Summertime meant going north to see her other family. Suddenly, at 14, that meant going to sleep away camp up amid the lakes. Haliburton. All those spoiled jerky kids knew each other from birth on but there was short solace in secretly groping with a counselor – he was about twenty and it was the one violation that would truly get all involved in trouble. Hidden away, sticky and impatient in the woods, everything new but already somehow unsatisfying, instinctively knowing that there was more. It was like something hollowed in her chest.
Back in the city, she found a strange freedom in sneaking out onto her grandmother’s balcony at 2 am. Old movies flickering on the TV inside, the sound turned down. Wearing her grandmother’s old slip from the 50s and nothing else. Yearning. Chain-smoking feverishly. Wanting painfully to get out into this world. Her feet dangle into the night, the smoke drifts towards the city skyline.
Light – Jennifer Schlesinger Hanson
Word – Rebecca Frank
