After Fighting with My Husband Marie Hoffman

Skye shook her head. She knew her grandma was right, but it felt so much easier when she said it than it was going to be.Title

“You wrote a bit grandma? Why did you decide to not pursue it more?” Author

“I liked to write for myself. I never wanted to do it for other people.”

Skye took a deep breath and sat down on the stoop of Megan’s apartment. Her grandma had always lived life, and she knew she wouldn’t want Skye dwelling on the past.

Story

I’ll do it for her, she thought, getting out her phone and calling her mom. “Honey! Are you OK? You had us so freaked out,” her mom answered after one

“Yes, I’m fine. I’m actually…” She knew it was now or never. “I’m going to visit the campus of the college I want to go to… in New York. I applied and got in for creative writing. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

There was silence on the other end. Skye wasn’t sure if it was ten seconds or ten minutes, but she knew she couldn’t breathe until she heard her mom speak again.

“Honey, we saw the envelope when it arrived back in March. We just didn’t want to push you on the situation, but we were getting a little worried with it being the summer now and all. It will take a lot more planning to move you there.”

Skye felt ridiculous. Of course they’d been able to piece it together. They had always been attentive parents.

“Listen. I have to get ready to go, but I’ll be home soon.”

“Send us pictures of campus, please.”

She put her grandma’s manuscript carefully into the passenger seat of her car.

“Thanks for the help, Grandma.”

Thank you to my Grandma Lesley Thomas for your beautiful words. I hope I did you proud by using them in this story.

Ahoy

David P. Miller

To flee the landlocked summer afternoons of our automobile-encircled Boston block we set ourselves to go a-harbor-cruising. Locals incognito, we queued with tourists, pondered but rejected the standard proffered beers, girded sealegs for the voyage of some few breezy miles. The waves, with luck, were kind to amateurs. The winds were high, my visor cap was threatened. The company was hearty, as we dashed around the decks from port to starboard, starboard to port, in breathless pursuit of the enormous WHALE! We transfixed Leviathan with our wows and over heres, grappled the beast for future anecdotes, pressed its oil to lubricate our photo streams. ***

Night falls, and I, daytripping sailor, crash to snooze across my mattress quarterdeck. But ahoy! my day of sail is incomplete. My inner ears’ canals, awash in fluid, stay faithful to their mission of keeping me upright. My brain, tossed in its billows, lists from port to starboard, starboard back to port. Land Ho!it calls from its crow’s-nest. Land Ho! as the synaptic shoreline slowly comes in view. I slumber in the sea’s dogged embrace.