With a black beret pulled down tight on her head, she could be anyone. When the bus pulls to the corner where Comrade Snarky had agreed to wait, she stands there in an army-surplus flak jacket-dark olive-green-and baggy camouflage pants, the cuffs rolled up to show infantry boots. No, this was only a writers' retreat until it was too late for us to be anything, It doesn't matter who we were as people, not to old Mr. Spring, summer, winter, autumn-one whole season of that year. Too many of us, locked away from the world for one whole A lot of hot, sticky blood.Īnd we were supposed to write short stories. Real intestines, real lungs, a beating heart, blood. As if you cut open a rag doll and found inside: Names based on our sins instead of our jobs:īased on our faults and crimes. The names we earned, based on our stories. You called peonies-sticky with nectar and crawling withĪnts-the “ant flower.” You called collies: Lassie Dogs.īut even now, the same way you still call someone “that man with one leg.” The same way-when you were little-you invented names for the plants andĪnimals in your world. Locked away from the ordinary world for three months.Īnd we called each other the “Matchmaker.” And the “Missing Link.” Run by an old, old, dying man named Whittier,Īnd we were supposed to write poetry. It was supposed to be safe.Īn isolated writers' colony, where we could work, This was supposed to be a writers' retreat.
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