"EASY"
by Miriam N. Kotzin

I lie with my hands folded, fingers interlaced, like a grade school student in prayer, like someone lying forever still, locked in eternal silence. I listen to you breathe, even and slow. I try to match my breaths to yours. I cannot. Yours are too far apart, long strides, taking you away from me.

At dinner our silence hung like a thick curtain between us until I drew it aside. “What time did you get back from lunch?”

“It was a working lunch.”

“You were on voicemail all afternoon.”

“Your point is?” He cut so hard his knife scraped the plate.

My point was that he’d said nothing about the meeting he had been talking about for days and his hair smelled like a shampoo we do not use. “I wanted to meet you in town tonight. I was shopping.” Some lies are easy. “When I didn’t reach you, I just came on home.”

“What did you get?”

“I didn’t find it. Something for Ella’s daughter and her fiance.” So easy.

I notice that the clock is blinking 12:00, 12:00, 12:00. The power must have gone off for a while some time after we'd gone to bed. Funny how you can be without something and not miss it at all, and then notice some little sign that it had been gone, but it's back now. But sometimes you just notice it’s gone, maybe forever, and you don’t even know when it went missing.

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Miriam N. Kotzin teaches creative writing and literature at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA where she directs the Certificate Program in Writing and Publishing.  Her poetry and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in many print and on-line publications, including Carve, SmokeLong Quarterly, Edifice Wrecked, Rumble, The Beat, The Quarterly Staple, Three Candles, Small Spiral Notebook, Carnelian, Thieves Jargon and The Glut.  She also writes fiction collaboratively with Bill Turner.   Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Monkey Bicycle, Somewhat, The Beat and Admit Two.  http://miriamnkotzin.tripod.com/

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