A lax, alas, a lass

He didn’t need a father and I didn’t need to be one for someone else. He wouldn’t do what I asked him (and who can blame him?). This was the struggle: what we each wouldn’t be.

The woman who loved him didn’t talk for the first month I knew her. She was dustbowl thin and corn tassel blond and sweet as can be and smarter than what she didn’t say. They, as they say, lived happily ever after, they say.