Grace Daniels, 68 y/o

Age: 68
Occupation: Retired
Hobbies: Baking, Reading

Whenever she has a good day,
one without her body cramping,
one without her knees buckling, she bakes.

Measuring flour and sugar, it's her excuse to invite her neighbors from next door, those cute girls with the beautiful dresses and their stories.

She writes a note and pushes it under their door. They always show up.
They need a stage and audience and she gives it.
For fortyfive minutes every time the painkillers kicks in.

Around the table, this is her imagining that she's on televisions like those New York babies.

Over cinnamon buns and coffee she asks them about
their new boyfriends, always new, every time. And they tell her.

She pretends innocence to perfection as they tell her about what the sex is like. With mouths full of apple cobbler and tea they show her how oralsex makes them gag.

This was beyond humiliation but she doesn't mind.

This is Grace's fifteen minutes of the spotlight of pity before crashlanding in solitude,
before the pills fades out again in her too hot blood.