My mother plays all night. Sometimes the lights shut off when the hotel is cheap, or when we are at home and she has not touched the electric bill since I put it on the kitchen table. But she keeps playing, impervious to the dark or the cold, the sound of her violin flooding the blackness, shaping it, filling it with her ghosts.
Read MoreI cycled through many of the things I had thought I might say if I ever saw you again, ranging from I love you to asking for your French onion dip recipe I’d never quite intuited correctly, to punching you in the gut, if for no other purpose than so you’d double over and I could kick you in the face.
Read MoreMaybe she was an angel. She wasn’t. She told me to relax my mind. She didn’t tell me anything. Her mouth wasn’t moving, but she was talking to me, and I could hear her better than I had ever heard anything in my life. She said to me, “I just want to see his face.”
Read MoreI had come to his barn a couple times since the day he left. Each time wasn’t any easier. He needed to make this table in under a year. I would convince him. My mother would be visiting soon, and I had to have a house that was ready.
Read MoreHis pointed face passes next to you when the new passengers enter the train and his hand touches yours when he grabs the rail above your head and you try to push yourself away from him in the crowded train. You clutch the keys in your purse without thinking and despite the humid air of the subway, you feel his hot breath on your neck just above your scarlet winter coat.
Read MoreWe all have tricks on how to bend the rules but the money is too consistent to risk getting caught. Sure, we’re all chosen based on our shapes and sizes to fill in the designer dresses- but it’s our job. Plus, they give us what they consider ‘options,’ a chance to still feel connected to our final look.
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