This Is a Love Story

by Jessica Soffer

It was my era of “at least it’ll make a good short story.”

Without your mother, you were a bird without your flock. How hard it must have been to do anything. Make art, fall in love, have a child of your own.

You remember how once, after a breakup, you asked your mother why it was over. We’d stopped making memories, she’d said. After that, every time things were going south, you’d just ask: Memories or not?

It is no one’s fault, he thinks. Life is impossible. Love kills us. The color blue. The color blue.

The thing about parenting, Jane thinks, is how often failure is on the line. All the time. Every time.