The Sixth Thing by Mark Young

It wasn’t what he started out to tell her; but, somewhere near the beginning, he became distracted by—first of all—the way the clouds were tumbleweeding across all that remained of the sky & besides, that small portion was rapidly turning a dark shade—& this was the second thing—of aquamarine which is not something you see every day—& since it was night that was a third thing.

So he tucked the image away in his mind where it joined a cacophony of—& this the fourth thing—strange occurrences, & then he was waiting for isotopes to fall down on his head because that is what he had been told would happen next & the fact that it didn’t was the fifth thing which was when he stopped counting & came back to carry on the conversation only to find she had left

& he had no-
where else
to go.