After a long and impressive battle with stigmata, my former lover Mr. Daly was assumed into heaven one windy day in October. I watched him rise slowly to the sky, like Mary Martin in Peter Pan, a beatific expression on his face.
Because of the unprecedented circumstances and lack of a buriable corpse, Fr. Doyle ultimately decided against holding a formal funeral. Instead, he urged parishioners to contemplate the miraculous events quietly in their own hearts.
Since there was no grave, I erected a small shrine outside the diner where he had first realized his palms were bleeding. Nothing flashy—some flowers, a poem, and a plastic Virgin Mary his grandmother had given him as a child and which he had subsequently given to me.
Unfortunately, the property owner—a terse, no-nonsense Lutheran—removed it the following day. With all record of him gone, it was almost as if Mr. Daly had never existed.
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Tara Roeder teaches writing in New York City. Her work has appeared in such venues as Monkeybicycle and The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts.
Lead image: “everything” (via Flickr user David DeHetre)
[…] Some dynamite flash fiction at Hobart from Juliana Gray: They Also Use Tools, and Are Capable of Making Plans. And at Change Seven from Bud Smith: Don Corleone. I also fell hard for this gem by Tara Roeder at Cease, Cows: My Former Lover Mr. Daly. […]