Rich Youmans
Between First and Second Sleep
Memories rise up, multiply. Of yesterday’s false dawn, the jangling alarm. How he silenced it and fallen back to sleep. What if he had gotten up instead? Would he have left the house on time, avoided the frantic run to the subway, coffee-to-go sloshing in his fist? What if he hadn’t been late to work, missed the brainstorming for the new Orion account? Would he have come up with an idea that led to something beyond the to-dos he ticked through for the rest of the day? And on the commute home, when the woman with blond hair and kind eyes pointed to his book and said that Stephen King was her favorite, what if he had done more than nod and smile and turn the page? What if he had looked up and met those kind eyes? What if…
still water with each raindrop another lifetime
About the Author
Rich Youmans lives on Cape Cod with his wife, Alice. He published his first haibun in 1994 and, decades later, is still at it. His books include All the Windows Lit (Snapshot Press, 2017) and Head-On (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2018). He is also the co-author, with Roberta Beary and Lew Watts, of Haibun: A Writer’s Guide (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2023).