Posts Tagged ‘Marriage’

11
Mar

Looking For Mr. Goodbar Version 2022

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

Mr. Goodbar was a respected man, but he was still single at fifty. The woman he picked wore no panties under her joggers. She said she liked having sex with two men. Mr. Goodbar was happy.

The woman got pregnant. He married her because he was a good man. She wanted him to change for their child. He did not. In work and now in marriage, he had to live a double life. Mr. Goodbar was exhausted and miserable.

The woman had deceived him. She was not like she had led him to believe when they had met.

She vanished.

From Guest Contributor Dominique Margolis

25
Jun

The Mona Lisa

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

Mona was known for her smile, but really, what was so great about it? Just a slice of smile, nothing big and welcoming. Not a smile with a future in it, more of a flirtatious glance than anything else.

Mary Lee had a big welcoming smile. It had greeted legions of men. It was a smile that had launched many ships, one that let men know that she was available and ready for marriage. Perhaps that had been part of her problem. Men wanted what they couldn’t have. They preferred having their hearts broken over settling down to someone real.

From Guest Contributor Eliza Mimski

12
May

Abedabun

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

Abedabun weaves baskets while her father makes arrowheads. The sun is warm against her face and she tires of the mundane ritual but does not complain when her father rubs a droplet of sweat from her cheek with affection.

Her mother is by the river collecting herbs, humming in tune with the birds, while her brother and sister collect insects for amusement.

Hiawatha, the finest young man in the tribe, approaches Abedabun and her father with a token of marriage, a deer slung over his broad shoulders.

She stops her work and looks to her father.

Hiawatha’s token is accepted.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

5
May

A Deadly Metaphor

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

Chester tosses rocks over the cliff, ruminating over whether to respond. Angelica expects tacit agreement with all her decisions, only consulting him on the timing and execution, never the overall direction. This makes sense as a way to run a boardroom, but not a marriage.

Even this vacation, celebrating their anniversary, was her concoction. Sure, the views are spectacular, but she knows he’s no fan of hiking. That’s most likely her secret reason for this destination. He tosses another pebble, watching it careen out of sight.

At the bottom of the gorge, three fresh bodies lay buried beneath Chester’s avalanche.

26
Mar

The Silenced

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

She did not say yes.

The silence of more fear than cultural respect was not a sign of consent. The tears on her face at the dawn of her ‘big day’ were not a sign of consent.

The lashes fell upon her, one, two…

She had dreamt of wearing green for her wedding. Red was her mother’s choice.

His voice was loud it silenced her lips.
Ninety-eight or was it already past hundred? She’d later count the scars on her back, looking at her reflection in the broken mirror stained with blood.

She never wanted marriage.
She never wanted this.

From Guest Contributor Anne Silva.

Anne is a student writer from Sri Lanka. She publishes her writing on social media as Poetry of Despair.
You can read them at www.instagram.com/PoetryofDespair.

29
Sep

The Short-Lived Joys Of Youth

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words


When I married at eighteen,
a friend gave us The Joy of Cooking.
My husband, nineteen, turned every page,
looked at every recipe, writing, “Yes!” “Try!”
or (for his mother’s recipes) “No!”
Never thinking of actually cooking something himself.
I wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed or flattered,
but the marriage lasted about a year.

When I married at fifty-one,
we compared copies of The Joy of Cooking.
My husband’s was in better repair,
so we gave mine to Goodwill.
He likes cooking, so he does it. I wash the dishes.
It’s been nine years now. We are still married.

From Guest Contributor Cheryl L. Caesar

Cheryl lived in Paris, Tuscany and Sligo for 25 years; she earned her doctorate in comparative literature at the Sorbonne and taught literature and phonetics. She now teaches writing at Michigan State University. Last year she published over a hundred poems in the U.S., Germany, India, Bangladesh, Yemen and Zimbabwe, and won third prize in the Singapore Poetry Contest for her poem on global warming. Her chapbook Flatman: Poems of Protest in the Trump Era is now available from Amazon and Goodreads.

8
Apr

Ignis Fatuus

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

HISTORICAL FICTION ENTRY:

The three sisters couldn’t spend their summer at home because of smallpox in the town. Their parents acquired the old farmhouse close to the boarding school and their favorite teacher agreed to spend her vacation taking care of them. She told them why the house was empty, of the little girl, who drowned in the cow pond. In time, the spirit came to each: in a dream; as a light over the field at dusk; and to the third sister, as the woman she spent the rest of her life with, from the age of twenty-eight, in a Boston marriage.

From Guest Contributor Jon Fain

Thus far in 2020, Jon’s fiction has appeared in 50-Word Stories, Fleas on the Dog, City. River. Tree., and Blue Lake Review.

1
Jul

The Postscript

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

It was boiling mid-September, Freshman Gym, 30 kids in blue and white trying not to faint, two bees hounding us, Mrs. Jenkins scowling at our clumsy volleyball.

Since then, Brian’s been in and out of marriages, has a kid he’s ok with not seeing often, multiple jobs, half-bald, half-brown wisps, slow, ineffectual, chunky.

But in that gym, Brian was a long-haired demon god, always moving, lean and all instinct, feasting on shiftless opponents and becoming the postscript to everything I would ever write about my youth, not always the point or the signature, but an afterthought never to be ignored.

From Guest Contributor Steve Bogdaniec

24
Jun

Her Greatest Love Affair

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

On her death bed, Jennifer’s thoughts don’t dwell on her husband, despite several decades of marriage and two children together.

It’s Mateo she remembers instead. Jennifer was only meant to spend three days in Barcelona, but she switched out her ticket and let her friends travel on to Italy without her.

She remembers Mateo’s laugh, and the way he mispronounced her name in the cutest way. She remembers the passion when they made love in his flat beneath the open window.

It was only two weeks, but that was enough time to know Mateo was the love of her life.

4
Sep

Gone

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

Twenty years of marriage, twenty years of building a life together. Buying houses and cars. Now she is gone.

For twenty years, she was my everything. The smile in my morning, the sunshine in my day. But now it is dark and quiet.

One argument led to cruel words. Cruel words led to hurt feelings. Hurt feelings took time to heal, but heal they did. Things returned to normal for us. Life continued for us as a couple. Then it happened.

One episode of indiscretion, it wasn’t such a big deal. Deal breaker, she said. She is never coming back.

From Guest Contributor NT Franklin