Tag: Marriage

  • Flash Fiction Review: “Rewind” by Cole Beauchamp

    (The flash fiction story “Rewind” by Cole Beauchamp appeared at Lost Balloon on January 7th, 2026.)

    The flash fiction that I love straddles a precarious knife’s edge. On one side is the prose, the other being the poetic, and if they counter balance correctly, a beautiful harmony is created. Reading Cole Beauchamp’s “Rewind” put me right on that the edge’s sweet spot; a tactile narrative countered with an eternal instant.

    The structure of “Rewind” is divided into three section, each beginning with the same first line, “I have something to tell you…” In the first section, a couple is descending down a mountain during a hike while the husband attempts to explain what is implied to be his infidelity, which the wife has no interest in hearing. The section ends with the wife accidently falling off the path, tumbling down, and all goes black, followed by one word: Rewind. The second section takes places in the past, this time the wife is making a special dinner attempting to make up to her husband for all the time that she’s been away. Just as in the first section, the second section concludes with the wife losing her footing and falling, again with all going black; Rewind. The final section takes places the night before their wedding, and them sneaking out to see each other, with the wife stating that they “can’t rewind any further.”

                The three moments selected in “Rewind” are snap shots of this marriage. The first being the only one that I believe takes place in a tactile moment. This marriage is over, even if the husband isn’t aware of it, for the wife knows that she has stopped loving him. When she falls and all goes black, that ushers in the next two section which I will argue take place in her memory, existing in her own eternal instant. The second section is close to a mirror image of the first section; same opening line, the disappoints, to apologies, and the falling. The first was his fault, and now we are being shown how she was an accomplice in the death of this relationship. But the second section acts as a bridge; though it is in the eternal, the language Beauchamp uses is still rooted in factual descriptions. When the third section arrives, the language softens, the poetic is embraced, and thematically, a melancholic tone is embraced which intertwines with the recollection of the past optimism this marriage had.

                No one goes into a marriage thinking that it will fail, and when things go wrong, that initial optimism can feel like it’s a million miles away in a different life. Cole Beauchamp’s “Rewind” played with this theme in a structure that I appreciated for its inventiveness, but most importantly, this was the type of flash fiction that embraced the unique qualities this form can have, which are prose and poetry wrapped tightly together.  

  • ODDS and ENDS: Dog Haircut, Covid Conscious, and Just Doing What I’m Doing

    (They tried to kill him with a forklift…)

    My dog needs a haircut. Some might call that grooming, but I find that word problematic; grooming. She gets a cut every three months, so being that we just crossed into April, we’re right on schedule. Yet, the dog is hairier and shaggier than she has ever been. And she stinks. The wife does bathe the dog regularly, but the hair is so long, it just traps in the smell. I guess what I am really saying is that the dog is a mess. And she knows it. She looks at us, at least I assume as the hair covers her eyes, in a most pitiful fashion, saying, “Please sir and madam, may I have a haircut?” Again, that’s an assumption.

    The wife has Covid. Not very server, more like a mild flu. I’m taking care of her, and making sure she’s resting and being taken care of. Sadly, I didn’t get my Covid vaccine this year, so I have set myself up for a possible infection. If I’m still healthy by Sunday, then I know for sure that I am in the clear. As such, I’m being very cautious and conscious of my contact with other people. Mainly, this is my excuse for not going to the gym this whole week. You gotta be safe, and I like having an extra hour to drink coffee on the couch while watching DREW.

    So… the world might be going to hell or ending soon; who can tell these days. For that reason, I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing. I’m not giving up, and I will still see you at the March.

  • Short Story Review: “Between the Shadow and the Soul” by Lauren Groff

    (The short story “Between the Shadow and the Soul” by Lauren Groff appeared in the December 16th, 2024 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Photograph by Xuebing Du for The New Yorker

    Sometimes when I read a short story, in my mind I can hear the gears of the story’s mechanics grinding away, snapping into place, moving it all forward, and churning out the work of fiction. Other times, the author’s machinations are as silent as an evening breeze in summer, but still felt and causing an impact. Then Lauren Groff creates the story “Between the Shadow and the Soul” where I can feel the mechanics of the piece, but is written so well, with such character, flavor, and so wonderfully brutally honest in regard to couplehood, that it left me feeling better having gone on this journey with these characters.

    What we have is a story about Willie and Eliza, but really about Eliza, a couple that has been together for over twenty-five plus years in upstate New York. They live in an old home they purchased right after they got married, and have spent those years fixing up. Now, with Eliza at fifty, she has reached retirement age from her job at the Post Office, and decided to act upon it. But retirement doesn’t suit her, and with Willie’s encouragement, and occasional participation, Eliza begins to explore life through local arts classes, pilates, and especially a gardening class. (Now, go read the story.)

