No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story.
They moved over to the plaid couches. Art and Deb sat next to each other, Dan sat across from them, the accused and the executioner. Deb set the urn on the coffee table between them.
“Start at the beginning,” Dan suggested.
“Biracial, I think.”
Luciana glanced up into the mirror to see who had said it, but it was impossible to tell; the chatter of thirty-one, day-tripping blue hairs and silver tops muddled any trace of its origin.
Truth wasn’t one of my strong points. I believed that the more intelligent were adroit liars, able to manipulate the truth for their own purposes, ...
She and Dante took a flat in Chatham. They weren’t married. She could never invite her sister for a visit. When Dante’s family paid a call, she hid in the bedroom. Even Dante’s friends were ignorant of their living arrangement.
I’m looking for him. Even among the crowds he was taller than almost everyone else. I would look for his smile, his encouragement. But today I won’t see him. I won’t hear him scream “Run, Anna, run!” while he waves his arms above the rest of the crowd so that I can’t miss him.
Rita Zumpano was the topic of neighborhood gossip, a widow who’d gotten over the death of her husband a decade ago, a woman who lit no candles at church, who favored floral patterns over black, who took tango lessons at the community center.