From "Homemade"

Teresa wondered, while reaching, if the customer was looking at her back. She had this thing about her new haircut. It fell sort of flat. When the hairdresser handed her a mirror to check out her rear view, Teresa had been too disappointed to say anything. She drove home afterwards, feeling deflated. So that’s what I look like. That’s what they see.

Teresa had a tendency to daydream. It was something of a problem, and the last time she’d seen the Doctor, he encouraged her to use public transportation to get back and forth from work. She’d tried to take the bus once, but it took all the energy she had to share her space with strangers after a day of doing just that. The sudden stops and jarring noises did little to lessen the constant whir inside her head. On off days when the only voice she’d heard was Susan’s on the overhead, urging Bookenders to try a blueberry latté (Full of antioxidants!), Teresa would leave the store with the heavy sound of white noise flushing through her eardrums. Her voice echoed when she tried to answer a question, and sometimes she had the strangest feeling that she just might float away.

From "Homemade"

Some of her relatives criticized Teresa for being stuck in her ways, but this wasn’t so. She was happy to try nearly anything before making a judgment. Like the ludicrously overpriced pizza night at the new restaurant near the green. Just as loud and as crowded as she imagined it would be, but Sarah told her their cheese pizza was “better than sex”, as it had to be admitted, that Sarah would know. Teresa made sure to reserve a table beforehand but she ended up sitting at the bar after too many long looks and pinched faces from the groups of three and four waiting for the hostess.

From "Homemade"

Teresa liked the people that asked for books on origami. She imagined they had very neat homes, with closets full of transparent boxes and spare rooms with clean sheets.

From "Homemade"

Teresa had been working at Bookends for three months and had finally entered that comfortably-sized tunnel of patterns and rhythms that defines a nine-to-five position. She had a combination lock for her cubby, a thermal travel mug that she washed out every night, and a plastic container for the pink runcible spoon that her colleagues insisted on calling a ‘spork’. She had a tote bag reserved exclusively for “work stuff” and the occasional string of green lights with her commute. Although exhilaration wasn’t something she could expect from this job- contentment might be.

From "White Bowls in White Cupboards"

Sonia had honey blond highlights painted on by a woman named Melissa. Melissa had pink nails and a pink baby boy, and she lived in a house with a sun porch. One day, Melissa brought a big pitcher of homemade sun tea into the salon, and Sonia became fixated by this gesture; an effort she found at once charming and irksome. Melissa handed her a red plastic cup, the ubiquitous type you see in the hands of men at outdoor parties, and Sonia thanked her, and assured her it was good. That word- that jug of sun tea, it got her thinking about the expression, “out-of-doors”, and did this term exist when the world was full of tent flaps?

From "White Bowls in White Cupboards"

She’d been working in the drug store in the lobby of a hotel where he had a sales conference.When you married a person, you inherited a dowry of their good and bad habits, of mistakes and acquaintances and well-worn behaviors that required courage, and patience, and a bit of compromise. Theo, for example, had a thing for the color purple, but he didn’t look good in it because he had blond hair. He had oddly formed kneecaps, and a noisome habit of cracking his knuckles during television commercials. But he was kind, and predictable- he liked malted milkshakes and he still looked forward to the weekends as if something different might happen. When it didn’t, this made him feel content instead of anxious, and he seemed pretty comfortable with the snapshot forecast of his future life. 2006, 2007- the cozy years unfolding in the canopy of a fixed mortgage. 6.3. With points.

It's been a lovely while.

Cut hair on the cold floor. Outer leaves of lettuce. Scraps of paper from a cut-out, paper heart. From time to time, I will be posting parts of my short stories that got the good snip-snip.
Welcome to the home of the words I don't use in the stories that I write.