Defenestrationism.net

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Anne Waldron Neumann teaches creative writing to adults and has completed a collection of literary folktales, Bedtime Stories for Mothers.  She is currently working on a book, Reading and Writing with Jane Austen, that combines an appreciation of Austen’s novels with a fiction-writing handbook.

 

Decisions

They have some big decisions ahead of them.
Well, I said to them, you have to decide
one way or the other,
don’t you?
It doesn’t really matter how they decide,
does it?
She’s not going to know
either way.
Just make that decision, I told them.
Just put it behind you.

 

Some Issues

We’re going up for the weekend.
Pop has been having some issues.
The weekend.  We’ll be at the hotel.
Not with Pop.
As I said, he has
some issues.
We may have to bring him home
with us.  Unless
we get those issues addressed.

 

The Problem

They’ve been having problems with her.
She’s been having problems.
She was always a problem.
She’s fine now.
She’ll be staying there for a while,
just until they see.  No, she’s fine
now.  Really.
No problem.

 

A Blow

Well, I said, that must have been quite a blow.
A terrible blow.
She feels terrible, of course.
Understandable.
It’s the sort of blow a person might
never
get over.
Time is the great healer, I told her.
But nobody really believes that.
At first.

 

The Thing

Here’s
the thing.
I don’t give a damn what
he thinks.
He can do what he likes.
And here’s the thing.
He always did.
Even then.
That’s the thing of it.  He never gave a damn what anyone else
thinks.
That was always his thing.
He did
his thing.
Now I do mine.

 

A Solution

So what’s the solution? he says,
What do you think the solution is?
I can think of lots of solutions,
I say,
but they won’t solve anything.
I don’t know,
he says,
There must be some solution
somewhere.

 

copyright by author, defenestrationism.net: 2013

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