'The Minister of Loneliness isn’t taking appointments' by Amy Barnes

The Minister of Loneliness isn’t taking appointments

on the day the moon gets one too many depressions from space junk and marriage junk and work junk, and finally, falls into a lake. No one knows which one. His wife (who is surprised, and also not) goes dark by association because she’s a traditional spouse who always backs him up even when she’s also worried she won’t have enough money or patience to last the week. His buddies at the dock are worried. Her mother is worried, but also secretly glad he might have gone missing for good this time. There are search parties immediately formed and everyone gazes and searches into the water of their own lakes, the man-made and wife-made ones - woebegone, or woeful, or just gone, to try and find him. There’s also a church meal train created for their family with moon cheese, head cheese, and tuna casseroles that she’ll throw away because no one really likes those and she knows the women have cooked judgment into them. The weekend passes with no sign of him. She finds him on Tuesday, soaking wet in his brown Barcalounger, watching Matlock like nothing happened, like the town’s July 4th fireworks weren’t canceled and their kids didn’t have to eat peanut butter in spoons for the three days he was missing because that’s all was left in the cabinets.

 

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Amy Cipolla Barnes is the author of three collections: Mother Figures (ELJ Editions, 2021), Ambrotypes (Word West LLC, 2022), and Child Craft (Belle Point Press, 2023). She has words at The Citron Review, Spartan Lit, JMWW Journal, No Contact Mag, Leon Review, Complete Sentence, Gone Lawn, The Bureau Dispatch, Nurture Lit, X-R-A-Y Lit, McSweeney’s, -ette review, Cease, Cows and many other sites. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, long-listed for the Wigleaf Top 50 in 2021, 2022 and 2023, and included in The Best Small Fictions, 2022. She’s a Fractured Lit Associate Editor, Gone Lawn co-editor, Ruby Lit assistant editor, Narratively Chief Submissions Reader, and reads for The MacGuffin, and The Best Small Fictions.