There's something about New Hampshire. Three Granite State residents and Poet Laureates are going to be reading on January 22nd in Concord, NH. Donald Hall, Maxine Kumin and current Poet Laureate Charles Simic are going to share their work at Poets Three, an event organized by the New Hampshire Writers Project and sponsored by the Concord Monitor. Go to http://www.nhwritersproject.org/ for details and tickets. Live free or die.
This week we have a story by Sarah Byrne. Sarah lives in Providence, where she works a day job and thinks about doing something else.
Read on!
A Little Story
I was sitting at a table at a café. I was reading. A young couple sat down across from me. Both of them—the boy and the girl—were a little overweight and not particularly attractive. The girl put a laptop computer on the table and opened it up. The boy went to the counter to get them drinks. The girl clicked around on the keyboard. I pretended to read. The boy came back with a coffee and a pink Italian soda.
“What do you want to look at? Irish names?” the girl asked.
“Yeah,” the boy said.
“Two syllables or three syllables?”
“Two.”
And then she started reading names off the screen, all boy names.
“Aiden? Would you want to name him Aiden?”
“No,” the boy said. “I knew a guy named Aiden. I didn’t like him.”
She read through a few more, and the boy didn’t say much else. She hung onto him with one arm. He kept one foot on the floor while sitting on the tall stool. After five minutes or so, he said he had to go because he told someone he would give them a ride somewhere. He left five dollars so she could get another soda. She kissed him goodbye and stared at the screen by herself.
I thought briefly about the child growing inside of her. I hoped it would have a name that meant something.
