At Least They're Committed

“Are you done yet?” he steps onto the front porch, hands stuffed firmly in pockets, shoulders hunched, shaking off a drizzle of rainfall.

“With what, pray tell?” I plop the tawdry novel, of which I’ve read all of 36 pages, into my lap and turn my chin up to him to give my full attention.

“The bathos,” he drops in the folding chair next to mine and looks out at the yard and its unkempt tree and the crows squawking and cawing among its green, green leaves.

“Huh? Oh, that, the mushy, feel-good stuff,” I look down.

He rolls his head my direction looking inside of me. “That’d be it.”

I fumble with the bent corners of the book’s cover, as if I could fix them. “I’m not corny, I just have a lot of empathy. I hurt when people hurt.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But, sure, I’m done.”

We’re both peering at the sky, heads resting against the brick, as the wind picks up, the rain comes down, the leaves play and the crows fly away.