    When I said that I could feel the mechanics of this story, what I meant by that was how the craft and structure of this story was very close to the surface. When the joke about kids was made, I knew that was coming back into play. The couple Eliza discovered having sex at the boathouse; there’s another meaning there. The fact that Willie and Eliza’s relationship started clandestinely; oh, you that this was foreshadowing something to come. Yet, I can also say this story did take a winding path which never felt superfluous. At all times, the story felt purposeful and controlled by a steady hand.

    That deft touch was never more on display than Eliza’s growth over the course of the story. She is such a complex and detailed character. There are many authentic pieces to her, but what I connected with most was how “retirement” wasn’t a reward but a prison for Eliza; she is the type of person who works at life, and losing that work from her job, in addition to the loss of working on their home, she found herself lost. Such a clear and easy situation to understand and grasp as to why it would bring about her motivation in the next part of the story. But I would also be remiss not to touch on the relationship between Eliza and Willie, and their level of intimacy. Not just sexual intimacy, but the intimacy of knowing your partner after so many years, and knowing when they are hurting, and when they are hiding. And I loved how they both grew and moved forward in this story, and one of the conflicts was how they had to learn and adjust to loving this new person.

    Like all good stories, I am leaving out so much, and I know if I were to read it again, I would discover new depths and details to Eliza and her life with Willie. To have a story about growth and discovering passion, and also to be a story where neither member of the couple is the “bad guy,” left the whole piece feeling refreshing, alive, and honest.

  • Working Out Together

    Who does this? I’m not judging; just wondering if I know any friends, couples actually, who go and workout together? I see this couple activity depicted in tv and movies, and there sure does seem to be a great number of people on social media presenting videos of them and their significant other lifting weights, running, or drinking protein shakes together. They seem to be enjoying each other’s company. Now and then, at the gym or in the park, I will see a couple running together, so I know it happens.

    The reason I ask is that the wife and I might start working out together. OR to be more accurate, both of us will be in the gym at the same time. See, I run and the wife does yoga. Recently, after a back issue, her doctor suggested that she might want to start lifting some weights. She does have a membership to the gym I go to, a perk of her job, so she thought that we should go together on the same day… you know, to help motivate each other.

    I’m not opposed to this idea. I just never saw us as a workout couple on our life BINGO card. When this happens at the gym, she’ll go to her weight machine, and I’ll head to the treadmill. After thirty minutes, we’ll leave together. Maybe we’ll talk about “gains” but I doubt it.

    And I would say that this is the unexpected path that middle-aged life is taking us on. I still hate working out, but I at least know that working out 30 minutes a day, five days a week, can have a huge positive impact on your health. So, I’m not stupid. It’s just not my favorite thing to do. Call it an “eating your vegetable” problem – I know it’s good for me.

    I never really thought about what being middle aged would be like, because I never really thought that I’d be middle aged. Not that I would die young or anything like that; I just never thought about being bald, with a little tummy pudge, worrying about retirement and the cost of college for the kid. Thinking about my life with the wife, I just assumed we’d get older, but look the same, and drink and smoke, eat food we want to eat, never change, and and stay up late every night.

    Didn’t turn out that way. I’m not unhappy about the way things worked out; most of it is pretty great. But now I have things in my life that I want to spend as much time with as possible, and though it’s like fighting the tide, if I can snatch some extra time, I will.

    So, we’re going to the gym together.

  • Flowers

    Tuesday, normally, I go grocery shopping for the family. I try to shop for the entire week, not that it always works out because I will forget something. To accomplish this errand, and try to save some money, I head to multiple stores, one of them being Trader Joe’s – specifically, the on one 93rd.

    Walking into the store this morning, I saw that the flowers they had out looked particularly colorful, and it had been awhile since I had got the wife flowers. They have those three-dollar bouquets, which are rather small, so I bought two of them. I made sure that each bouquets was made up of different types of flowers, so that I would bring home a variety.

    I did my shopping and when I was checking out the clerk looked at my two bouquets asked, “Are you in trouble?”

    And I was like, “They are for my wife, but she’s having a hard week.”

    “It’s Tuesday.”

    “Been that kind’a week.”

    My wife works very hard, is going back to school, and has to deal with me and a daughter who acts like me. And she is having shoulder pain, which she has seen the doctor about and it is getting better, but it’s still there. Constant pain, even low-grade pain, can take a toll on you and wear you down. And it’s a pain, that no matter how hard I try, I have no power the alleviate. The best I can do is help her relax, and try to make her as comfortable as possible.

    Today, I tried flowers to see if that would help.