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When We Needed To Get Out More

We ate trout for dinner, fresh from the lake. 15 of them, 7 of us; they didn’t stand a chance. We filled them with spinach and smothered them with butter. Then we baked them till their skins cracked. You said they were scrumdiddlyumptious, and everyone laughed. But I was watching: you only picked. Somebody had prepared a salad; the dressing wasn’t nearly as good as yours.

The boys drank beer, the girls drank wine. We watched a TV movie and I laughed the whole way through, because it wasn’t funny, though it tried so very hard to be. You spent a lot of time gazing high and left, up where the wall meets the ceiling. Nothing much but your eyes moved for the duration. I ate more fish, and when I dropped some on the floor, the dog wolfed it down.

'He’ll be sick,' you said.

*

We left after midnight, hugging our hosts and promising it wouldn’t be long until the next time. You were busy with your nails on the drive home.

‘We need to get out more,’ you said.

‘Huh?’ I said, ‘you don’t like them?’

‘No,’ you said, as the wipers pushed the rain away, ‘I don’t.’

‘But they’re my oldest friends,’ I said.

‘That’s no defence,’ you said and did that thing with your eyes, ‘you’re quite the square circle. Seriously, we need to get out more.’

~

words: Kevin O'Cuinn, Ireland (kevsville)
photo: Anne-Katrin Barth, Germany


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