: Going Going.