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Another Hard Week

Carol Edelstein

He started his self-portrait with three broad strokes. Two eyebrows and a nose. It was unmistakably himself. She was blaming him and said if blah blah blah it would be all on him. That was Sunday, and he thought maybe he’d just end it, beat her at her own game, but smoked some weed and read some affirmations and worked up a new song and talked himself out of it. Put aside the gin. Cancelled Monday. Took to the trail. Took both dogs. Got a few clouds over him. Got a little stormy weather over him. Sheltered under an overhanging boulder. Me and the spiders were quite dry, he said. The dogs didn’t freak out like they usually do with thunder, maybe they just knew we had to stick together and see it through.

Carol Edelstein is the co-founder of Gallery of Readers, a nonprofit, independent literary press in Northampton, Massachusetts. With Elizabeth M. George, she edits Switch, an online magazine of micro fiction. She is the author of The World Is Round (Amherst Writers and Artists Press, 1994), The Disappearing Letters (Perugia Press, 2005) and Past Repair (Simian Press, 2020). Her poetry and fiction have been featured in numerous anthologies and literary magazines, including The Massachusetts Review, The Georgia Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review.

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