He waits for an answer that will never surface, while I wonder why, after all these decades, this is what he remembers of me. I want to be elsewhere, and I am elsewhere, but not sure where, and I know where I don’t want to be.
Diane Payne
Diane Payne is the author of Burning Tulips (Red Hen Press). Her work has been published in Watershed Review, Tishman Review, Whiskey Island, Kudzu House Quarterly, Superstition Review, Burrow Press, and Cheat River Review among many others. She is the MFA Director at University of Arkansas-Monticello.
The New You
The day after the riots at the Capitol, I’m frazzled, and while walking to my new dentist’s office, I wonder if he may be a Trumper and will somehow recognize me as a Democrat, then decide to pull a few of my teeth as revenge.