It was one of those nights when everything felt symbolic:
the empty pop bottles nosed together in the flowerless
flowerbed, the missing I in WIG-O-RAMA. A girl
stood alone on the corner beneath a blinking man
on the crosswalk sign. An arrow made of lights pointed
to an Asian guy wearing a cowboy shirt. I got excited
about a baby palm tree pushed up through
a sidewalk crack. India turned to look —
even her name was a sad prediction —
and said, "Oh, I thought it was going to be a cat."
Rachel Yoder's writing has appeared in The New York Times, Cimarron Review, juked, and Mennonite Life and is forthcoming in Word Riot. Her short fiction has been nominated for inclusion in Best New American Voices 2009, for an AWP Intro Award, and has twice been a finalist in Glimmer Train's Short-Story Contest for New Writers. She is the managing editor of Alligator Juniper, the national literary journal published by Prescott College, where she also teaches writing. Her literary journal reviews can be found online at Newpages.com.