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Retribution

Believe this. In the bed is a man. Frail, white, diaphanous skin shows through the purple of blood vessels that map his arm lying bare on the sheet. Jaws work soundlessly. He is thinking. The past slowly draws forward from far away and the present fades, becomes wispy and fades away, and this means he is dying.

Might Have Been

“Mom, did you ever have an abortion?” Annabel helped herself to more lasagna, meticulously skirting the carrots that Kit had sneaked into the filling. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

Wife

Rituals

Every night Lynn cooks onions for supper: liver and onions, onion soup, onion rings, hot sausage grinders. Every night, amidst the smell of onions, Jerry removes pieces of the kitchen’s blue-flowered wallpaper, exposing patches of green paint and gray paste.

This Summer

My husband has told me that this summer he will retire. Right now he is in the library holding X-rays up to the light and dictating. I do not know how his secretary understands the things he mumbles.

Sunbeams

Millions and millions of years would still not give me half enough time to describe that tiny instant of eternity when you put your arms around me and I put my arms around you.

Jacques Prévert

From A Prayer For The Bride

Fidelity

She stood up. “Excuse me for interrupting,” she said to the minister, “but he can’t do that. He’s married to me already. We never really got divorced. I never gave him a divorce. Those are our children sitting there in front of you.” She addressed the bride. “It’s better for you to know now than to find out later.”

Staying Together

Being tied up till eternity through the children, writing to each other in a centrally located spiral notebook, consulting the I Ching

Gestures Of Protection

“It’s like a spiritual cruise ship, a love boat,” says Joan. She’s determined to be positive. The lounge on the first floor is decorated with large posters of attractive, radiantly smiling men and women who have given money to the ashram.