A Boy, Falling

by Alex Keegan
93 words


Today, as we flew kites, as we ate ice-cream, a boy fell from the sky. A ploughman ignored the crashing plane, the boy, falling.

I thought, God, let the boy fly. I want more than I have ever asked, I know, but at any moment things will strike the ground. It will be horrible. Is this so much to ask, God, that a boy can fly? I am only suggesting, this, but let the boy live, let him become a man; allow him to smell a woman’s hair, to taste her skin.




Alex Keegan is widely published in print and on-line including Atlantic Monthly Unbound, Mississippi Review, Eclectica and Archipelago. He runs an on-line writing group called Boot Camp Keegan. In December 2008 a collection of his prize-winning stories was published by SALT Publishing, Cambridge, England.