Heptadecagon

Like most other days since becoming an adult, Connie picked up the phone to call her parents. Dad answered the phone. She didn't know where Mom was and she didn't ask. Connie could anticipate the answers: weeding the garden beds, wandering the grocery store aisles, riding the stationary bike in the basement. It didn't really matter to Connie where her mom was. The call had become more of an obligation than a tried and true how-are-you-doing sort of thing. As usual, Connie would try to talk to Dad, but she didn't expect much besides a diatribe on the state of the political system or a musing on the weather. "How's work going?" he asked. Connie loved her job, but the stress of it she could do without. "I'm not going in today," she said. "I'm taking the day off." Dad didn't miss a beat.  "Again? You had a few days off with the holiday and all of that." Justifying herself to her father seemed to be a position s...

Go to her , I want to say, go to her . Peel off the gossamer layers of shame and guilt and madness, Confess your sins, and place them before her, carefully, willfully, let her inspect them, these things that have  desiccated you. Have her thread her fingers between the crevices and then, she can decide whether or not to judge you. I have no answers , I want to say I have no answers . but I know how much the past can adhere and wrench the vitality out of everything, such that it jeopardizes the present, the future. But you will feel  clean, pure, rejuvenated and more content than ever if you go to her.

She found herself at the stoplight yesterday almost in tears. She can't really tell you why. The temperature was mild, the kids had gotten off to school okay, and her husband had made it back from his business trip all in one piece. She'd had a decent night's sleep and almost all of a cup of coffee. Everything should have been all right. And yet, it wasn't. Putting a hand to her forehead to feel if she was warm--because maybe a rogue fever was the cause of her errant behavior--she looked to her left. She was immediately taken in by the sun, whose light peeked over the top of the Shell gas station sign. She squinted, almost missing the man who walked across the street in front of her car. She looked once at him. He looked at her. He tipped his ball cap at her and smiled. The simple gesture was enough to get her day back on track. She managed a wobbly smile, and shot it in the direction of the man, then proceeded to the grocery store, as was her habit each Tuesday m...