The woman did not cry when her husband told her he was leaving.
No. She was a woman with a hard mother––a good mother––one who taught her to never become a wretch. A hard mother who taught her that men had hearts, but they were different from women’s; they were colder, and better for shaping, like biscuit dough. She showed the woman, then a girl, how to hold the dough, how to warm it enough to bend but not enough to stick, and then she showed the girl the wretches, the abandoned women, the ghoulish, vacant wanderers. She showed her them as a warning to never join them.
Her husband told her at the table, stone-faced and flinty-eyed. The one she’d bought after they first married, stumbling around a furniture store drunk on love and hope.…
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I wish you had warned me,
When we were young,
Or some other time,
While we sat on the terrace,
Drinking wine,
Or, perhaps, the time
We walked for hours,
Miserably lost,
Or that evening
We slept on the sand,
And could smell the sea
And could feel its pulse,
Or the time we sat
In a waiting room,
As quiet as air,
Reading ragged magazines,
Wishing we were
Somewhere else,
Or any time,
In the time we had left,
In simple words,
In a voice as loud
As a coyote’s howl,
Or soft like whispers
Of conspiring thieves;
In shuddering stammer
Or wrenching rasp,
In scattered sobs,
Or syllables spat,
In a long moan
Like dying breath,
The only thing
I needed to know:
That someday
I would be all alone,
And walk the house
In a sad trance,
And find myself
At the foot of the stairs,
Gaze up at the top
As if it were a universe,
And need to summon
All my strength
To climb those cruel,
Inhuman steps.…
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I am an identical twin. Our mother would sometimes dress my twin—let’s call her Arlene—and me in identical outfits (although she’d sometimes vary the colors). Once, we dressed in our white crepe Bat Mitzvah dresses, trimmed with silver threads in the bustline, which we didn’t quite fill out. (Looking at the photos now, I knew which one was me because I distinctly remember wearing tan pantyhose.) Then there were our rust-colored double-knit polyester pant suits that we decided to wear on April 1 when we switched classes. Teachers, of course, could not tell the difference.
The following year my sister and I were forced into Mrs. Friedman’s home cc classes and to the sewing machine. Over the course of the year, my sister became the better seamstress.…
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The pigeons arrive in the spring. She watches him try to shoo them away—first with the clapping of hands, with the stomping of feet on the wooden deck, then finally with a garden hose. “Stop,” she tells him finally. “Leave them alone.”
She’s grown to like their incessant cooing, their low murmur a lullaby.
The birds roost on the wooden beam just under the roof, side by side, staring into the Spanish fir across the street, like two people sitting side by side at a bar in front of a baseball game.
*
Flying rats, he calls them. Or, rats with wings.
How does a bird get a reputation like that? she wonders. As a pest—when pigeons are really quite beautiful, with the blues and purples feathering their necks, their curious faces, their bobbing heads.…
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When in autumn, the blood curls up softly. It settles to a slow silky jazz pace. Two saxophones and a muffled trumpet playing downstage, while a husky voice swims through cocktail glasses and spills out over table linens.
The O to my I is Sophia Kohn Heart: My tadpole, my motivator. The name itself rips me open with long dollar-store-red fingernails; sucks me dry, and then fills me with tears. Her water, her juice, is my Indo-European opiate. I’ll smoke her hot, until I’m cold dead.
This is late October, and we’re in the City. The City is upstate. We come here after the leaves fall because the streets are crackly and dynamic. Sophia and I stroll. We stomp and kick our way between the Old Town bars, bookshops, and lazy dance clubs.…
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You know, it lifted my spirits. The whiteboard next to the dining room. In green and red ink: Holiday Special / stollen and eggnog / with or without brandy. And my mind flipped to merry olde Wisconsin. Seventies-era fun in dim bars. Faux leather seats in paneled rooms, glasses of beer and Old Fashioneds on wreath-trimmed napkins. A three-piece combo ragging in the background, barely heard over a buzzed crowd laughing, smoking. The occasional flirtatious shriek.
Today we enter a well-lit basement room next to the laundry. The scent of laundry-softener. The folks’ dinner partner, who fell last week—gone. Like many spouses. And dogs. Those quarantined for pneumonia behind doors hung with blue plastic, pockets stuffed with face masks, disposable gloves, yellow protective gowns.
Mom wears a copper-colored sweater, beige stretch pants one size smaller than when first admitted.…
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South Koreans have pale white faces. Oriental is what many people call them, though they aren’t oriental. Their faces are like rice cakes: soft, squishy, and fleshy, like the pastry itself. Their faces pearl white or the color of sunscreen that reflect the harsh rays of sun as it beats onto their umbrellas as they stroll down hilly streets. The porcelain color of their faces reflects at one another as they chatter about the newest Korean beauty trends. Asking one another what the best course of action is so they can keep their porcelain faces polished and pretty, like a doll. So that at least if not smarts or money, they can have pretty faces that they have manufactured for themselves.
Their faces are unchanging like the seasons the Han River runs through.…
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