Paprika
There is a town in Hungary that is three miles away from the Austrian border. In the winter of 1956, mothers held hands with their sons and daughters and ran as fast as they could. When you asked where they were going, all they said was away. It didn't matter where they had been, that wasn't the point anymore. The point, as far as anyone actually knew, was to keep breathing. Husbands had gone into hiding, pressed a couple forints into their wives palms, and then went off to keep breathing. Now, it was up to the wives to keep breathing, too. Mothers, of course, had the added burden of making sure their kids kept breathing. So they ran, and to make sure they stayed together, they held hands.
Coffee
We met for coffee and talked about nothing over onion rings; it was just what we needed. Then we ordered curly fries and shared Kennedy stories. I was on my 8th grade field trip to the Science Museum. You were hanging streamers in the high school gym before a pep rally. We both cried when we heard the news. I was in front of the dinosaur exhibit as I watched the bones go blurry: you dropped a pair of scissors and heard them hit the gym floor.
How It Happened
I met you with the bowl of oranges half-empty on the kitchen table, light found your face through the open window: the sun came to rest in blue porcelain filling the bowl to its brim.
Copyright © Peter J. Gloviczki 2016
