She found work somewhere, I found work elsewhere, people intervened. I don’t know how she described me to him when she sent out cards every year, custom printed, with glossy photos of the two of them on benches, in parks, at beaches. Maybe she didn’t tell him anything. Maybe it wasn’t necessary. Maybe that’s why the greetings turned impersonal. First it was “Love” from her, then “Love” from them, then “Greetings from,” etc. The pictures indicated happiness, or at least a desire to appear happy, but I could see what was missing, the familiar components of her life, locations I knew her to love. Instead she appeared in these cities and destinations, clutching accessories alien to her personality. A big bag. A keychain with an orange strap. Her body dwarfed by its surroundings: the man, the skyscrapers, the glassy tides, the lobster rolls. Each year she looked further away, her face smaller, extremities longer. Her arms dangled like a feather boa over the ends of a picnic table. One muppety leg coiled up the height of the Chrysler Building. The new card shows less than that, only a featureless assemblage of spheres and triangles blowing through a desert. “Greetings,” it says. No name.
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Addison Zeller‘s fiction appears in 3:AM, Epiphany, Cincinnati Review, Pithead Chapel, trampset, minor literature[s], hex, Ligeia, ergot., and elsewhere. He is a contributing editor for The Dodge and lives in Wooster, Ohio.
Lead image: “white and brown wooden picture frame” (Photo by Becky Phan on Unsplash)
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