I. Even near the end of our time, my husband Jim tossed compliments around like confetti. He expressed his appreciation when I walked through the living room to empty his urinal, calling […]
6 Years Later, Remembrance in Four Parts
My May-December Romance, a Dozen Years In
“If you marry an older man, one day you’ll be married to an old man,” a woman I met several years ago told me. She’d been married for nearly three decades to […]
Statute of Limitations – A Short Story by Paula Whyman
by Paula Whyman “Statute of Limitations” first appeared in the March-April 2009 issue of Bethesda Magazine. Ginny was making dinner for Mike’s friends, Pogo and Ann. They’d never been to the new house […]
Playlist- “The Long Run”
By Karen Lynch. “I know how to shoot to kill, but I can’t shoot a gun out of a man’s hand. Civilians always think cops can do that, but only Annie Oakley could have pulled off that sort of trick. I know how to stay married, but I don’t how to keep passion burning in a long marriage, and maybe I also view those who say they can as I do Annie, rare, unlikely, and highly skilled.”
Blue Canaries
My fiancé arrives home from a twelve hour shift. He left in the pre-dawn darkness, and has arrived after winter’s dusk.
“Who died?” I ask when I greet him at the door, motioning to the black band across his badge. A thin blue line on the band serves as a marker for his profession.
“The deputy in Leon Country,” he says, leaving his boots by the door. “You didn’t hear?”
“No,” I say. “What happened?”
He tells me about the fire and the ambushed deputies, and I’m reminded of the nickname firefighters have given cops–blue canaries.
Wearing Mom
by Gianna Russo There is no way she would miss it. Nothing would keep my mother away from the wedding of her first grandchild—not even her death nearly five years earlier. […]
Mountains and DNA
By Julia Connolly Driving up the crumbling mountain road I’m bombarded by metaphors, snuck up on by similes. As we near the site of the wedding I’m silently singing the words to […]
Walking Alone in Late Winter
by Jane Kenyon How long the winter has lasted—like a Mahler symphony, or an hour in the dentist’s chair. In the fields the grasses are matted and gray, making me think of June, […]
An Ideal Husband? My May-December Romance
by Suzannah Gilman The last thing I thought I would ever do is get romantically entangled with a man 25 years older than me. But here I am. I used to think […]
Mind-Body Problem
by Katha Pollitt When I think of my youth I feel sorry not for myself but for my body. It was so direct and simple, so rational in its desires, wanting to be […]
