“Your brain is too polite, Martha,” my sister tells me over the phone.
“WHAT?” I’m annoyed with Janet anyway, just out of principle, but this is just too much. “What the heck is that supposed to mean?”
Janet chuckles, raising my ire even further. She’s older than me by three years and always acts like it. She’s the wiser one, the better one, the patronizing one. Continue reading
“What’s for breakfast?” my son asks. He’s visiting from California thanks to a Boston business trip.
“Malevolent . Ensorcell. Palatable.”
Sean watches me pour the words into my cereal bowl. “Are you adding milk to that?” he wonders out loud.
“I like my words dry,” I respond.
My sophisticated adult son sits down with a thud. The look in his gray-green eyes changes from amusement to concern in seconds. Continue reading
As I placed my head on the pillow to sleep, I suddenly thought about Artie. My heart choked up as if something was squeezing it, hard.
The pain pushed the blood, salt, and tears out of my soul.
I rose out of bed, realizing that sleep was impossible, and walked quietly, almost hypnotically, over to the master bath. What I needed was a good long soak in the tub . . . Continue reading
roughwighting 