Fiction | June 19, 2020
Joy Comes in the Morning
Diana Xin
I went over to Rosalind’s house because the Sunday Sisters had gathered to pray for me. I told them I didn’t believe in God but attended services with my mother because it pleased her, and I wanted to give her that, so they prayed for God to lift the veil from my eyes and soften my heart, that I might accept his love, which made me fidget in the wicker rocking chair—the only single-occupant seat in the room—but that was not the most uncomfortable part.
The most uncomfortable part was the man looking down at me from the photo on the mantelpiece. Pete, at possibly his peak of handsome and happy, arms wrapped around Rosalind and all that airbrushed bliss. The last time I’d slept with him had been over ten years ago, so it made sense that I wasn’t sure if I could recognize him, which is not to say that perhaps it wasn’t him, because it definitely was, but that he was maybe not the same person I once knew.
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