The Donkey's Footprint

Miss Alza Piedi's long chest was as flat as a table top. Summer or winter she never wore stockings. Her white Bernie ankles exposed to all weathers. Ottomar similarly recalled being reprimanded because he'd overturned a tin of paint when the decorators came to paint the staircase wall and the wall. The general had let his men to the battle fronts of the world. But always he'd returned to the girl he'd proposed to on a son lit lawn whose tears of joy had stained the leather of his uniform. His happy marriage was written in the geography of the old man's face. A simple statement that for nearly a lifetime two people had been as one.