Good Alabama thirty-somethings roll
eyes at husbands, give birth. I sit at my
grandmother’s bedside, unmarried, single,
unlovable or lesbian or both.
At least you have each other, and hope it
all goes well, that you two will be alright.
She’s talking about my sister and me—
roommates and where-did-their-mother-go-wrong
women sharing an apartment I wish
were a sexy British flat in early
2000s; me, still me, but also more
like you—ink pen, black coffee, jean jacket
that never looked so cool, cigarettes and
words oval and true, that make men of boys.

Hallie Johnston is a writer from the South. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Miami. Her fiction has appeared in the Southern Humanities Review and Sinking City.