Yair Ron

“Words Were Never Enough” by Yair Ron

Submitted to Contest #51

I fell in love with you at four in the morning. It was about five months into our relationship, that night when I first let you see through the mask, the one that looks like a smile. Like stupid puns and a ready laugh, like crow’s feet at the corner of my eyes. Like solid strength, enough to hold you when you cry no matter how much I wish I was the one being held. It was WALL-E that finally did it. Stupid, I know, but far too often it is animated movies that end up as my last straws. There is some strange alchemy to them, and I am long past ...

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“What Remains?” by Yair Ron

Submitted to Contest #47

You look out the window and, not for the first time, think about how wrong the weather forecast has been.Granted, it was a tad unfair, expecting the Channel 4 meteorologists would predict The Rapture, but still, one imagines a certain standard would be upheld. As you watch the “clear and sunny” sky, the sulfurous, burning clouds that cover it lighting the city an ominous red, you think to yourself just how fitting it is that the last forecast in the world was wrong. What does a person do in this situation? Should you call your mother? L...

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“Look Mom, I Made It” by Yair Ron

Submitted to Contest #46

Three years. I’m sitting in my car, staring at the memory of the house I grew up in, surprised it still fits. Oh, there were some changes - New wind chimes in the porch, unfamiliar additions to my dad’s dusty, expansive collection that wakes up the whole neighborhood every storm. Fresh paint on the door, the unfaded brown matching the new car filling the garage. A new bicycle, its bubblegum pink a contrast to the old rusted set whose metallic squeal was the soundtrack of my childhood.And yet somehow, as I stare at my parents' house for ...

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“Diary of a Plague Year” by Yair Ron

Submitted to Contest #38

Dear DiaryWow did that sound like I’m thirteen. Jesus. Ok, so we’re not calling you that. How about… Diar-dude. Dia? Di. Yea that’ll work, I guess. Should I just erase all that? Where’s my eraser?Ok, so update. While I did have a few pencils left over from… something, I do not have any erasers beyond those nubby cruds at the end of said pencils and we both know those won’t do, so that’s an ixnay on the eraseray. I guess I could switch to just Word, but I dunno. A diary should be physical. Digital just doesn’t have the same heft, ya know?Anyw...

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“Bleach” by Yair Ron

Submitted to Contest #31

Sarah hummed to herself as she hung her wet clothes to dry on the rack. One by one she took them from her basket, placing each carefully on the five taut steel wires, making sure they had the room they needed, stretching them just so. The morning sun warmed her skin pleasantly, and Sarah smiled. The clothes would dry quickly.Her nose tingled, filled with the fresh smell of summer and flowery soap and sharp bleach. It was a clean smell, a new smell. Sarah liked it.She was hanging the last piece when her arm stretched too far. A twinge of pain...

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“Transcendence” by Yair Ron

I have a hard time falling asleep.That’s what I always say when people ask me why I look so tired, and they nod and smile and toss empty sympathies and useless suggestions I’ve already heard a hundred times before.They think of great minds who slept four hours a night and of themselves cranking up the overtime in those crunch months, think they understand and so they are appeased. That’s why I say it like that, this half-lie. Because I have a hard time falling asleep and I don’t think I’ve slept in four days and I really don’t feel like...

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“Ten Reasons Not to Kill Myself” by Yair Ron

Submitted to Contest #22

TEN. It’s nearly midnight and I am standing on a ledge overlooking a cheering crowd. They are gathered here in celebration - another year gone by, another come again, the cycle repeating as it always has and always will, ad infinitum. Most of them would call it a good thing if they were still sober enough for abstract thought. But no, they are drunk on alcohol and reckless joy and the companionship of loved ones and they cannot see the unbreakable, unbearable hold of the chains of time. They must have sadness and sorrow in their life...

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“Of Numbers” by Yair Ron

Submitted to Contest #20

This world of numbers. Simple laws of physics and biology playing themselves out, determining every outcome. Every question ever asked was answered millions of years ago when the universe made its one and only decision in an explosion of heat and energy.This world is of numbers, for it is mine, and I am of numbers. Many of those beings with need for gods and names and words believe I made it, but the truth of that does not matter. All that matters are the numbers - math and physics, biology and astronomy, and her.Even now, after all that hap...

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“A Smiley Christmas” by Yair Ron

Submitted to Contest #19

"We at Smiley's Toys want to wish you a Smiley Christmas!" the giant green emoji shrieked from the great screens towering over the cavernous space. The sound surrounded the worker, the high-pitched voice of god emanating from the vast and well disguised speaker system covering every foot of the massive store.The neon green face smiled at her beatifically, the red stocking cap that marked the season hanging foppishly on its brilliant head. Three years working here and she still wasn't used to that emerald grin leering at her from every damn c...

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