Curtains

By Cheryl Snell

In the fabric store you stand there staring at the pink damask. The pattern is woven through with threads in a darker, angrier pink, like the face of your high school sweetheart. There are boys like him going through their ugly phase everywhere, living like spools of fabric, tightly wound until they can be sprung. You turn from the pink folds toward the bolt of black, and a sour-faced woman in an orange smock slices off the amount you need to make blackout curtains. How else can you darken the sun? you ask her. Somehow you think she might know.

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Cheryl Snell writes as revenge against reality.