Calloused feet slap up and down the sun-baked dock. Underneath the minnows dart, perturbed by noise, the Pitch of children’s squeals and peals of laughter. The women flip and flop and murmur pleasantries While studying their aging selves and counting Multiple betrayals of skin and bone and muscle. In tandem they rise, languidly, and train […]
Monthly Archives: May 2012
I’m not one of the cool moms. The cool moms gather after school and gossip while their kids run around in dizzying spirals and finally collapse, breathless but grinning, in the grass. (Their kids are cool, too. But then you might have guessed that.) I don’t have the gift of easy conversation, and I never […]
In the film Broadcast News Jane Craig, played by Holly Hunter, who is caught somewhere in her thirties or forties, sits down at the side of her bed, takes a deep breath, and starts to sob, really sob. She proceeds to succumb to a spluttering, messy crying fit, the kind that includes hiccups and the […]
In a cheap Italian restaurant — red and white checkered vinyl tablecloths, sawdust on the floor, Parmesan in a shaker — he watched as she twirled her hair, a habit of hers he found endearing, though later he’d find it infuriating. They were newly in love, which should explain everything. “I don’t like the rain,” […]
These pines they look the shape of heartbreak: Knobby spindles seem ill-matched to nature’s best, Much less her worst. They do not guard but slouch, Splayed, awkward, like you were at the very last Of the parties. Oh, you’d tried to beg off, feigned Headache or another vague pain damnably Impervious to proof. You did […]
