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Literature Text
She thinks it hits at 35. She watches her husband blow out the candles on his birthday cake, the smoke tendrils hovering in the air before they are swallowed up by the fan in the window of their new home.
By 35 you have settled down and started your family, and if you haven't, it's the year your mother begins to tell you that it's "now or never" and that if you chose the latter, you're going to regret it.
Their friends all sing an off-key version of Happy Birthday, holding long-stemmed glasses of red wine, except for Marie, since she's six months pregnant. She cuts her husband's cake into sizable pieces only to have three of the women decline as they are "watching their weight."
She looks down at the cake on her plate and thinks of the blank application for a gym membership on top of the refrigerator as her friends swap workout stories. She nods her head, gasping every so often and finishes it off with a lot of sympathetic grunting. The men have begun swapping work stories now that they settled down into their leadership positions. They break out into perfectly-harmonized laughter that almost had to be rehearsed.
Someone mentions having to get up early for work and Marie and Tom leave as they have a doctor's appointment in the morning. The clock reads 9:30 and she rolls her eyes, but starts cleaning up the small paper plates scattered around the table. The guests trickle out of the house, echoing the same types of long goodbyes through the still bare hallways.
Her husband slips his arm around her waist, craning his neck down for a quick kiss.
"Thirty-five, it looks like I'm growing old now."
By 35 you have settled down and started your family, and if you haven't, it's the year your mother begins to tell you that it's "now or never" and that if you chose the latter, you're going to regret it.
Their friends all sing an off-key version of Happy Birthday, holding long-stemmed glasses of red wine, except for Marie, since she's six months pregnant. She cuts her husband's cake into sizable pieces only to have three of the women decline as they are "watching their weight."
She looks down at the cake on her plate and thinks of the blank application for a gym membership on top of the refrigerator as her friends swap workout stories. She nods her head, gasping every so often and finishes it off with a lot of sympathetic grunting. The men have begun swapping work stories now that they settled down into their leadership positions. They break out into perfectly-harmonized laughter that almost had to be rehearsed.
Someone mentions having to get up early for work and Marie and Tom leave as they have a doctor's appointment in the morning. The clock reads 9:30 and she rolls her eyes, but starts cleaning up the small paper plates scattered around the table. The guests trickle out of the house, echoing the same types of long goodbyes through the still bare hallways.
Her husband slips his arm around her waist, craning his neck down for a quick kiss.
"Thirty-five, it looks like I'm growing old now."
Literature
Oh, the Irony
"You don't know anything!"
"I know."
Literature
don't look back - oh.
before the
before, face it,
there were faces indelible,
the viscosity of
tar in his voice...
tar on his coarse fingers;
like everywhere
in everything
there was the sacred drunkard illuminating
a way...
when i hid by the bucket and
nettle brushed my shoulder, the poison
was slow;
(in reality, he
ran his cows over with a tractor and there
the sacredness should have ended;
didn't;
before the before there was gnarled bark
off unidentified trees
whispering by the river,
rough to the touch
i would spread out my fingers
fascinated by the splinters
now it is morning and i re
Literature
oh baby please, don't go.
i.
you're half-awake, entangled in the covers and he's nowhere near you. groggy, disoriented and very much hating life, you stumble to the door of your room and wrench it open, only to see a vast expanse of sky and nothing else below. you blink twice before you feel your stomach heave. you never knew you had a fear of heights.
ii.
when it finally dawns on you that your room is hovering somewhere in the atmosphere, you settle down on the edge of your bed and wonder if you're dead. in all honesty, you wouldn't mind being dead. besides, there's nothing to live for, is there? you look at the corner of the bedspread that you've been playing wit
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...the title is a work in progress. Right now, I just used the "thesis."
I'm getting old and no one warned me and I'm scared of adulthood because you spend the rest of your LIFE there. I didn't ask for this to happen. Please hold me.
© 2012 - 2024 xthe-eleanorx
Comments19
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Hmm. I'm 35. Haven't started a family yet, and my mother doesn't really care either way. She's got two granddaughters, a grandson and a great-grandson, courtesy of my sister.