He was taking his usual evening stroll around the Alameda with his incommunicative wife. Her default position was stolid silence.

The Alameda was alive with groups at tables conversing and laughing. He asked her, “Why don’t you ever laugh?”

He tripped. Before he lost consciousness, he heard his wife laughing.

Tony Dawson, 86, lives in Seville and has been scribbling since the pandemic. He has published one poetry collection, “Afterthoughts” and one small selection of flash fiction, “Curiouser and Curiouser”. His poems and fiction have appeared in print and online in the USA, the UK and Australia.