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Show Inside Out, 12 happy together? I think about the old folks I used to see at church and wonder if they still love each other, or whether they just get really good at pretending. It might be easy to pretend while you're at church, but what about all the other days and nights that you have to spend together? There's one couple, the Hendricksons, who live two doors down from us. Sister Hendrickson has a loud, screechy voice and we can hear her sometimes shrieking, "Robert/'' One time I saw Brother Hendrickson wince when she yelled from the house while he was out pruning the roses. She's probably not easy to live with, with her big, saggy arms and housedresses. But there they are at church holding hands and smiling at each other every week. Which is the real relationship? Is that what love is like? I've got the application to the Young Writer's Academy contest. But I don't have anything new to send them. I quit writing poetry after the accident. Because it seems like poetry is about trying to feel more, and feel things more intensely. But real life is about trying to quit feeling. I'm sick of bruises. |