Sunday Morning, Late August
She's never sat at a steamy café near Pont Neuf and fed a lover a perfect tarte tatin, never slept naked in a rented room on Place de la Madeleine, shutters open to the rain. Already, a thousand times before this morning, she's wished to be someplace else if only a little further down the beach. In this small town on the Cape, even clouds drag away their important business. Flimsy chairs face seaward, as if in wait for something glorious, drastic. An ocean away from Boulevard St. Germain, the water shimmers like unspooled foil. Some other life lies elsewhere: hers, unclaimed. But why, now, as her husband crosses the yard and with customary gestures plucks— oh, how banal—a common daisy, does her blood, running its old familiar route, deliver such bounty to her heart? Deborah Cummins