I smile at her, saying nothing. In her face I try to see my father’s, see my own. I can’t. Her face is too thin and pale, wearing the mask of death. Instead, I see the face of our cat, which died when I was a teenager. Also, strangely, I see the face of my sister, who had two kids when she was a teenager and then grew thin and pale and light, like her bones had been sucked of their marrow.

The last time I saw Johanna before this night was at my sister’s baby shower. Johanna had driven up north in a pickup truck, her oxygen tank in the back. She was plumper then, almost healthy, wearing a red blouse, vivid, the color of blood in the movies. She wore shorts, too, and her legs were coltish, like my legs when I was a child. She gave my sister frilly baby clothes, and gave the rest of us presents too, one for each year she hadn’t seen us. They piled up on the deck like the mountains surrounding us, like the mountains in which she would die. The mound of presents hid her from our view, and by the time we saw her again she was diminishing, beginning to say goodbye.

 --"Butterfly Shadows" by Jacqueline Vogtman, in Emprise Review 

Today I'm an English butler. Sort of a hybrid of Igor and Oliver Twist and Anthony Hopkins in Remains of the Day. Jane and Sylvie come in in the afternoon and they're the only folks in the place, so I stride over to them and wring my hands and ask them, will it be fucking burgers today, mademoiselles? Jane and Sylvie love that shit, because I am somewhat of a simian performer to them. And they're like, oh, yes, sir. And cheese cubes. And I respond, very good.

Some people don't react. Like, I'm all deferential to the mayor. I use a terrible approximation of an English accent when I serve his pie. Yohh pie iz suhhhved. And he just looks at me and digs in. I mean, does he notice the accent? He has to notice it.

--"English Butler, Ohio" by Bess Winter, in JMWW 

But when you hang up the phone, your smile is smug. Paul would never have numbers in his glove compartment. Paul is open and honest, and he tells you every single detail of his day—from the popcorn kernel he found stuck in his back molar this morning (It's probably been there since we left the theater last night! he shouts) to the Facebook message he got from an old high school friend this afternoon, some girl named Marla.

And even if you did find a number, you would assume it was the number to the dry cleaner down the street, or to his accountant's office. It is tax season. You are not the jealous type.

--"Baggage" by Anne Valente, in JMWW