Kitchens of the Great Midwest

by J. Ryan Stradal

By this time, he was twenty-eight, growing a pale hairy inner tube around his waist, and already going bald.

When Lars first held her, his heart melted over her like butter on warm bread, and he would never get it back. When mother and baby were asleep in the hospital room, he went out to the parking lot, sat in his Dodge Omni, and cried like a man who had never wanted anything in his life until now.

“Because I don’t want my room to look like a Hallmark store, that’s why,” Braque said.

just two more people who didn’t try hard enough at anything in life to make any kind of difference to anybody or anything.

He sometimes talked about her as if her death were a jackknifed semi on the road ahead. Will viewed it more like the giant crack in their concrete driveway; he felt it, saw it, and walked over it every day, but it was too big and strange to fix.