"When She Set the Alarm for Two" by Jenny Wong

Luna and John sat side by side, a pair of clocks unwound into stillness. Their faces stared forward. Backs leaned up against a cracked plaster wall. Hands no longer moved to avoid the circumference of each other. The thin skin of an old air mattress sagged beneath them, bought for a camping trip they never took.

There were only a few hours left. Before Luna vacated her apartment. Before they fully committed to this belief that life paths resembled things straight and narrow as planks. John would stand at the end of an aisle and wait for someone-not-Luna who wanted things like a French tulle veil and a child’s hand tucked in her own. Luna would take off down an airport runway where she hoped that old ties to this childhood city would finally snap as Flight 802 soared up towards new skies and unknown clouds. That’s the thing with planks. They have foreseeable ends. And Luna figured that perhaps if she hurled herself as fast and as hard as she could, she’d be rewarded with something open and blue, devoid of uncrossable borders and lines that existed even when left unsaid.

JENNY WONG is a writer, traveler, and occasional business analyst. Her favorite places to wander are Tokyo alleys, Singapore hawker centers, and Parisian cemeteries. Recent publications include Acropolis Journal, Five Minutes, and Tiny Molecules. She resides in the foothills of Alberta, Canada and tweets @jenwithwords.