Dear Wigleaf,

It is evening all goddamned day. It is freezing, and it is going to be freezing. There are no blackbirds to look wistfully at in various poetic ways. I'm wearing the ancient knee-length down coat that I wear indoors from October to March, the one my kids call my exoskeleton, the one that's big enough to exhale fully in and go braless in and eat food in bed in and hate winter in. Sorry. I should be more cheerful. Here:

My 10-year old son is on the bed in the center of all the precarious towers of folded laundry reading one of my stories off my laptop when I walk into the room.

"You shouldn't read that probably," I tell him.

He's eating a donut, plateless. "Why? Because it's inappropriate? I love inappropriate."

It's true. He does.

"You still shouldn't be reading it." I start putting folded T-shirts into an already too-stuffed drawer but then ask him, "So what did you think?" because I have no boundaries. 

"It's okay... I mean, if you like macabre stories about dysfunctional relationships," he tells me and licks powdered sugar off his fingers and goes off to listen to music on his phone. The storm windows rattle in a way that makes it feel like the wind is strangling the house, but slowly, with some tiny bit of concern for its demise. 

21st Century February Kansas is bleak. Send cocaine. Send crocuses. Take care.




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Read Amy Stuber's story.

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