The little girl on the swing looks sad. Her mother is speaking into a ‘phone, its blue glow lighting up her drawn-in eyebrows and cheap mascara. She’s gesturing wildly with her hands, arguing, cursing. I’m embarrassed for her, for the little girl, who sits waiting for a push, dangling skinny legs from denim cut-offs and …
We have the same eyes. Kind of peanut-shaped and poked quite far into our heads. It’s one of my favourite nearly-identical things about us. Mum says Lou’s are hazel. Mine are slightly muddy puddle. We have the same Mum and Dad, and the same birthday, even though she came an hour earlier, but definitely different …
A stubborn man wearing cartoonish golf shorts walked down a concrete path that ran parallel to a river that’s only a river by name. It’s not the lyrical Ohio or majestic Mississippi. He believed it fell somewhere between a stagnant, neglected motel pool and a grease puddle under a wrecked Taurus in a junkyard. Joshua …