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if a sparkling wine were served with fish and told were Vegans it's delish and all were sold on macaroons as macaroni we would hear how they were...

They migrated from the provinces when the judge retired. This was to escape the escalating violence in those places. He was very formal and never failed to speak. You always saw him impeccably dressed in his dark suits. His wife dressed nicely, too, and you thought she wouldn't be caught dead without her heels--sometimes high, sometimes medium, never low. I suspect she'd worked only inside the home. They'd brought up three children. He'd always provided them with nice houses and housemaids. As she was a racist, she'd never been able to forgive the child who married bi-racially nor fully accept the in-law. During the old white judge's last days and weeks, as his health failed further and further, she became exasperated and fed up with running here, running there despite paying a full-time nurse with money he'd earned(or stolen). Then he died and the running stopped acutely. Rest ensued. I think she'd planned to live with one of the children but it wasn't to be. So, she's with us still, but she doesn't live alone. She lives with a live-in housemaid by the grace of God. A judge's pension can be fairly comforting. Maybe in her thoughts or heart she lives alone. But who really knows?

A letter to an aunt from a homeless girl

PHANTOMS Is there anyone there I said, Looking near the empty house door. Which groaned with rusted hinges, To reveal the dusty floor. Small insects...

a (then) unrequited love poem to a delightfully scented friend ...

ouch!

Girl on streets

no dark clouds cross this sky the trees not wracked by bitter winds the sea not twisted torn in torment terror today is not a good day to die

Through opalescant mauve cold and careless crocadile tears hail ill met. Sluice of shimmering tendons gutter gathered rain muscles slur and sing...