Ready or Not

by Cara Bastone

I know I won’t get any sort of actual thank-you, so I’ll have to be satisfied simply through my powers of observation.

They want irrevocable and they want it now.

I press my ear to his chest and isn’t it so wild that you can go forever knowing someone and never really listen to their actual heartbeat until they kiss you behind a tree?

“Everything’s hard, Eve. All of life. For everybody. You can’t spare your child that.”