And--why, didn't you know?--there was a lift of cowlick to the right
side of his front hair, as he sat there playing in the twilight, that
was exactly the shape of an apostrophe!
THE SMUDGE
In the bleak little graveyard of Hattie Bertch's dead hopes, dead loves,
and dead ecstasies, more than one headstone had long since begun to sag
and the wreaths of bleeding heart to shrivel.
That was good, because the grave that is kept bubbly with tears is a
tender, quivering thing, almost like an amputated bit of self that still
aches with threads of life.
Even over the mound of her dead ambitions, which grave she had dug with
the fingers of her heart, Hattie could walk now with unsensitive feet.
It had become dry clay with cracks in it like sardonic smiles.
Smiles. That was the dreadful part, because the laugh where there
have been tears is not a nice laugh, and Hattie could sit among the
headstones of her dead dreams now and laugh. But not horridly. Just
drearily.
There was one grave, Heart's Desire, that was still a little moist.
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