Steven R. Kraaijeveld

Short Fiction

–Tea

–Milk

–Bread

—Eggs

–Cereal

–Vegetables because I told her I’d eat healthy while she is away; she made me promise especially, which I know was a way for her to tell me that she loves me; like my promising her was a way for me to tell her that I love her; she who pulled my brokenly wedged life out of the mire, six years ago; when the only thing I cared about was writing, when I disregarded everything and everyone and receded like a heliotrope under a shadow-stained porch, riding out the daylight each morning to glide depleted into the darkness of night like flotsam, letting days fall away like jokers discarded from a deck; until I met her six years ago and, out of nowhere, gradually but then very suddenly, she made me someone, somewhere, to be in the world; she broke the spell of my pathological obsession with putting words down on paper; my frantic and downright pathological thinking merely and always of new sentences to form and preserve like a machine sensing the scrap yard; after I met her, I no longer wrote out of privation, one bloodless cheek raised cold against the eviscerating wind constantly blowing through the universe; I met her and no longer felt the need, the sickly desire, to be esteemed by my peers, to be valued by fellow writers and livers-along, to be elevated in the eyes of unseen others, those echoing ghosts among which we misguidedly place our hopes and fears; I found the only view that matters (hers); I held the only body firmer than death (hers); with her, my entire living being eased; away with the urge to drill the pen into the core of my existence; I learned to let the worm be; and even if she might not make it, which I refuse to believe, which I absolutely refuse to believe, but even if, God forbid, she does not make it, then those six years have provided me with all that is necessary to continue; she animated me with her wondrous rays, opened me up to face the world; for as long as I live, her warmth is with me; and I know that this is only a shopping list, but I haven’t written a thing in months; we spent the last twenty-four hours at home, helping one another prepare for what will happen; meaning not thinking together, meaning ignoring the parts of our minds that sink, meaning being and loving and cooking together; she made pasta for us one day, very early in our relationship, and she has made it for us every weekend since; but last night I was the one who made us pasta, spaghettini with tomato sauce and basil and extra virgin olive oil; it wasn’t nearly as good as hers, of course, but she said that it was (she’s always encouraging me); and the afternoon hasn’t felt so dreadfully empty in years, so harrowingly devoid of the stuff that invites living; which might explain my scribbling, like the old days; but I will visit her tomorrow, early morning, the very first thing; my alarm is already set; she might be a bit woozy still, the doctors said, and that’s okay; I’ll just sit in a chair next to her or maybe with her on her bed if there is space; I didn’t tell her this, I wanted it to be a surprise, but I bought her a collection of stories by Kate Chopin that she loved as a teenager; she lost her copy in college, she told me; so I bought her a little paperback (a hardback might tire her arms) and I’ll take it with me tomorrow; I could read it to her or she could read it for herself in the ebbing hours when I can’t be there; but I really have to go now, before the shops close—

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Steven R. Kraaijeveld is a Dutch philosopher, ethicist, and writer who grew up in Czechia, China, and the Philippines. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in ANMLY, Chicago Quarterly Review, Epiphany, Massachusetts Review, Maudlin House, and MoonPark Review. His work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions 2026 and Best Microfiction 2026 and he was a finalist in Fugue’s 2025 Prose Contest. Find out more about him on Instagram @esarkaye or through his website: stevenrkraaijeveld.com.