Forgetting the landscape of shaving, I run the razor sidewise, coaxing a bleed. We have forgotten Corinthian love, or never knew it and wonder if it exists. Wounds, we have, unsalted but unhealed.

Meg had put it from her mind for too long. Today was a day of change and of ending. Which way…which way? Long she had walked. The further away she got from grasping hands and tearful faces, the greater grew her resolve. “God, forgive me.” she thought.

[Art by Deb Garlick]

I whistled well when I was young-

An artifice of breath and tongue.

It ruffled almost everyone,

Save you, my funny shadow.

I met you in the grocery aisle

Unwitting of your secret smile

I hummed a tuneful ditty while

I squeezed an avocado.

Funny- how you had the nerve

So forward, and without reserve,

And scant I felt did I deserve

Your words of inspiration.

You asked me “Can you whistle too,

Or sing a silly song or two?”

And, blushing as I said, “I do”,

I paused, in hesitation.

And so, you said “Not many men

Can pull it off like that”, and then

You walked away, and that was when

You turned around, still smiling.

So, blushing still, I hoped that we

By happy Serendipity

Might meet again, for so you see-

Your smile is so beguiling.

Joey spoke to himself behind his mask of mute. People didn’t make sense anymore. He was in singsong thoughts, and all that was reaching him was the rising scent of his scrambled eggs and the underwater music of voices. Colored, they were, and in his mind he swam.

***

Art: “My friend Pierrot”, by Max Ernst

In we stayed, us kids, during the short days of that long winter, while Grand Dad saw to the animals and smoked his pipe. Well, what can you do in feet of powder snow in the flatlands? Not even good for a fort. Checkers. Cards. We fought. We read in kerosene light.

***

Art: Winter landscape. Neskuchnoye, 1910, by Zinaida Serebriakova.